Wednesday, May 29, 2013

A sneak peek at my labor of love

It's only a little over a week until we move into our new house and I am so excited to get in and get settled!  I measured every inch of the house during showings and I've been drawing room plans and space planning every nook and cranny since!  I generally despise shopping but have turned a new leaf...don't tell Dave Ramsey... I discovered the marvelous world of online shopping!  Don't worry, my cheapskate side has kept the budget in check and I can't wait to see it all pulled together and show you all my fun finds!!

Being that we are not in the house yet, I've been working on some art projects that we will hang in our new living room!  My sister gave me a 5 pack of 16x20 blank canvases for my birthday last fall and I have been keeping them for a future house project.  I bought some blue painters tape, paintbrushes, and some craft paint and set to work!  

Each canvas was taped off in a different geometric pattern and then painted to coordinate with the overall color scheme of the room.  

Simple project right?  
Tape, paint, remove tape, and voilĂ ... 
DIY artwork I love and can be proud of!

NOT that simple!

First off, let me clarify that perfectionists like myself should only undertake this type of project if they have spent a considerable amount of time mentally preparing themselves for the mistakes they will assuredly make.  

I carefully laid the tape just so, followed a 37 step process to ensure nice clean lines, and then spent a few late evenings touching up all the paint that slipped through the cracks!  
And that was just for one of the five canvases!!

I still am not 100% impressed when I look up close, but here is one of my labors of hate love!

Terrible quality photo, courtesy of my dumb phone, but you get the gist!!

Despite all the work that went into this one, I am still so excited to complete the rest and see how they look on my wall!!

For your benefit, I am including a list of "Do's" and "Don'ts" for anyone who decides they want to take on this project! 

DO
Paint your canvases a base color before taping. 
I painted mine white :)

Pre-plan your tape lines.
Pinterest is a wonderful resource - come up with a theme, "geometric" in my case, and go from there!

Smooth over tape lines to eliminate little bubbles that allow paint to seep through.
I used my credit card like a window scraper.... however, that being said, my canvas had quite a few imperfections so maybe choose a different tool!

Repaint over tape with base color again so it will fill any bubbles you missed.

Paint 2 coats of your color of choice.

Carefully remove tape and touch up any mistakes.

DON'T 
Get overzealous and try to take on a pattern that is too intricate.
This particular pattern fit that bill!  

Scrimp on the quality of the paintbrushes by buying a multi-pack for $1.
I spent more time picking out tiny little bristles than I care to admit!

Utilize the "ripping off the band-aid" method when removing tape.

Switch brands of your base paint when the first bottle runs out.
I made the mistake of believing that white is white so switching to a different brand of paint wouldn't matter... 
NOT TRUE.  When I touched up the areas where the color seeped through, it looked like I used white out!  This resulted in me trying to repaint over all of the white base with the new white paint, which then resulted in getting the new white paint all over the colored sections, which resulted in me repainting the colored sections, which resulted in needing to touch up where my shaky hand failed me, which resulted in me slowly going crazy!

Over-analyze your work.
As a perfectionist, this is a hard pill to swallow.  I will likely point out all of my mistakes to any person who compliments the canvas because I can't help myself, but when I take a step back it actually looks pretty darn good :)

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I can't wait to finish up the rest of them so you can see them all together!!