Christmas Gift Painting

One of my friends asked me this Christmas to make her something to give to her Mom. She had seen my picture of the words on canvas that I had painted several months ago and wanted me to do something similar. Except she said she would like it to be a painting of the Fruits of the Spirit and she gave me specific colors to use. 

I decided, however, that since the Fruits of the Spirit are so short, that it would be better to use different fonts, paints and sizes to take up the canvas she had purchased for me to use. 

I remembered this print I had seen a while back on Pinterest and I decided to show it to her. She said she loved it! 

The only problem was that she had purchased a square canvas instead of a rectangle canvas, so I knew the scale was going to be off a bit and that it wasn't going to be exact. Nevertheless, I decided to go for it! 

I had never painted block letters before. So, I knew this was going to be a challenge for me. If you read my post about the words on canvas, you heard me express the patience it takes to paint words. This one required even more patience!! 

First, I had to sketch out the block letters on the canvas and then I painted the letters one color at a time. 

All in all it took me about 5 hours to paint. Definitely a labor worth doing because I can now say I know all of the Fruits by heart!! 

I don't know if I'm in love with the final product. There was one font in particular that I am not a big fan of. But my friend said that her mom loved it! She paid me probably too much for it, but it was still nice to be commissioned to do something and get paid for it. 

For her moms birthday we are going to build her something out of old barn wood. I'm looking forward to it because wood and I are much better friends that paint and I :)  

Upcycled: Free Logs Turned Into Fantastic Centerpieces & A Present

One of the best things about being nice, is that if you're nice to strangers, 

they will generally be nice back to you :)

I was driving to my boss' house one day and I passed by some guys cutting down a few trees for one of his neighbors. After they cut the tree into smaller pieces, they placed it all into a pile across the street. I parked my car, went over and started asking about the wood--all in hopes of asking the land owner if I could take some of the discarded wood. The workers informed me that the city dump would come by tomorrow and that the wood was mine for the taking. I grabbed three large logs (pictured below) and threw them into my trunk.

A few weeks later, my oldest brother and I spent a few hours with the wood and a chainsaw to cut the logs into 2 1/2-3 inch thick pieces. We got about 18 smaller pieces and three large pieces out of the logs. 

(Pay attention to the tall one of the left--I'm going to use it later on for a gift for the bride and groom)

Here's a close up of the sizes. They all varied because I didn't want the tables to look too uniform--My hope for the dinner party was to make the tables look styled, but individual.

Next, I wanted to create something fun for the bride and groom.The largest leftover piece of wood was too tall to place on top of a table, so I decided to make it into an engraved doorstop for the couple. 

I wanted the doorstop to read "A + J" but I couldn't find my grandfathers' wood engraver, so I resulted to using an old trick that I learned in high school. You can achieve the same look by using regular wood matches. 

First you line up the matches in a row (or in the shape of whatever it is that you're trying to make) and then you use tape to hold the ends together. Try not to get too close to the ends of the match because you do not want to prevent the matches from burning. 

Place the line on the log in the location of the project area.

Set fire to the matches and let it burn for 3-5 seconds. 

Blow it out and remove. You should be left with something that looks like this: 

Continue repeating the steps until you have your final project!!

Here's what mine ended up looking like. The bride and groom loved it! The groom, however, wanted to know what his initial didn't come first haha. 

The dinner party ended up being a big success. My parent's think that event planning/wedding planning is my calling. They might be right. I did have a lot of fun planning and decorating.

Here's a pic of what the tables ended up looking like with all of the flowers, candles and wood cuts :)