Message Spools for Mom Using Jacquard Products

Every year, on the second Sunday in May, we honor our Mothers and sometimes choose to lavish them with special gifts. Wrap a special message around a painted and embellished wooden spool using Jacquard's ExtravOrganza and present it to Mom as a special handmade gift.

I began with various unfinished wood shapes which can be purchased in the woodworking supply section of your local craft store or online at Cupboard Distributing Wood.

I chose Jacquard's Lumiere paints because of their extra special luminosity and Neopaque in rich hues in a color palette of turquiose, citrine green (my personal fav), Metallic Copper, Metallic Silver and True Gold. You can, of course, vary the color scheme to your personal liking, or Mom's.

After painting the pieces on all sides very throughly, let them dry. While you wait for the peices to dry, find some inspiring quotes about mothers by googling "quotes about mothers" or other. I found a great selection of quotes from Quote Garden. Bear in mind that you will be printing these quotes in the font of your choosing on 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of ExtravOrganza so you will need to use a smaller font with more lines for longer quotes or larger fonts for only one or two lines for shorter quotes, Additionally, they have to be able to fit around the base of the wooden spool so keep that in mind as well. Here are the fonts I chose:

I have posted about ExtravOrganza before, but it you are unfamiliar with it, it is a super neat product Jacqaurd produces. ExtraOrganza is a Inkjet Printable 100% semi transparent silk organza fabric sheet that is paper backed to run through an inkjet printer or inkjet copier. It is easy to use and extremely versatile and allows you to layer transparent images over the top of other artwork without blocking them.

To add depth I dry brushed all my piece with either the Lumiere in the Metallic Silver or the True Gold.

Once you have printed and cut your ExtraOrganza into the appropriate sized strips (measure length of inner spool), use a clear drying adhesive to attach the end of the quote to the inner part of the wooden painted spool. This will allow Mom to read the message from left to right as she unwraps it.

Now it time to assemble the remainder of the spool. This is the super fun part! Start by placing a generous amount of glue on one end of the cut dowel. I used a sqaure one and yes,fitting a sqaure peg into a round hole seemed to work well in this case. Play with the dowel sizes according to the spool sizes you end up using, making sure it fits snuggly but does have room to make it inside the hole.

Decide if you would like to use an antique photo, a recent photo of Mom or a wood bird shapes as the top embellishment on the spool.

If you opt for an antique image, either scan your antique photo into your computer for editing, or download an image from one of the hundreds of clip art sites available for a small purchase such as The Vintage Workshop. Use your circle to trace a portion of the image cut out leaving 1/4" off the edge and decoupage or glue the image to the circle.

Glue the back of the circle to the top of the dowel. leave in lying on its backside until the glue it throughly set.

There are hundreds of options for decorating the top of the spool to add that extra special touch but here are a couple I like. I cut silk flowers in half and glued each half to the sides of the top of the spool so that it appears to be a complete flower surrounding the dowel. I them use jewelry glue to adhere small stones, pearls, etc from my embarrassing extensive stash (: I am better at buying product than I am using it right away for projects. But somehow, I always seem to get to it.)

Finally wrap the message all the way around the spool and use a pearl head pin to hold in place. Try to position the pin in a position where it doesnt stick out too far and stick poor Mom!

Live Life Creatively,