Epic Craft Fail + Traveling

I arrived in Starkville Mississippi for a recruiting event last night.  It was sleeting/snowing/icing (whatever you want to call it) all the way from home to about 2/3 the way to Starkville.  I am already an extremely nervous driver so having all of the 18-wheelers around me going extremely fast made it a very intense drive.

So, I picked up some of these (best invention ever) and went to have some beer dinner...which helped calm the nerves.

So...on to my Epic Craft Fail.  In one of my earlier posts I showed you my chalkboard creation and talked about how I needed some more art to put around it.  So, I found these amazing prints on Etsy last week and decided to Mod Podge the paper to a canvas and see how it turned out.

F.A.I.L.

 My very first attempt went straight into the trash due to me trying to get rid of the bubbles in the paper and ended up ripping the entire thing in half.

I slowly got a little better with placement but the bubbles never went away...it is definitely a trashed craft and I'll have to start over from point A.  At least I can still print out the pages and use them a different way.

Do you have any Mod Podge tips?  How do you keep the bubbles out without creasing or tearing the paper?