Seven Foot Stork Invasion

Remember the baby shower that won't go away? Well here is another little project that I did for it.

All of this was done using the large rolls of paper that every school has to cover bulletin boards. I was asked to decorate the "Pit" area of the school for the shower. To give you an idea of the size of this~the Pit is approximately 9 ft x 30 something ft. Now, it would seem that since this was a fairly simple decorating idea that it wouldn't have taken so long to do. But, of course, things never go as planned!! Originally, I thought that I would take an hour or so and put up the blue background while my oldest son was in his Lego Mindstorm class (something to do with building a robot that will perform certain "missions" during a competition). Ended up pulling staples out of the wall for probably an hour first. Grabbed a couple of 5th graders to help me by holding up the paper while I add more staples to the wall. Bless their hearts, they did try...but 5th graders cannot hold still. At ALL. Sooooo, after removing staples again and re-applying the bottom layer, I found a mom to help me (amazingly, we got the next two sheets up in about the same amount of time that it took for the first sheet! Kids~~ya gotta luv 'em!!). The clouds took another hour and half to "draw" (hahaha) and put up. They are kinda outlined. Kinda.

Drawing the storks was another matter. My wonderful husband has been gracious enough to dedicate one wall in the garage for such artistic endeavors. Seriously, that is a HUGE sacrifice for him, as the "office" (which all my stamping/craft stuff has seemed to somehow made its home) was to be "his" space. Now, all he has is his garage for all his "manly man" stuff. So, for him to give me a wall to practice faux painting techniques or to draw 7 ft storks is a biggie!! Anyway, back to the subject of drawing the storks. I am not one of those type of "artists" that can just draw "out of her head" (and I'm sure it has NOTHING to do with the fact that I don't practice!!). I find several pictures and take bits and pieces and adapt them to make up my own drawings. Fine. Except that the stork that is "taking off" didn't fit in my space (he was horizontal to begin with) so I had to adjust and draw him vertically. Which is kinda scary since I can't really tell if my lines are going to look right once he is positioned how he is really suppose to be (which, as it turned out, was no big deal since he got stapled in a more vertical position).

Painting the storks was done with my vast collection of acrylic tubes of paint (did I mention that SOMEONE forgot to check her supply from the last LARGE painting project? Yeah....let's just say it is a good thing that I don't have a problem mixing multiple shades to get my colors!!) Here's a couple of "close ups" that let you see the details a little better

There is subtle shading done with my copic marker on the storks defining the feather areas and where there would be shading normally, but my cheapie digi camera didn't pick up that important detail!!

Overall, I was very pleased with how this turned out. One of the other teacher's has asked if she can try and take the storks down to be used at her daughter and daughter-in-laws baby showers. Which is just fine with me. I'd like these things to get more use before they are thrown in the trash.

Thanks for stopping by. I'll share more projects for this shower tomorrow! (I still get giddy about how those turned out!! Geesh~~ I REALLY hope that I didn't use all my allotted creativity for the month on these!!)

Starla

P.S.....the baby bottles were a hit too. This same teacher mentioned above took the one's that no one took to be used at her showers. Which is nice. I really don't need them and kinda had a sick feeling in my stomach about them just getting tossed!!