Resting and Crafting

Sometimes I just really like to toss around the word "crafting" - as if I am the type of super creative person who actually makes something fabulous and worthwhile. I am such the wanna-be crafter.

In reality, I am just trying to find things to do that involve sitting or laying down - RESTING - so my darn uterus will stop being so grumpy!

This little project has been on my "Get It Done" list for a few weeks ... my ABC Nursery idea continues to sweep the nation. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but my friend Laurie did it while living in Texas and again after she moved to Chicago. My neighbor Tammy, right here in the NW, took on the ABC project as a first birthday gift to her handsome little guy ... of course that was almost a year ago and she still has displayed the canvases, but whatever. And now my super adorable friend Jenn in Virginia, pregnant with her first, gender unknown, has decided to give it a whirl. For those of you keeping track, that's a grand total of 4 canvases - 3 V's and 1 S - that I've crafted for the nurseries of my friends both near and far. And here's the latest, the fourth:

What I did: My friend Jenn chose three colors: yellow, green, and brown, based on the baby's bedding, which also has lots of circles. She sent me the canvas and three bottles of paint. I am not much of a painter, so I took those bottles to a scrapbooking store and found paper with the same colors - the green was hardest to match, so I used the green paint as the background. That's the only part of the canvas I actually painted. I printed the giant V in my new favorite font, traced it onto the polka dot paper and cut it out - a Cricut makes this step so much easier; wish I had one. The stripes came from a matching paper. The whole thing is Modge Podged together and away we go ... literally, it's in the envelope and ready to mail to VA :)

The basic idea - in case you, too want to have a very unique and wonderful nursery and make your friends and family do most of the work ... is assign a letter to 26 different people (preferably people you actually know), send a canvas and bottles of paint to each person, and let the craft-tasticness begin! All of the canvases will come back as a mini work of art - that's how I dreamt this idea, as a little art gallery in the nursery. I hung mine around the perimeter of the room about two feet from the ceiling. Laurie hung hers in a grid pattern all on one wall. It's personalized, it's a keepsake, and it's a little expression of love (and craftiness) for your baby. (If you want to do this, let me know because I have the directions for the artists all typed up, and I love to share.)

Okay, back to the resting part of my day ... contractions are about 8 minutes apart now ... ugh!