Recycled junk mail!!!!

So, you know that annoying junk mail you get every Tuesday? Yeah, I hate that... Most of it I dump directly from my mailbox into the recycle bin.  But every once in a while a piece makes it into the house.  oops...

Anyways, I opened one of these annoying pieces the other day, cuz I thought, "hey, why not?"  It was a visa offer (like I need another credit card...) but you know how you can get those pretty cards now? Yeah, it was one of those.  The pictures were all Zodiac signs... very cool. So I put the insert in my craft-stash to ponder later.  That was two days ago...

Three days ago I made a few poly-clay pendants, thinking that I would Mod Podge some pics of my niece and nephews onto them, for gifts, if they turned out okay. Unfortunately, none of the pics I have printed would work at all well for that, and I've run out of ink (boo...). Then yesterday, I remembered the pics from that Visa offer.

So I started pondering, and made this:

[caption id="attachment_76" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Zodiacs"][/caption]

Here's the back:

[caption id="attachment_75" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Swirlies!"][/caption]

So here's what I did: After pondering the 12 designs offered up in the mailing, I decided on the Leo, Pisces, and Cancer (right, that's the crab?) images as the best for this project. And I cut some backgroundy bits from the other pieces to fill in the gaps a bit.   Instead of painting the Mod Podge on each individual piece, like I normally would, I just painted a thinnish layer on the front of the pendant, so that I would have a base to arrange and stick the pieces to. It seemed to work best for this project.  After I had them arranged (actually, I arranged on the dry piece first, then did the Podgey process...) and stuck down to my satisfaction, I painted some Podge overtop.  After that layer dried, I painted another layer, and made sure to seal the edges and back of the pendant as well, so that it's all nicely shiny... Shiny is good....

This project holds a number of firsts for me.  It's my first mosaic piece, it's the first time I've mixed polyclay and ANYTHING else, and it's the first time I've used Mod Podge start to finish.  I can honestly say, I was very pleasantly surprised at the workability of the Mod Podge.  See, I usually use Elmers to stick stuff down, and until the tea-tray, I'd not used Mod Podge EVER.  I think I'm in love...

So, what am I going to do with this pendant? No idea.  It doesn't really match any of the jewelry types I wear, but I'm kinda loving it.  But I'm not sure about the ethics of selling it, either, since I have no idea who the original artist is so I can't give them credit (and here is the dilemma of being an English teacher and a jewelry designer.  I worry about plagiarism in art... kind of annoying actually!)

Ah, well.  In the meantime, I'm just going to enjoy my craftiness...

R.Wilson