diy: chevron wall art July 19, 2011

Happy Tuesday, bloggies!  It is a four-day week for me (loving my new Alternate Work Schedule, which gives me every other Friday off!  Oh, the joys of working for the government), so this morning marked the halfway point of waking up to an alarm, something I despise (still) with every fiber of my being.  I am also reuniting with UVa friend, first-year roomie, and tremendous swimmer Mei tonight, which I am so excited about.  So, all in all, it really is a Happy Tuesday.

I had a very relaxing weekend, aside from the waterfall of tears I shed for the end of Harry Potter, with a big success coming from my very first Do-It Yourself apartment improvement project.  I live in a studio, so it’s been tough for me to find wall art that goes with everything in my apartment.  I also have a vast amount of white wall space that saddens me with its emptiness, so I have had quite the conundrum for the past 9 months on how to appropriately decorate. 

I saw this stunning chevron rug on westelm, and I really loved the cool, modern zig zags that had both movement and the potential to subtly enliven a room.  Unfortunately, I have no need for a new rug, so I searched the Blogosphere for other chevron options.  I found these sophisticated and simple chevron canvases on Make Under Your Life, and I set out to recreate. 

Alas, I am not an experienced DIY-er, so I was very unfamiliar with the kind of supplies I would need.  First, I think I bought the wrong kind of painter’s tape, and I definitely did not buy the best paint for the job.  More on these issues later, though.

I started with two plain, stretched 24×36 canvases from Michael’s.  (20% off with my handy coupon!) 

After clearing my work space (the floor) and putting on my favorite Pandora station (a Dave Matthews/Adele mix), I got started.  I had printed out a bunch of chevron “stencils” at work, and I layed them out on the canvas.  Then, to mark the lines, I put pushpins through the canvas at all the corners. 

This was a pretty time intensive process–don’t let the pros on Make Under My Life fool you!  I didn’t have the necessary 900 pushpins, so I kept having to reuse the ones I’d already stuck in, and I forgot which holes I’d already pricked.  It was a bit of a pain.  But once I finished this step, I endeavored to fill in all the skinnier lines of my stencil with painter’s tape.

This was also an incredibly time intensive procedure.  I had bought Scotch brand tape, which was all that Michael’s carried, and it was about 1/2 an inch too skinny to fill the whole line.  Thus, I had to use two strips of tape for every zig-zag section–and it took forever.  Also, for whatever reason, the tape wasn’t sticking very well to the canvas, which forced me to sneak in an extra step to my DIY process: push down all the tape with a credit card.

I don’t know if Scotch brand is just not optimal for canvas, or if all painter’s tape in general is inadequate, but my naivete in this was a big point of frustration.  Even after getting all the air bubbles out, the demonic Smurf tape refused to lay flat.

I had bought some cheap acrylic paint in “metallic ombre,” mainly because I couldn’t find any metallics in the expensive brands.  I had two small bottles, and it took me an entire bottle for each canvas.  If I could repurchase the paint, I would have gotten a third one to do a light second coat on each canvas.

I let the paint dry for a little over 20 minutes before taking off the tape.  It should have dried longer I think, but I was worried about the tape drying to the cavas and having trouble pulling it off.  Once the tape was off, I left it out overnight to dry completelty.  I think the finished product turned out pretty well:

When the light hits it right, and you’re standing a good distance away, these look really great.  But when you get closer, the streaks and unevenness of the paint is obvious, as is the evidence of the non-sticky tape.  I tried to clean some of the blotches up with q-tips, but had to abandon that effort when it just smeared instead of removing.

As an amatuer, I’m not sure what measures I could have taken to prevent the paint problems–maybe a different tape?  Anyways, while my project did not turn out as perfect as I’d planned, I’m really happy with my final end result.  The paintings really brighten up the vast expanse of wall behind my bed, and they are visible from the couch without insistently drawing one’s eye to them.  In the spirit of me trying to make everything in my apartment go as opposed to match, they highlight the yellow tones of my “living room” chairs without being the exact color.  The whole project cost me $53.57 from Michael’s, way cheaper than something I would have bought.  (The westelm rug was $300!!)  I also have the satisfaction of bragging to visitors that I made them myself–and hopefully getting their nods of approval instead of upturned noses of disgust.  First reaction is forthcoming.

all is well. July 17, 2011

If you are a Harry Potter nerd, you will recognize the title of this post as the last sentence in the seventh and final J.K. Rowling novel.  Sigh.  I finished that book a few summers ago while I was visiting my Grandma and Grandpa at their house in Redding, and I vividly remember being wide awake at 3:30 in the morning, sobbing over the death of Dobby, in the butterfly-decorated room that used to be my Aunt Gail’s.  In the way that only Harry Potter can, I was captivated through the entire book, and pulled the closest I’ve ever been to an all-nighter to get to the end.  Of course, in true irony, the minute I read the last page, I realized the saga truly was over, and contritely wished I had read the book slower, to savor the final 700 pages of Harry’s magical world.

On Friday, I saw the final Harry Potter film installment with Les and Michelle.  I thought the movie was just fine; a fitting adaptation to the hefty, complicated book.  About halfway through the movie, where Professor McGonagall and the other teachers start casting their spells to protect Hogwarts (if Harry Potter was not such a popular and accepted phenomenon, I would sound like an incredible nerd here), I became choked with emotion as I realized that this wild ride, the immersion into every child’s magical fantasy, was really coming to an end.  The end of the book made me sad, yes, but the movie put the period on the last sentence of Harry Potter.  I started crying in the theater, and my friends looked at me, mystified, and reminded me that Jen, this part isn’t even sad!

I’ve read numerous articles this past week on the significance of Harry Potter to the world.  It seems that there is no aspect of life he hasn’t touched: reinvigorating childrens’ desire to read; teaching young adults the power of good versus evil; instilling the value of patience in fans waiting breathlessly for the release of each new book; offering a true success story in single mom J.K. Rowling’s rise to riches; pouring money into Hollywood’s emptying coffers.  But for me, Harry and I had a bond that was so natural, so easily made and striking in its longevity, that it is hard for me to imagine my childhood without it.  (Cheesey!  But I’m in a weepy mood, so bear with me.)

I did a book report in fifth grade on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, before anyone even knew it was a good story.  I was a voracious reader as a kid, and I commend my mom for supplying me with so many things to read.  (The humongous Redwall series kept me occupied for years.)  I think she was in the bookstore browsing, and saw that Harry was both in the kids section and 300+ pages, and brought it home without another thought as a means of confining me to the couch for at least a week.  Well, Harry cast his proverbial spell over me, and I was hooked.  Harry was every child’s alter-ego: an under-appreciated boy who can actually perform magic–AND is idolized by society!  Let’s review: 1. Nobody sees Harry’s true potential; 2. He’s a wizard; and 3. The whole world loves him.  If you were a 10 year old, semi-nerdy, super lazy kid, you wanted desperately to BE Harry Potter.  Man, he had it good.

The first three books came out very close together, so once I was into it, I had fodder for a while.  I think what really drew me to Harry was the parallel between our lives–yes, he was playing Quidditch and fighting evil wizards, but he was also developing crushes on girls, and taking final exams, and never turning homework in on time.  He was simply an ordinary boy in an extra-ordinary world.  When he first fell for Cho Chang (aka Cho the Ho in my book, as I despised her), I was crushing on some 7th grader in my middle school.  When he had to go to that formal dance and was stressing about his robes, I was shopping for my 8th grade promotion dance and worrying about my hair.  When he had to take his O.W.L exams, I was struggling through my AP classes.  I literally grew up with Harry, and I knew that I could always go home after a bad day and immerse myself in his world, while not completely losing touch with my own.

The Harry Potter experience, books and movies, is over now.  I will be re-reading Harry for the rest of my life, and I will most likely buy the outrageously expensive boxed film set when it comes out, but there’s nothing like cracking open a new Harry novel that you’ve been anxiously awaiting, knowing that the words are about to wrap themselves around you like an Invisibility Cloak and whisk you away to a world that is outwardly exactly the same as the one you just left, but with plenty more space for imagination.

I don’t think Harry Potter taught me patience, like all the over-analyzing opinion writers have been saying, nor do I think he left me with an overwhelming sense that good will always triumph over evil.  He did, however, cradle my childhood gently between the Sorcerer’s Stone and the Deathly Hallows, two bookends keeping precious memories of early love, long school days, good and bad sporting events secure within their pages.  I’m 23 now, and I still forget that “home” is no longer my house in Pleasanton; “summer” is no longer empty days filled with naps and sunbathing; “bills” are no longer the green things in my wallet, but things I am now responsible for paying.  It is too much of an exaggeration to say that with the end of Harry, I finally realize that it’s the end of my childhood, but that sentiment is definitely buried somewhere inside me.  I hurt that there is no other saga within which I can mindlessly lose myself, while at the same time caring so much about the characters and their destinies.  I ache for nights where it was just me and Harry up late, rebelliously reading past bedtime.  My waning imagination has guided me to books with little room for creativity, books that are all smarts and no fun, and I yearn for the playfulness and drama that were so prevalent in Harry Potter.

I feel like I am in mourning over the loss of my friend Harry, and I’m curious if any other people feel the same way.  The amount of emotion I felt during the movie caught me off guard, and I was surprised it was so much more tangible after the film rather than after the book.

So, to Harry, the Boy Who Lived: I thank you for feeding the fire of my imagination and for being there as I grew up.

les, me, michelle

 

bethany beach retreat July 7, 2011

Last week marked the return of BFF Colleen from her studies in Manchester, England.  (It was also the return of other BFFs Les and Beales, who came home from a month long European excursion.  You can read their half-hearted travel blog here.)  Needless to say, I was over the moon to have her back, since I don’t have the equipment to BBM her nor did our schedules ever line up for consistent Skype chats.  She came home just in time for arguably the most American of holidays–Independance Day–and insisted on getting the long weekend off to a great start by taking a quick trip to the beach.  She extended the invitiation to me (she wears it wasn’t simply a courtesy invite) and I gleefully accepted (she swears she wasn’t caught off guard that I said yes, immediately infringing upon her family time).  Her wonderful family owns a beach house in Bethany, up the coast in Delaware, the perfect distance away for a quick 36-hour trip.  (Side note: this was only the second time I’d ever been in Delaware–the first was with the same family on our way home from Fran’s funeral.) 

After spending the first night in an adorable room with some stunning art by a four-year-old Colleen, we spent the entire next day either on the beach or at the neighborhood pool.  The sky was cloudless and the water was refreshing but not too cold–perfect tanning conditions.

I made sure to load up on high SPF sunscreen, as I feel it’s only a matter of time before my 11 years of outdoor swimming catches up to me (and let’s be serious: I’m 23 now.  Wrinkles are not far away.), but Colleen and I still managed to get nice a brown.  We marveled at how much better a girl feels when she has a nice golden tan; it’s not completely unfathomable to understand how people can get addicted to tanning beds in the middle of winter. 

During our switch from beach to pool, we wandered around Bethany’s boardwalk, a quaint and super family-friendly few blocks along the ocean.  Colleen and I indulged our inner tween with yummy snowcones– which was my personal treat of choice at summer swim meets years ago.  I went with the sickly sweet and notably artifically flavored watermelon, which was an excellent decision that left my mouht blood red, an effective way to ward of ambitious teenage wannabe surfer dudes.

That evening, Colleen, myself, and her parents went to nearby Dewey Beach for a drink at an oceanfront bar.  We thoroughly enjoyed the stunning sunset and took numerous photos, to the chargrin of the waiters who were trying to clear the deck for an impending night of dancing.

me & colleen

The sunset didn’t fail us:

 

And the photo ops just kept coming.

me & colleen (again)

We had a great time catching up (isn’t it weird how, with your closest friends, you can be apart for 6 months but reconnect like it’s only been days?) and rehashing the past few months of our lives.  I’m so glad to have Colleen back in the US, and wish her the best of luck as she applies for jobs in DC. 

I hope you had a great 4th of July!