Here’s what went right on Saturday: I finally got Deborah’s birthday present to her. (I actually had made it the weekend before, but the evenings were busy and it just sat on my table. Now it is in her possession and I can tell its story.)
Deborah is teaching some classes at Concordia this year. It’s part-time and just perfect as she is recovering from her cancer battle. I think she is quite smart and perfect for the job, but she says that her first few days of teaching freaked her out. “I’m teaching college kids! Ahhhh!!”
She’s fine with it now, but it has its quirks. A couple of weeks ago she said that her sister-in-law was talking about her job and said, “I work with people who use these ginormous words, and I say words like ‘ginormous’.” We laughed and Deborah said that’s how she feels every day!
Well, it sounded like it needed to be immortalized.
….er, make that ‘printed on paper and decoupaged onto a frame’. That’s immortal enough, right?
Here are things I learned: If you are going to send a sheet of plain brown wrapping paper through your printer, set the printer to ‘thin paper’ or you will have a royal mess inside that machine. Also, you don’t have to buy special decoupage glue (I am amazed that I spelled that correctly on the first try), you just have to add some water to Elmer’s.
Print print print.
Wrap wrap wrap.
Glue glue glue.
Find a spot to hang it once it’s all glued up. It will take a long time to dry and you will notice dozens of air bubbles that you had thought you’d smoothed out. Grrrrr. Poke them with a pin and squeeze the air out.
When dry (hours later), hold it up to admire its glory!
What the what? Where’d that scar come from? It wasn’t there before. Oh, well. It’s the crack in the teacup that makes it valuable. (Where’s that saying from? I use it all the time and can’t seem to document it. I think it’s some Chinese saying, but when I googled it I got a list of antique sites and one link to how to make crack cocaine. Hmmmmmm. Maybe I’d better stop saying that.)
So, one prototype down! Happy birthday, Deborah!