Finished projects

Doesn't it feel good to finish a project? I have had several going at the same time and finished two of them this week. (Actually three, if you count getting the quilt hung.)

This morning Reva brought me a big bag of corks and I got right to work and finished up my wine cork board this afternoon.

They are hard to discern in this picture, but Judy sent me two lime green corks and a nice blue one. Great little jolts of color! So, thanks to my friends, this project is now complete, and as you can see already has a few things pinned to it.

The other project was a bigger one. I decided I wanted to paint a big flower on the wall in the small bathroom. I used a photo I had taken of lilies in our yard last year for reference and drew my giant lily in Illustrator. I enlarged it and printed it out on my printer—lots of sheets that needed to be taped together. Taping them on the window helped me see through each paper to properly line it up with the others.

Once it was up on the window I traced over it with a dark marker and made a few edits to the drawing while I was at it.

Then I transferred the image to the bathroom wall.

I wanted a very flat, graphic painting, so I started by outlining the drawing with taupe paint, then started filling in one color at a time.

Here's the finished mural, seen as you come in the door.

The bathroom is pretty small so it was hard to get a full-on shot, but here's the view from the john!

P.S. A couple of people have asked how I transferred the drawing to the wall. When it was taped to the window I flipped it over and went over the lines on the back side, with a soft pencil. Then when I taped it to the wall I traced over the lines, transferring a small amount of the pencil graphite to the wall—just barely enough to see.