Thursday, February 18, 2010

The most important thing in the world ... belated Valentine's Day present

I gave a present to my daughter yesterday that was actually supposed to be for Valentine's Day. I know it was late ... well, with the kiddos being sick and all I simply did not get it done earlier.

My hubby still has not gotten anything from me for Valentine's ... so I guess my daughter can consider herself lucky. :-)

Anyway, I had this blank puzzle lying around. I bought it a while ago with no idea in mind ... and just before Valentine's Day I thought I could paint a world map on it. It would fit great because all the postcards coming from the postcard exchange. And I thought I could add the line "You are the most important thing to us in the whole world" to make it a cute Valentine's present. Well, I think the idea was not that bad. But it certainly did not turn out exactly how I had hoped. And it also was not such a big hit with my daughter.


I used a waterproof marker to paint the outline of the world. And that alone took me (of course with the necessary baby feeding, changing etc. breaks) TWO days! And if anyone of you notices that there are some islands missing - do not tell me! I KNOW! I never really thought that the outline of the world is that complicated. Anyway ... so I had a black and white puzzle. I figured if I use my daughter's water colors and just color it very lightly it would look good. Kind of like a pastel painting. Well, maybe it would have worked if I would have used better paint ... I don't know. But the colors I used simply looked kinda greyish ... so I used less water and more paint ... and so it turned out not pastel looking at all! :-(
Also it is just a cardboard puzzle and with all the water I added while painting - I think it lost some of the stiffness. So now it is rather hard to handle (very fragile). Since it has very many pieces and some of the pieces are just blue - lots of water on the earth :-) - it is basically still too hard for my daughter and she did not have that much fun putting it together. :-( Well, next time I know. With thin cardboard puzzles - do NOT use water colors! And keep the motive rather simple ...
Oh, well ... guess some projects have to go wrong once in a while ...

2 comments:

megan said...

I'm so glad you posted a project that didn't work out the way you hoped it would! So often, everything on blogs is so perfect and just exactly right that I often feel like my less-than-perfect attempts are huge failures. Thank you for sharing something that didn't work out the way you wanted it to, even though it looks great to the rest of us!

Ms Muffin said...

Thanks for the comment! It actually looks much better on the photo. Oh well ... And I actually have quite a few projects that do not work out at all ... that do not even make it to the stage that they are being photographed! :-) Hope that makes you feel better! ;-)

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