Sample of decoupage for Jazabelle

Jazabelle over at MSE wanted to know about decoupage and foam pads. I've tried to explain, very badly I think, about silicone glue being able to give an image movement and shape. Hopefully you can see what I mean on this card (click to enlarge and it should show up better) which I must have done about four years ago. I haven't done any decoupage for a long time, there's a lot of die-cut decoupage available now which wasn't about the last time I did any. Perhaps I should try the die cut version, I'll put it on my shopping list for next time I am out and about as I only want to try one sheet not a pack with too many sheets in.

The leaves at the bottom and the flower petals have been curved slightly (I use a pencil to gently roll the pieces over) and the bottom of the leaves stuck with a very small amount of silicone, almost flat with the image underneath. Then a bit further up the stem a bit more silicone to give it height so it stands away from the stem as it would do in real life. Same with the petals, look at the middle parts of the flowers which have a lot less silicone than the middle parts of the petals. By putting more silicone under the middle of the petals this lifts them up a bit from the image underneath, and because the edges have been shaped they come down again a bit as a real flower would. Foam pads will do the job well enough but silicone will give more movement and a more natural look to the image. There are now different depths of foam pads available so by varying the pads used it's possible you could get a similar effect to silicone. Again, when I was doing decoupage only one depth of pad was available.

Hope you can follow that, it's so much easier to show someone how to do it rather than talk them through it.