I came, I saw, I copied!

So the "trash fairies" have been good to me - yes, for a long time now, I have believed in the "miracle of the trash can". I will mention to Cam that Dylan could use a new dresser and like magic a perfectly good dresser will appear in the trash - free for the picking!

I was browsing at one of my favorite country stores when a huge canvas caught my eye - It was creative, different and very expensive. I tucked that information in my head and moved on. That night Dylan and I were out for a walk and in the trash was a canvas - 4 feet by 4 feet - the same as the one I saw in the store. We hightailed it home, drove back and loaded it into the car.

This project required 36 wooden circles, so since good friends of ours were due for a visit and he just happened to be a retired shop teacher, I put my order in.

Ryan helped me paint the canvas - which had huge, textured flowers on it - as we painted, it was a little too "textury" for me, so I went over it with black shoe polish (which I interchange with stain on many projects) the look was perfect, it appeared like old paper. Next we painted the circles black and took a bowl that was slightly smaller than the circles, I dipped it in white paint on the rim and placed it on the circles - this gave the effect of a slightly off circle - perfect (this was a new trick for me, so I was really excited)

Next I stenciled the alphabet and numbers. I am slightly obsessed with the alphabet which fits in nicely with being a teacher. Then I positioned the letters on the canvas and double checked to make sure positioning was good. Cam stood on a chair and I moved letters - this took about 15 minutes and after he left I took one last look and realized "u" was upside down - yeah, funny story, but so glad I caught that! I glued everything down and let it sit over night.

Tada...

This turned out just like the one I saw at the store, minus the price tag. Everything was free except for the stencil - which I got for 50% off at AC Moore.

I had 6 extra circles, so I was determined to do something with them - here is what I came up with: