Redemption

As disheartened as I was after my failure earlier this week, I had a project in the works that I was itching to actually get done. I had the idea in my head for a while and finally took the plunge last night. I was determined to paint a canvas with our monogram on it and hang it in our family room above our other shelving, almost like a small gallery wall. Here's a refresher of the area above the couch.

I got the idea for a monogram after reading this post from Hi Sugarplum! I liked this

style of monogram that Cassie ultimately chose for her daughter's room and decided to use that as my jumping off point.

Problem #1: I am not artistic so could not for the life of me draw that free hand and we don't have photo shop so I couldn't make it on the computer! But, I was determined (oh, and keep in mind, this was quite a few weeks ago!) I printed this picture and enlarged it at work on the copy machine. I then traced a round circle onto some paper and tried to trace the general lines for our initials. I didn't take any pictures of those - I was at work :)

Problem #2: It looked like crap! I brought it to the art teacher at work and begged for help. She gave me some hints and helped fix some of my lines. What I really wanted her to do was draw it for me but I was too shy to actually ask her! So, I went back upstairs and tried it again on my own. Still no pictures.

Problem #3: It STILL looked like crap! Enter my friend Maureen. I wasn't afraid to ask her for help (she is a great artist!) So, she made it for me. And it's great. I didn't need the satisfaction of doing it myself. I really needed the satisfaction of it looking great!

So, after Maureen worked her magic, the project sat for a while. I was trying to figure out how I was going to get the letters on to the canvas since I wanted the background to be colored and the letters to be white. I just decided to go for it and deal with the potential problems as they came. This past weekend I finally bought the canvas and the paint (blue, imagine that!) Last night I gathered my supplies. (See Maureen's handiwork??)

 I cut out each letter and used some Frog Tape to tape them individually to the canvas.

I splurted out the blue paint into a bowl but it looked a little too bright. Can you tell?

I just added some white Behr semi-gloss that I had and mixed it up a bit to get the color a little lighter.

 Then I started painting along the perimeter of the letters using them as a guide.

Problem #4: There needed some major touch ups because my fool proof system of just pulling the letters down taught as I painted around them didn't really work. Imagine that! As I mentioned, I am not an artist, so my free hand sucked! But, instead of getting worked up because it wasn't perfect, I decided to embrace the more organic nature of it. Again, I don't have close ups of that part!

But, here is the final product.

And here it is in place:

Definitely redemption from Monday!