How to Decoupage a Foam Head

Let’s start with my motivation.  I wanted a cool way to display the felt masks I make in pictures for my Esty page.  I decided that a mannequin head or display foam head was the way to go.  Mannequin heads are expensive AF.  But Hobby Lobby sells foam display heads for like $5…so you know what route I went. #CheapAF

After looking at my merchandise on the plain white head I felt like I needed something more.  Thanks to Pinterest I settled on decoupage because although there were a lot of really awesome ideas, decoupage seemed like the easiest of all of the options.  So I bought Mod Podge, sponge brushes and a newspaper and got to work.

First, I spent about an hour cutting the newspaper into various sizes.  I made a bunch of small cuts because according to all the tutorials, you’ll need tiny pieces to properly cover the face of the head, which is really curvy.

Then I started gluing. I tackled the face first.  I covered about three square inches of surface with mod podge and started sticking pieces of newsprint to it.  I made sure to then cover the newsprint with more glue. Once again, from every tutorial I read, I learned that there can NEVER be too much glue. I continued to finish the face, and about an hour in I realized that I was almost done with the entire head. I decided to let it dry some more so I could see how it was turning out.  After the glue dried I saw that I’d missed a few spots.  And by ‘few’ I mean a lot of spots.  So I cut some more newsprint and made sure to cover everything I’d missed as well as the base of the head. 

I’d say this project was about 3 hours of work over the course of two days.  I think it turned out really well for my first attempt.  The project was way easier than I thought it would be.  And now I basically want to decoupage everything because I’m convinced that it’s really hard to mess up.

Lo Note: Newsprint is really easy to work with because it's thin and takes to the glue well.  If you use a thicker material, say pages from a magazine, just know that you'll probably have to lay on the podge EXTRA thick.

I’d love to hear your decoupage stories. Pleas share pics of cool shit you’ve glued up with Mod Podge…I live for awesome crafting stories.

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