Lighting

At some point in the last fifty years I learned to accept that I will never live the way other people do. I mean, I get that it's aesthetically appealing when everything in the house matches, and when art is done by people who are masters of the craft, but it's just not me. I don't put things on my walls unless it was done by someone I know. That someone is usually me.

All this is to say that I was trying to figure out how to put up a string of lights in my living room. I considered just tacking them up close to the ceiling, but I was pretty sure they would just annoy me because they wouldn't be straight. (Because nothing I do ever turns out straight.) Then I decided to incorporate them into linked canvases.

Supplies:

• A whole bunch of really cheap canvases. (They were on sale at Michael's and I was going to go over to Elisabeth's and do some cool blobby acrylic pours, but that hasn't happened yet.)

• Really old acrylic paints. They are starting to not mix with water. I should probably just get a new set, but meh, I can just pretend I'm adding texture on purpose.

• The world's cheapest freaking paintbrushes. Seriously. Granted, the whole bag of twenty was probably a couple of bucks and you get what you pay for, but I used a brand new one and it was shedding bristles literally the first time I touched it to the canvas.

• A string of lights I had in the garage. For a few years I kept seeing cheap strings of lights and buying them, so now I have at least three boxes in the garage which is ridiculous because I never decorate for the holidays. I have a thing about heights and it turns out that decorating the house with lights that are all under six feet just looks kind of sad. So I had lights.

• Glue. I had to buy this. I went through the junk drawer and found three (3!) hole punches but no glue.

("Canvas 1"; media: acrylics and paint brush bristles; lights off.)

Anyhow, I attached a bunch of lights to the canvas today. That turned out to be harder than I expected, because these lights are the icicle kind, with a row across the top and strands hanging down. It's harder to place them exactly where I want them, but I persevered. I think I should get points just for using super glue around both my computer and the cats without any disasters.

 ("Canvas 1"; media: acrylics and paint brush bristles; lights on.)

The strand has 300 lights and I used 17. I'll probably run the strand around the outside this canvas as part of the frame (maybe with twigs glued on as the frame?), but my quick calculations are telling me that I could have ten canvases as part of this. We'll see...

I'll try different things as I go.


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It's Holidailies time!