Collaged Compacts

Here’s one of my latest creations.  I found a bunch of mirror compacts at the dollar store and thought that dressed up they would make lovely gifts.  They were really simple to make but I think turned out quite pretty.  I apologize for the quality of some of the pictures but the outside of the compacts is a shiny reflective metal and it really catches the light!

The plain compact I started with!

The first step I took was to take a piece of sand paper and sand down the surface of the compact.  I decided to work on only on the top of the compact and leave the other side plain.  I just wanted to rough up the surface so that it would accept the Gesso I was using to prep the surface and the gel medium I was using as glue more readily.

The sanded compact.

The next step I took was to apply Gesso to the sanded surface.  Again, this was to prep the surface and make it more readily accept the gel medium.  I used clear Gesso because it’s what I had on hand but since you are covering up the Gesso completely I can’t see why the white wouldn’t work just as well.

The compact with a coat of Gesso applied.

Because the compact has an “inner circle” on the face of it and then slopes down to the edges, I wasn’t able to use it as a template for cutting out my background papers.  Instead I looked for something around the house (I am away and don’t have my circle cutter with me but if you have one of those it would be ideal to use for this) that was the appropriate size and used it to create a pattern.  I used gel medium as my glue for applying the background papers.  The background papers I used were from my supply of scrapbooking papers, collage papers, and even sheet music that I had here with me.  I could also see using pages from old books, the newspaper, magazines, even phone books!

The compacts with the background papers applied.

A closeup of one of the compacts with the background paper applied

I used some some collage images, butterflies that I cut out using two sizes of butterfly punches, and some pressed flowers to embellish the compacts.  On a couple I added some squares of coordinating background papers to add an additional layer to the collage.  There are so many possibilities that could be utilized here.  On some of them I also added words that I had previously typed into my computer and printed out.

Some of the finished compacts.

After allowing the compacts to dry slightly (just to keep the images and dried flowers from moving around), I used my gel medium to apply a protective coat over the collage as well.

Another view of the finished compacts.

I worked on these off and on throughout a day and was able to complete 10 of them!  Cute little gifts or stocking stuffers!