I was originally going to use this as the background to an awesome poster-style picture of Hank using this tutorial that I first spied on Pinterest.   But the background itself was so pretty all by its fine self that I couldn’t destroy it by painting an abstract of my dog on top of it.  Such defilement.  So abstract Hank will go on another painted background – perhaps one that looks like a background. Hm.

I originally painted one small wall of my house with this technique that I found here, and was thinking a matching design on the other side of the door ALSO FEATURING MY DOG would be totally appropriate. Can you tell that I think my dog is so cute that everyone else should think he’s awesome as well?

I started with a blank canvas I was given by the massage therapist that works at our office.  Apparently she went through an “I’m going to be a painter” phase, bought a crap ton of canvases and acrylics, tried her stuff and decided that she was unhappy with the results and ditched the entire effort.  My kind of girl! Because now I have her canvases and I just bought some gesso to hopefully erase her flowers.

I covered it with some leftover latex paint from my herringbone wall and set it under our (random) ceiling mounted electric heater to dry.  As we know from my dry erase board experience, things get ruined when paint is not dry.

Then I measured out the middle (marking on the outside edge of the canvas) , and centered a piece of masking tape over the marks.

Then I taped off two more lines at the quarter marks for a total of four columns.  My wall only has 1.20 columns, so this was getting pretty fancy for me.

I marked off every two inches all the way down both sides of each tape stripe, and started taping off my diagonal stripes.  I lined the top edge of the tape up with my pencil marks the whole way down.  I hope that each and every person who takes the time to read this blog will be a better measurer than I, for I am REALLY BAD at accurately measuring.  Cut it out to pure laziness and pride that I think I can just eyeball crap and it’ll turn out fine, but my sincere hope for your future is that you don’t share that trait with me.  It leads to lots of disasters, especially in sewing.

Then I painted over the whole thing with another coat of the base latex paint, to seal the edges of the tape.  That way if any seeped under, it would be the same color as the base.  I know this is not NEW news, but it is good news nonetheless.

AND… painting time.  I’m currently gaga over grey, so that’s what I did.  Like my wall. And most other things I paint.  I alternated stripes of dark grey craft paint and bright white craft paint, 2-3 coats of each.  Even after 3 coats of the dark grey, it was still a little see-through, but… whatever, a person has got some DrawSomething to get to.

And then you get to rip the tape off, which is truly the most satisfying part. It’s like bubble wrap, I think.

Tada!!! This is where I decided to NOT put a picture of my dog on it.  That will go on something more… blurry. Apologies for the photos, these are all taken at night and I am a terrible photo editor.

And here’s the best shot I could get of it with the matching wall. Y’all don’t judge me on the reflection in the mirror of my craft books/supplies bookshelf and lime green dog bed.  Or the giant crack my lil bro put in the wall, because he was being strong like Hulk.

So next up, apparently, is a pop-art inspired Hank-dog picture for… somewhere else in my teeny apartment.