With motivation ebbing, I took them outside to paint them my wall color. Those of you who are astute readers will remember that this was a breezy day in September. I also took these to my deck in the later afternoon, where there just happens to be a shadow from my house (go figure). So needless to say I was wrestling with leaves, hairs falling out of my cheap paintbrush, and a shadow that makes it really hard to evenly spread off-white paint on a white canvas. It was at the moment when I picked the last leaf out of my wet paint when I decided that this project was going to be "just good enough".
My good friend Jillian Michaels once told me (and everyone else who bought her Yoga Meltdown dvd) "this is not about perfection, it's about being perfect with your imperfection". Little did she know her words of wisdom would extend beyond my "crow pose" and into my crafts.
These imperfect, newly off-white canvases then sat a few weeks before I got back to them. Rather than purchase a stencil online (which, after the fact, I completely recommend), I found a damask style on-line that I liked and printed it out. I then laminated it and cut out the shape, thus making a stencil. This was way more work than it needed to be. And in the spirit of doing more work than necessary, I then traced the stencil on the canvas with pencil. To do it again, I would buy a stencil and just paint right on the stencil as you go.
So I not only painstakingly drew each damask onto the canvas, but then I had to go back and paint inside the stenciled lines. I can't even write with wit about this part of the project because it was so unnecessarily time consuming.
(This is a picture of both the pencil and the paint)
Then my semester got busy and my back couldn't stand hunching over a canvas any longer, and my super-project that I started in September sat in the guest room until today. In the meantime, my computer had some work done and all my photos were lost. Luckily, I am lazy enough that I have only completed one full canvas, so the image above it what's left of the second canvas. I also got some different furniture since that blustering day in September, so putting these on either side of my window no longer seems right.
So today I set out to hang the completed canvas above my mantel. In line with the rest of this project, this seemingly simple task turned out to be a disaster. I heard about this idea to put a dab of toothpaste where you want the nail to go and then stick the canvas where you want it on the wall, so the toothpaste transfers onto the wall and you can put your nail there. If you remember, I have an aversion to nails and putting holes in my plaster wall, so I got some stellar 3M command hooks, transferred the toothpaste onto the wall, and stuck my strips on the wall. I hung my canvas from the hook, stepped back to admire my work, and my canvas then pulled the hook from the wall and fell to the floor. I watched this happen, in slow motion, and when I went to grab the canvas, it knocked my two picture frames from my mantel, and the glass shattered on the floor. I then had to delay the project further to both vacuum and wash all the floors in my house so my pup wouldn't hurt his paw.
And for those of you who are wondering, my stupidity and bad luck in this DIY has not escaped my notice.
I gave in and put some nails in the wall (granted it took my 4 nails to get two holes) and, for safety's sake, I also used velcro command strips to secure the edges to the wall, because if there was a sliver of a chance that the canvas would fall onto my mantel and knock my TV to the ground, it would happen.
So here it as, the "finished" product that you've all waited for years to see...
I swear my phone's camera does not do this justice...
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