Beautiful, Valuable, Enough.

As we slowly learn to make our new house our "home" I'm trying to come up with more meaningful wall art. I've had several prints for years and they've traveled from house to house and I just find a place to "make them work". Some I still love & hold special memories (think a Christmas present from my sister, or a picture of Spavinaw Lake taken, developed, framed, and signed with a sweet note on the back by my late uncle) and I will find special places in this house for them. But I really want to try and redefine our space in this house.

I was mindlessly clicking from pin to pin on Pinterest a couple of weeks ago and I stumbled on this article. It's still strange to think we will have two teenagers in a year and a half. Teen.Agers. Seriously. That's a whole new world (cue the Aladdin music) & I want to navigate through it carefully. This article is spot on! I love the frankness, yet tenderness in the words. I was smiling my way through it until I read number 10. And then the tears came. I don't know if I've ever read anything so perfect for teenage girls. Sure, they will probably roll their eyes at it, but if we can instill those truths deep inside of them early on, hopefully it will save them from some hurt later on down the road.

"You are beautiful. You are valuable You are enough."

When I read those final words a lightbulb came on and I was a woman on a mission. The girls have had a cute zebra bathroom theme for years. We all still loved it, but it was time for a change. Target to the rescue and I found a lovely blue and green shower curtain for their bathroom. New shower curtain meant blank walls. Anyone who knows me knows blank walls don't bother me. I'd rather have them blank for years than to have them filled to the brim with stuff I have settled for.

That article sparked something in me & I knew I needed to incorporate it somehow into their bathroom. I'm not the craftiest of persons, but I like to try (and boy do I want to be crafty!). I've seen all kinds of DIY canvases on Pinterest and I just knew I could find something that would meet me right at my crafty level. I was so excited when I found this. Canvas, magazines, paint...I could totally do this!

I grabbed my old Southern Living magazines and found colors that blended with the shower curtain. I stayed in the blue/green range, but threw in some pops of pinks, yellows, and reds here and there as well. It was fun to not worry about perfection. It was magazine scraps, for crying out loud! And it was going to be completely covered in paint. I did manage to mess up the first canvas I attempted (didn't have the right letters), but never fear I had a spare canvas and started all over. And I LOVE the end result. I mean, I. LOVE. IT. It's exactly what I had in mind.

I tried to be all crafty blooger-like and document the process. Ha!

Magazine scraps hot glued onto the canvas. After my first disaster I learned I had to use vinyl letters for this project to work. So this is take two. And since they were vinyl & reusable I refused to buy two packages of letters so I couldn't lay it all out at once. I kind of had to wing it. A little nerve wracking, but not bad. I kept saying "this isn't supposed to be a polished look so don't worry about perfection". After the letters were in place and pressed down firmly, the fun part came. Paint over it!! 

Yes, you'll see there are two different backgrounds. This pic is from the reject. ;) Once the canvas is completely covered in paint, slowly peel the letters off to reveal your masterpiece. 

(I kind of got too excited to take a picture the moment I peeled all the letters off, so let's go to the final piece, shall we?)

Come on. How perfectly imperfect?! The girls knew I was working on something for their bathroom, but I kept it a secret. I called it "my project", but wouldn't let them watch what I was doing. It drove them nuts! When I was finally finished I got them together to reveal it. I wanted to explain it. I probably got a little deep, but that's okay. This canvas, to me, is a representation of life. It's made up of all kinds of experiences (magazine scraps) that come together to make us who we are. We have the amazing gift of salvation through Jesus Christ that covers up (white paint) a multitude of sin. We are in control of what we choose to reveal to the world (vinyl letters). We are not perfect (crooked, uneven lines and spacing). 

There will be days the girls look in the bathroom mirror and don't like what they see. That's normal. They'll wish their hair was different, or their teeth, or maybe they'll have a huge zit, or...or...or... But they'll have that canvas starring back at them. Whether they believe it or not when they're in the midst of the "drama of the day", they can't escape the truth in those words.

They are beautiful.

They are valuable.

They are enough.