This week I've been watching the weather forecast intently.  The autumn rain has come and it's snowed a few times recently in the mountains not too far from home.  Brrr.  Not the best weather for painting but today - the sun shines!  Quickly, let's get onto this week's pin:

This Week's Pin: Letter Canvas

Original Source: http://www.inspirationformoms.com/2011/08/i-finished-it-friday-wall-art.html

Who's This For?:  My Family

Price: Canvas $8.99 from Lincraft, Wooden Hearts (2) $3.70 and Wooden Letters (4) $7.12 from Bunnings, Fiddly Bits Spray Paint $2.95 from Bunnings and craft glue, Total $22.76

Difficulty: Only patience needed - watching paint dry

With all the letters of the alphabet available, I was stuck.  What do I write?  Live? Eat? Smile?  Keep it simple, I recalled and gathered the perfect letters, H, O, M and E.  Not too in your face.  Not trying to say too much.  

Next thing, what do I feel about home?  Love!  Hearts it is then.  Luckily there were two different sizes so that I could put them together for asymmetry.  Things appear more harmonious when they're asymmetrical.  That's weird.  How is that possible?  Don't know, but it's true.  You always plant trees in odd numbers, never even.

Allan Becker, the 'garden guru' wrote, "Because nature embraces chaos, odd numbers look more natural. At first, odd numbers of an item appear unbalanced; they are more difficult to divide because the eye is unable to pair them. When the eye tries to group an odd number into pairs, there is always one left over; the eye continues moving everywhere looking for a mate. This creates a pleasurable dynamic situation. The resulting phenomenon is that odd-numbered groups are particularly pleasing to the eye." http://allanbecker-gardenguru.squarespace.com/journal/2010/2/2/planting-in-odd-numbers-the-secret-to-a-beautiful-garden.html

With this firmly in mind, I glued the letters for home across the bottom (yes I drew a pencil line for letter placement) and positioned the two hearts to be off centre and at different angles so that they don't appear like a 'pair'.  So I'm waiting for glue to dry.  Perhaps a cup of tea then.

Now, with a big painter's sheet underneath, start spray painting.  It's taking many coats to get an even effect, but that's ok because it's always better to build up light layers of paint than to be heavy handed and have the paint run or become too thick.  Many, many coats later, I'll bring it inside to dry in the heated house.

Day 2 of watching paint dry begins.  I'm noticing that the edges of the letters are not taking up the paint at all so I've got a creamy shadow effect to the wooden shapes.  When I'm finished with the spray painting I'll have to hand paint each edge.  Really should have done this first before attaching to the canvas.  However, the overall effect is looking great.

After 5 days of painting and waiting, it's finished.  But I thought it was missing one more thing.  I added a silver painted heart to the heart cluster.  Perfect.

When I showed the canvas to my family, they all loved it.  My husband asked "What colour will it be?"  "Um, this colour" I replied.  "I love it" he said.  Thank goodness for that because the purple that I originally wanted was on the very top shelf, three racks higher than I could reach.

'Till next week,

Soops.

“Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up” – Pablo Picasso