Gracie's Wall Thank You

    Christopher and I decided it was time to decorate our bedroom (I will give posts soon).  For a while our bed sat in the middle of our bedroom, while our bedroom furniture was in the living room.  It was a beautiful sight to behold.  There came a point when we did the floor that we had to move out of our room.  Gracie to the rescue!

    We asked Gracie if we could sleep in her bed, and she could sleep in Elly's bed, and Elly could sleep with Riley... deep breath.  She was not in love with the idea, but she's a really good kid.  We had promised her something to make it up to her.  We also made jokes because Elly's room used to be Gracie's room.  We kept asking her if was like old times, did she want to move back to her old room.  The response was always a sarcastic look and an eye roll.

    After what seemed like eons with the family tossed around the house, our room was finished and we could move back in.  Our something nice for Gracie was to clean her room top to bottom, and to add something special for her on her wall.  For some time she has been asking me to make her a board that has a phrase on it that she loves.  Life for me is busy, and I kept telling her that I promised that it would happen, but that in fairness to her and to me, I could not give her an absolute time frame.  It occurred to me that this would be the perfect thank you to her.

    I began by typing out the phrase by Mark Twain in a font that I liked.  I then took it to my local print store and had it enlarged.  Back in the day when I loved folk art ( I still love to do it, I just don't seem to make the time to do it),  I had purchased some carbon paper to transfer patterns.  I'm not even sure if you can purchase it anymore.  I had originally planned to use my exacto knife and cut out a stencil onto clear plastic.  The more I thought about this plan, the more I became exhausted.  In theory it's awesome, but the reality is very labour intensive.  I decided to use that carbon paper and trace it onto her wall.
    It took a few tries to get the pressure right on the carbon paper.  In the end the markings were faint, but distinguishable!  I climbed up on a chair and began to paint.   When I had finished,  I took a step back and looked at my work.  I looked at it with my critical eyes (I'm a perfectionist).  I decided to highlight it with some white, knowing that I would probably over do it, like I usually do.  In the end I could only see the faults, but I had to give myself permission to be less than perfect.   I had forgotten how much I enjoyed painting.  It felt like half an hour, but when I wandered downstairs, it had been 4 hours that I had been up there!  My arms felt stretched like monkeys.
    When it was all done we took Gracie up to see her room.  She had been anxious to see what her surprise would be.  She was delighted.  Her little face just lit up when she saw the phrase.  "It's exactly what I wanted!" she said, her face glowing.  She just stood there smiling looking at the wall.  It was a very nice feeling to know that something so inexpensive could mean so much.