Scalloped Paint Chip Framed Art {or a tutorial from the mantel redo}

I wanted to share how I made the scalloped paint chip framed art for my mantel. One of the first things I bookmarked when I discovered the wonderful world of craft blogs was this wonderful post by Chris at Just a Girl who was guest posting over at Tatertots & Jello. {Yes, I bookmarked it. I was new to craft blogs and totally nieve to the wonderful world of Pintrest!}

I made my art piece just a bit differently, so I thought I'd share.

{Sorry for the picture quality. They were either taken during the hubby stole my camera and then lost the battery debacle or in the oh so dreary entryway.} 

I got this frame on sale at Target. It had a little orange spot on it so I got an extra 10% off. This is living on my mantel so there's no way anyone is going to see it. So a sale and an extra discount...score! 

The paint chips I used were Laura Ashley for Valspar {at Lowes} in Glass Green. I know people have different opinions about using paint chips for crafts. I don't want to debate this issue, but do want to say please be nice. Please don't take all the paint chips that the store has in stock. Someone might really want to paint their bathroom the color you're eying for your artwork! 

I used this Fiskars circle cutter borrowed from a friend. Borrowing craft supplies that you are only going to use once is a great way to keep craft project costs down. I'll be returning this to a friend with a Starbucks card attached {mainly to make her smile}.

This takes A LOT of circles. My frame was an 8X10 and I used close to 70. So put on an episode of Grey's while you're cutting {that or put your little one in the exersaucer and turn on music like I did}. The cutter and I took awhile to get into a good rhythm. Overall, I'm not a big fan of this particular cutter. But, you only need the top row of circles to be perfect so most of the duds are actually usable. Once I figured that out, this project became super low stress. 

The original tutorial said to use dots of craft glue. Well, I don't have any. So I tured to the trusty bottle of Mod Podge. I laid the glass down on my cutting mat and lined it up with the little yellow squares. I put a layer of Mod Podge down and then used the lines to make the tops of the rows even. Make sure you're going off the glass. You'll clean up the edges later.

I turned the glass upside down to dry. I figured the pressure would help everything dry in place. I think I left it alone for thirty minutes. I don't really know....it was however long it took to put little miss down, make a snack, and get the diapers started in the wash.

My trusty exacto knife helped me clean up the edges. Be really careful as you go around, the knife will cut little bits out of the glass and they can end up embedded in your fingers {I learned that lesson for you so you don't have to. You're welcome}.

Here's the finished product. I'm really happy with how it came out.

Here it is in action. You can learn all about this mantel over at this post.