Lisa's Birthday Present!

At long last, a whole week after I finished it, here's the canvas that I made for my darling friend Lisa's birthday. Lisa's the friend that everyone wishes they had - we walk into each other's houses without knocking, show up unannounced & occasionally in pajamas, look after each other's dogs, and LAUGH. She's a treasure!  (She normally follows that up with saying "yeah, you just wanna bury her")

So I started out thinking I'd make a button tree on canvas (Lisa's got a thing for trees) but the world conspired against me finding the right buttons. Augh. So back to the drawing board eleventy billion times, and I thought oooh, some sort of quilted patterned paper? nope. Finally I decided to just paint the canvas in her favourite colour & figure it out as I went along. Of course I didn't take step by step pictures.

The canvas is 16"x20", so it was a challenge to photograph:

Supplies: canvas; turquoise & lime green paint (Plaid); Mod Podge; doilies; Iris Dreams digital stamp from Sweet Pea Stamps; Spectrum Noir markers; Pearl Glimmer Mist; Memory Box flower die; assorted cardstock and buttons; sheer blue fabric; stencil from Plaid

The basic process:
1. Paint canvas using a 7-hair brush because I couldn't find a foam brush. Curse.
2. Mod Podge the doilies on. Curse some more because WRINKLES, AUGH!
3. Still no clue what the finished product will look like or have on it, but I want to use that stencil. Found the foam brush - should have used the 7-hair brush. D'oh.
4. Cut the sheer fabric to about the size of the canvas. Fray edges, heat with embossing tool to melt randomly. Curse at how long it's taking to do that with a big piece.
5. Mod Podge the centre of  the fabric to the canvas. Curse because it won't dry OR STICK! AUGH!
6. Still not sure where the canvas is going. Get out the glue gun. Glue down parts of the sheer fabric (which of course then need to be covered by SOMETHING BUT AUGH WHAT?) Burn fingers when glue oozes through fabric. Curse.
7. Decide to use the Iris Dreams image. Nearly use up the B4 marker in her hair, requiring lots of blending and anxiety and yep, cursing.
8. *whew* printed out two images at the same time, I can pop up the flowers! Something went right!
9. Die cut eleventy billion flowers, sew buttons through centres.
10. Hot glue flowers onto fabric. Burn fingers. Curse.
11. An hour before delivery time, panic and send a picture to the Snarky Stampers girls to ask if it looks ok.
12. Sleep so soundly it's not funny.

Totally worth it, though. She loved it :)
xoxo,
Jessi