Sunday, October 23, 2011

An Art Project


Wow...time has flown by...I can't believe it's almost been a year. To summarize the past year:

-Had a depths of despair, horrible, no good work situation that I did a horrible, no good, terrible job handling. On the other side I regret that I wasn't more mature and wise of how I handled things, but in the midst of it I did the best I could.
-I got a new job. Yay! I have a great job with a great employer- still in Recruiting. Learning so much these days about recruiting, and the similarities of all jobs at corporate America. BTW God totally gave me this miracle job in a huge way...I'll have to share the story at some point in the near future.
-My marriage went from 1 year to 2 years old. Yay! It's literally getting better daily.
-I joined Weight Watchers, lost 15 pounds in 2 months, got cocky, then got stressed and gained it all back. Now I'm back on it. Yikes.
-My community that I run with is planting a church! It's going to be amazing. I can't wait until January when it arrives, but until then it's a fun season of preparation. Yay! :)
-We completely redid our living room. It looks pretty cool :)
-We started training for a half marathon, but then things with the church plant became a little more time intensive, and we backed off a bit. Looking forward to retraining starting next week.
So I feel like there's so much more that's been going on, but that's all I got for now.

In other news, I had a fun art project yesterday. I have become super enthralled with Pinterest (you can follow me here btw) and I found the cutest idea on there. I wish I could take credit for the idea, but it just wouldn't be true. I can't find the original pin where I saw this idea, but someone basically found some cheap, not so pretty artwork at a garage sale or salvation army or something, cut out letters to spell out a phrase, glued them on and spray painted the rest of the board. Then you remove the letters and viola! Art.

We had this cheap ($5 to be exact) art canvas from IKEA that had been hanging in our craft room/office as a placebo art piece, so I thought it would be the perfect time to spruce it up. I have a Cricut machine, so I cut out my letters from the Songbird font cartridge. If you don't have a Cricut you can print letters off your computer, then trace them out and cut them. Same idea. :) I chose the phrase "exceedingly, abundantly" which is from Ephesians 3:20 (&21)- "Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen." It's such a great reminder of God's heart and character for us. Love it. Here's the canvas and my letters:



Then I headed outside with a can of spray paint and did my first coat:


Then I asked my technological best friend/assistant/robot/whatever, Siri, to set me a timer for 5 minutes. She's just fun to talk to.


Wait your five minutes patiently...or you can be like me and tap your foot and will time to speed along. :P Then do your second coat:



Looking better- but then I did another 5 minutes and one more coat, just to be safe. As soon as I had sprayed the 3rd coat I immediately began peeling letters off. I would reccomend doing this while the paint is wet so it doesn't dry and crack when you try to take them off. Here's what I ended up with:



I am really happy with how it came out. It was just so cheery and colorful and vintage-y, which I love. (I went back and sprayed the bottom left corner for more coverage, btw). I liked it so much I decided to do another in fact.



This comes from Matthew 6:25-27: "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?"

This verse is such a great reminder not to get caught up in the day to day worries of life and to instead focus on the big picture and the goal at the end. I also was able to use the Cricut to cut a bird for the bottom right, which I thought was very appropriate. :) Same steps- here's my result.



And here they are, side by side:


Not bad for one hour and about $15, right?

Tania

PS: Don't have an IKEA? Try garage sales, thrift stores, flea markets, craig's list, etc. Or, if you are feeling really crafty- get yourself a blank artist's canvas, and paint yourself a backdrop! Here's a time to experiment, go crazy and bold and see what you can come up with. You may like it so much you don't end up spray painting it after all!