Project reveal…

Ok, thanks for being patient with me as I finished up my latest project. I’m happy to report that it is all done, and hung up . My friend from work Jen guessed it right as being a growth chart. Atta girl! (Thanks to those of you who humored me and played along in the guessing game ) I have thought about wanting to get Eli one of these for a while now, particularly before he turned 1. Like I said, I searched Etsy for personalized ones and they were around $50! So I decided to just tackle it myself. I stuck with his airplane/Mickey themed room but also added a bunch of color to it so it could grow with him and not always look like it belonged in a nursery. I wanted it to easily go into a big boy room when the time comes. (ahhh! I can’t think about that!) I had just bought a bottle of stuff that makes acrylic paint into fabric paint so I decided to use fabric for mine. I could have ordered a vinyl decal one I suppose, but we will be moving into a bigger house as we expand our family (God willing) and I obviously wanted this thing to be able to go with us.
Now the reason I said that I could have jacked it up many times and was surprised I didn’t was because I free handed all the lettering, airplane, and Mickey Mouse. And even though I started by sketching it on the fabric in pencil, being that it IS fabric, I couldn’t erase it. (I tried to in one spot and thank God it was in an area I was able to paint over! It just smears into a into a big ol’ smudge mark, and doesn’t really go away) So I held my breath and jumped in feet first hoping for the best. I worried that I’d get it all sketched out and then mess up painting it or something. (I used to draw cartoons a lot when I was little, especially Garfield and Goofy. I would use a picture as a reference, as I did in this case, and go from there but I hadn’t drawn in yeeeeeears so I felt pretty rusty.)

This was the fuller pic of the teaser I gave you yesterday. I had to crop it more because I realized with his mouth in the pic, it was super obvious who I was drawing. Sneaky, sneaky sir. Ha! I had just outlined Mickey in black marker paint and filled in the black areas with the acrylic paint at this point. (Don’t worry, I went back and outlined that top part of his hand that I missed near his back. Did you even notice it until I pointed it out?)
Then I proceeded to paint the rest:

Bottom of chart

Top of chart

The whole thing. Ta Da!

Eli wasn’t havin’ it.

I started it at 24 inches and it goes up to about 6 foot 5in. My plan is for every birthday, I will measure him against the chart, mark it, and put a birthday picture next to the spot. I tried to leave a lot of “blank” white space so the pictures would fit next to the measurement. I’ve never seen a growth chart like that so who knows if it’ll even work out but it sounded like a cute idea in my head . I don’t know, kids grow quite a bit from year to year right, so I won’t have a cluster of pics all in one spot, will I? Ha ha. We shall see.

And there you have it!

Thanks again Jac for the “blank canvas” that was just itching to be drawn on. (You know me and blank paper, LOVE!)

-Linds