The slump is over!

Thanks for hanging in there as I've shared with you the most disastrous story of a DIY project ever told. The end is in sight!

I decided to use a technique on a regular canvas rather than a burlap canvas.

I realized I wanted to try to make it canvas textured, like the project Tasha did here. I used a hybrid of her technique and Carrie's technique.

I painted the edges black to start with, but then used a second canvas (rather than a foam roller as Carrie suggests) to get the texture. It was also while I was reading Carrie's post that I became nervous that my project might wrinkle or bubble, since I would be using scrapbook paper rather than an actual photograph.

Sure enough. Here are the wrinkles.

I ripped the paper off once it was mostly dry and was left with this mess. I was quite tempted to junk the whole thing, but my persevering nature took over instead.

The canvas and I spent some quality time with a Norwex cloth and a glass of water. That took care of most of the paper remnants, but I had to bring in the big guns for the really stuck areas: sandpaper. With just a bit of elbow grease, I found that the canvas was smooth enough to reuse.

There might have been something left in the Omni-Gel bottle...

But, I gleefully threw the whole, gooey bottle right into the trash. Goodbye forever, Omni-Gel. We are never, ever getting back together.

After I experienced the wrinkling problem, I got myself over to Google and did some research. I ran across this page, suggesting that I was going to need to get some acrylic spray and coat both sides of the paper with it. There were a few reasons I was NOT excited about that: the most important reason was that I was actually completing the project on what was essentially a "snow day." I didn't want to drive to Michaels (or spend more money), and I had no good place to do the spraying. I wasn't about to go outside and spray the paper in the snow, and I didn't want to try to do it in my apartment and open the windows. (This snow day issue was also part of why I was so desperate to reuse the canvas. For those readers who are not Minnesotan, please keep in mind that this "snow day" was occurring in April.  Love it.)

So, I did a little more digging and ran across Kristi's video tutorial. I was already familiar with Kristi, as I've been following her blog for quite some time - not long enough to have caught this decoupage tutorial unfortunately. But, long enough to know that she would be truthful about whether something was easy and whether it worked. Sold!

So far, so good. No wrinkling! 

I couldn't believe it. I actually got to move on to the next steps. I trimmed the edges with an X-Acto knife, and then painted over the edge with more of the black paint, in hopes of making it less obvious that this was a piece of paper glued onto the canvas. 

FINALLY! 

And, I'm a little embarrassed, but also a little proud, that this picture even exists. I'll let it speak for itself: 

And thus ends the slump! I look forward to returning to our regular programming around here shortly!