Late to the “red truck” party

Last year around the end of November, when I normally get my Christmas decorating done, I pulled out this seasonal dish towel and thought it would be a great thing to paint on one of the square canvases I had in my closet. So I photocopied the towel and then set it aside and did nothing that year. Then this year, I was cleaning up my desk and found the copy and I thought “I should really paint this, it’s cute!” And I’m only a zillion years late to the red truck party!

Have you noticed all the holiday things with red trucks? Once you start looking, it seems that they’re everywhere! Put “red truck” in the search field of Pinterest and wow. Just wow. I am a little surprised I didn’t see toilet tissue with red trucks, but I digress.

Photo collage of a seasonal dishtowel with a red truck design, and photocopies of the image used to enlarge it.

I had to enlarge the photocopy 300% to have it fit nicely on the square canvas, which was about 18″ square. (I’m sitting in my family room, writing this blog post, and I cannot be bothered to get up and measure the painting 😆) It was a little fiddly to enlarge the image on my outdated desktop printer/scanner. But I managed to get all of the image and then used my portable light table to line up the images and tape them together.

Photo collage of the image enlarged 300%

Next, I painted the blank canvas with some golden yellow chalk paint with a little brown acrylic paint mixed in. This would not be the actual background color. This was just an undercoat.

Photo collage showing the golden yellow color being painted on the canvas.

When that was all dry, I painting over the entire canvas with flat house paint I had in the basement. It is Antique White. When that top coat dried, I used some sandpaper to distress the white finish and have some of the golden yellow base coat show through.

Next, I used the “old school” transfer method I talked about in this blog post to transfer the image onto the newly painted canvas. This took some time. And during this process, it became evident that the image had become slightly distorted due to the enlarging process. I had to cut and re-tape some portions of the image to straighten them.

Photo collage showing how I transfer the design to the canvas. — In this photo collage, you can see how the white over the golden yellow turned out on the canvas.

At this point in the project, I got pretty geeked about this whole thing. I couldn’t wait to start painting.

Photo of pencil outlines of the design on the canvas. — I really wanted to get painting!

Photo showing the letter painting process on the canvas. — Instead of using a true black paint, I chose a craft paint color called Warm Black.

Photo of the red truck, all painted. — It’s all downhill from here! The truck got a little distorted in the enlarging process but I think I made it work ok.

At this point, I should tell you that I was using the black and white copy of the dishtowel to go by. I completely forgot to look at the actual dishtowel, which was in color, and could have helped me. I was looking at examples of red truck designs with these tree farm type phrases on them to get ideas for the colors for the lettering. I decided to go with this scheme shown in photo below, and then I made the colossal mistake of asking my family what they thought.

Photo of the finished canvas, but with some questionable color choice — I was pretty happy with it! For a while…

Two of the four members of my household chimed in with their opinions, which I supposed I did ask for in a round about way. In the end, I decided to tone things down a bit by changing the Farm Fresh phrase to the Warm Black color rather than the green. I’m glad I did.

Photo of the finished Farm Fresh Christmas tree sign. — Yay!

I’m really glad I did this project this year. I see things like this in the store and what keeps me from making the purchase is knowing I can make the thing myself, and usually without buying extra materials. I had the blank canvases from when I thought I was going to paint more. I always have some paint on hand. Most importantly, I usually have the time. And if I don’t have the time, I make it, simply by not cleaning my house or not doing laundry for a few days! It’s pretty straightforward. Listen family, do you want home decor or do you want clean underwear?

(Don’t answer that…)

Thanks so much for stopping by! We are getting closer to Christmas and I have been so busy with projects, but it really makes me happy. 😀 I hope you’re doing well and feeling happy, too.

Jenny

Paint-by-number purgatory

At the beginning of quarantine, I was scrolling thru Instagram and saw an ad for a paint-by-number thing where you upload a photo of your pet, and this company turns it into a project you’ll regret ever starting.

So I bought into it. And it took weeks and weeks for the kit to arrive. It took so long, that I figured it was a scam and I was out $46. (I know, right?!) After emailing the company, I learned that due to all the new shutdowns last Spring, they were behind on orders and if I could just be patient. I AM a very patient person, and also easily distracted, so I waited. And forgot about it.

Then the paint-by-number kit finally arrived, and I was immediately hit with one part excitement and one part horror. Why did I order this? Why did I choose that particular photo? To answer the first question, you only need to recall that everything in the world shut down, kids were no longer going to school, and I didn’t know how many more family games of table tennis I could endure. Also, I have a painting of our older cat, Princess, from a paint-and-drink-cocktails place that I completed several years ago. As for the second question, well, the photo I chose of Dewey, our young rescue kitty, was so darn cute and he looks so handsome, I had to choose it!

I began painting, and I made sure I did this at the dining room table where my two artistic boys could see and be inspired to help me finish it. Sneaky, right? (They don’t consider themselves artistic but they really are!)

Collage of two photos of a paint-by-number of my cat.

I worked and worked on this project in between other projects, like various knitting and crochet things, and eventually I got so close to finishing that I…..stopped working on it. It languished on the dining room table until I moved it to the floor of my craft room, where it languished further and completely lost its appeal.

But I finally picked it up one day a few weeks ago determined to finish it. But I knew it needed to be fixed because somewhere in the zereos and ones of software that converts photos into near-impossible paint-by-number kits, it determined that some shadowing in Dewey’s white fur should be mauve, and not just a sliver here and there, my cat looked like he was wearing a auto racing jump suit. It was bad. Everyone agreed. You can also feel free to agree by viewing this photo. He looked like the Trans Van of cats. (I thought these vehicles were super cool when I was a kid!)

Collage of images of a 1970's era Trans Van recreational vehicle and the paint-by-number of my cat with an unfortunate swath of mauve paint.

I changed out the mauve for a more reasonable shade of cat, and voila! Finished. I wrapped the canvas painting around a canvas on stretcher bars I had lying around and now I can look at it, admire it, and always be reminded that impulse purchases are usually not the best idea.

I hope you enjoyed this little story of impulse, regret and persistence. I can honestly say I never want to do another paint-by-number again. But maybe you’ll give it a try! Just be careful what photo you choose. The amount of detail in this painting just about did me in.

Have a wonderful day! –Jenny

“Wood” ya call me crazy?

I’m not sure how it is where you live, but where I live, in Minnesota, you almost cannot find a winter planter without birch logs in it. Birch trees are plentiful in Minnesota, and truth be told, I have always loved the look of a birch tree or birch bark anything. In fact, I still have a mug I bought probably 30 years ago at a Cracker Barrel restaurant. I used to drink my coffee out of it, but it isn’t the greatest drinking mug, as the lip of it isn’t quite right. It makes a great holder for my crochet hooks, though.

Anyhow, I have admired the winter planters from my neighbors’ front porches, to the local shops in my town. There’s something about the white logs against darker tones of greens, golds and reds. It’s so festive yet natural! But because I’m a bit of a cheapskate, I have refused to purchase birch logs for my own planters. You might even say I grew to hate the sight of them, because they are literally everywhere and I just couldn’t make the purchase. So I had an idea.

On the surface, my idea sounds kind of dumb, I admit it. But many times, I go with a dumb idea, and am surprised with either how good the idea was, or just how ridiculous! And I’m sure I looked, um, interesting as I dragged a huge fallen branch I found on the middle school field to my back yard where I hacked it up into manageable “planter” sized logs. I couldn’t tell you what type of tree it was, but it was not birch, maple or oak.

I knew I wanted to paint these logs and turn them into “birch”, but I didn’t have that amount of white craft paint, and I wasn’t ready to buy more, so I rummaged through the storage area of my basement where I knew many cans of house paint were left for us. I used interior latex flat paint in Antique White to put a nice base coat of white on the logs, then I used some craft paints in gold and brown and black to “birchify” them. I used Google to find images of birch logs as my guide, as I transformed these basic branches into something I can hopefully reuse for a few years.

Photo of branches painted white — Antique White latex paint

Photo of one branch painted to resemble a birch log — This log-painting adventure is quite therapeutic!

Photo of several branches painted to resemble birch logs — They might be a bit too gold here.

Another photo of logs painted to resemble birch logs — Yep, I need to tone down that gold color.

I found the best way to get the black marks was to use a piece of stiff cardboard and dip the edge in my black paint, then “imprint” the black onto the log, while turning the log so the straight cardboard could make a mark on a round surface. Then I found that tapping the cardboard on the log in areas gave me some dot-dash patterns that make the logs look realistic. I also found I went a little heavy on the gold and toned it down in some areas.

I ended up with six good logs, three for each planter on my front porch. I think they look nice! I’m happy with them, and I will store them in the garage or basement in the off-season and bring them out next year. Since I painted these “free” logs with supplies I had on hand, my investment was my time, and not my money. The birch logs sell for about $4.99 each. That would’ve been $30 for my two planters. Instead, I purchased these pre-bundled greenery packs at Home Depot for my planters. Last year, I literally went around my yard and trimmed pieces off some evergreens and also some arborvitae.

Photo of a Christmas planter with greenery, pine cones, red berries and my painted birch logs. — Ta-da!! One of my two finished planters.

Thanks for stopping by! I have another big project to write about so stay tuned! For now, I have to get to bed. I am making all my Christmas cards by hand this year, so I plan on getting an early start tomorrow.

Jenny