What am I lovin' on this summer? Crafting. Working out. Being outside.
Unfortunately, my favorite of these is the only one that costs money, which I have close to none of. After my first pay check from Michael's is cashed tomorrow, it's time to get REAL with my crafting. After rent, utilities, groceries, and a speeding ticket fine are taken care of, of course.
The only thing I've crafted so far this summer is a hand-painted cooler for my Big's 20th birthday. Which I was extremely proud of.
This is the top of the cooler that I painted. Yes, that is the Lilly Pulitzer Pi Beta Phi sorority print. The reason for my pride. This felt like my life's work, but it only took a few hours over the course of two weeks.
How did I do this? I painted in layers. And by that I mean, I painted one color at a time.
-First I painted the entire area in Pale Blue acrylic paint.
-The next thing I did was trace the print onto tissue paper, but not every last detail. I only traced the outline of the carnation groups. So whatever wasn't blue, I traced as one.
-After tracing the print onto the cooler via tissue paper with a white paint pen, I painted all of the traced areas white.
-Once the white areas dried, I began a more difficult part: The dark pink outline of the carnation groups. After the white area, I didn't trace anything, it was all by hand and looking at the print.
-After that was finished, I then filled in much of the white space with the lighter pink.
-Once all of that was done, there are a few mint green leaves to paint.
At this point, it looks awesome, I'm super excited about how it's turned out, and then I realize: I have yet to do the most tedious part of this print. The white arrows in the background. UGH! But while it was tedious, it wasn't hard to freehand different shaped and sized arrows and a few " ΠΒΦ"'s.
Finally done!! So if you're a Pi Phi and want to paint this print rather than Mod Podge it, do it!! And definitely paint it in layers. And this technique works for any Lilly print, not just this one of course :)
Remember... this was only the top of the cooler. Haha! But I was so happy with how it turned out and my big loved it. It was completely worth it!
Hopefully I'll have more crafting adventures to come VERY soon!