(All links clickable for bigger images)
For those of you who lead busy lives but were curious as to what I was whining about for so long, I'll put these here, right up front for you.
Having seen it in person, I have to say, the sense of scale in the photos feels off but trust me, it's kind of big (~12' from widest point and same for tallest point).
For anyone who wants to be overshared to death, you've come to the right place!
First of all, I'm an unoriginal, wannabe, so that is not an original design; that is from the little pony show that's currently sweeping the nation. Second, if I didn't screw up the math, it took somewhere in the ballpark of 54 hours to cut, "grid", draw, Sharpie, paint and cut it a second time. That means I heard the same one song about 774 times. I also have a painful blister on my thumb from the glue dots I used to hang it; go figure, I do the yard and get nothing but I work on a craft and get a blister. I guess I'm a hardcore crafter.
I didn't capture the earlier stages (since those were only obvious in the sense that I did them and I wasn't about to have my mom taking pictures of me doing this stuff) but the later process, in pictures:
This is me double-checking the lines matched up after I Sharpied it. This is where I noticed my first glaring mistake. I corrected it in the painting as best as I could.
The map to my drawing and painting. I used some serious art techniques, learned circa 2nd grade. Gridding isn't cheating, it's being smart...
My colors. Not even all of them, at that. Just the first row. I went through four bottles completely but depleted many more.
Let's get started! The first one I started painting.
Piecing it together in the too-small craft room.
I really grew to hate these finer lines. Favorite panel? Dead center, because it was large swaths of color and took the least time.
Kitchen table got prettied up in the process. My mom was amused by how much the lines looked intentional.
Hopefully not obvious shout-out. Hard to read? Good!
I think my favorite part is either the candle on the door or the book on the sign.
Somewhere, floating around in the vast ether of internet space, is a picture of me on the 14' ladder after hanging most of it; the director and asst. director were emailed the picture (not sure why I wasn't CCd). If I had known, I'd have worn the jeans that make my ass look nice instead of the much comfier, significantly less flattering pre-PMS granny pants I wore.
Oh well.
The response at work was pretty cool, especially given I was demoted from the unofficial "most creative person in the branch" position a week or two ago and some of the coworkers had serious doubts I'd be able to pull it off when I explained the idea to them. To hear a few "I love it!"s and "That's so cool!"s was nice vindication. I may not be the most creative but I'm alright.
I'm honestly more happy to be done than I am proud, at the moment. It's kind of hard to be proud when I saw all the mistakes I made/allowed. And I want a massage. All the bending, stretching, stooping, repetitive this or that really exhausted me.
That's the how's, basically. As to
why I did it? Well, that's kind of personal but if you don't mind hearing, I won't mind telling. (Please see above about oversharing; it's my thing/it's what I do.)
I’d been considering doing
something decorative in my department for quite a long while (white walls everywhere? Not kosher) but always talked myself out of it; “It would take too long†or “I honestly don’t feel like it/care enough right now†or “It wouldn’t turn out well, so why bother?â€
But then the boy started talking to me in this way that he sometimes does, every once in a blue moon, only it was constant and drawn out this time and it made me really happy. He wasn’t complimenting me or doing anything obvious in that nature but what he was doing made me feel similar to this:
Oh, look what I’m holding here in my fire,
This is for you.
Am I too obvious to preach it?
You’re so hypnotic on my heart.
And more than anyone before, in my entire life, in any relational capacity, he makes me want to
do, to bring beauty into this world in any way possible, even when he pisses me off. So...I gave it a shot.
Anyway. Sorry if it's sappy or inappropriate to say/share that part and I feel like a monumental ass for it but for me, the Why was much more relevant the whole way through than the How or What, anyway. It's not Serious Art Stuff but hopefully that wasn't too disappointing.
