a big M

 Hi friends.  How time flies.  I've been working on something a little different this week.  A few years ago, I picked up a big letter M.  It's 12" across and 12" high.  I think it's made of wood, because it's pretty heavy.  But it's covered in vinyl.  Unfortunately, it was PINK, and I don't do pink.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to do to it, so while I procrastinated, it sat.  

One day I decided to try and paint it, using acrylic paints.  I used blue, but it really didn't cover well, so it sat some more.  

I finally decided that I was really going to do something.  I tried painting over it with brown, but that didn't work either.  Finally, I decided to cover it, so I tore up some old music and proceeded to decoupage it with the music.  I already liked it better, but still, I wasn't what I wanted.  

So I got out my gelatos, and scribbled just a little with blue and turquoise.  Then I grabbed my watered down gesso and a paint brush.  The gesso smooths out the gelatos, but, because it's diluted, it doesn't completely cover whatever is underneath.  This is exactly what I wanted.  

But it was still too plain.  So I pulled out one of my favorite stamp sets, Petal Prints from Stampin' Up and stamped one image randomly all over the letter with ultramarine stazon ink.  Now, I was really liking it.  

But I decided to go one step further and add some flowers.  Daisies and butterflies.  I played around with them for awhile and decided on a layout, but it was late, and I was too tired to do leaves, so I just left it on the table.  When I came down the next morning, the flowers were all rearranged, in a nice neat pattern up and down the legs of the M.  Someone was in trouble!  And since I hadn't bothered to photograph the layout, I had to go through that process all over again.  Then I glued the flowers and butterflies down, and realized that I had forgotten the leaves.  So I cheated.  I punched leaves and sponged the edges.  Once I decided where I wanted to put them, I glued them on right over the top of the flowers.  Then I stamped a few more flowers and cut them out and glued them on top.  Not quite the way it should have been done, but I was not going to try and peel off the first ones.  I probably would have messed up everything, and I had already spent too much time to mess it up, so I just fixed it the easy way.  You can't tell by looking at it anyway, so it's all good.  I gave it two coats of decoupage finish and it's done. 

And I have to say that I really LOVE how it turned out.  

Thanks so much for taking time to stop by for a visit.