I’m plugging away at a new wip, and it’s going swimmingly. (Don’t worry; I don’t actually use the word swimmingly in the manuscript. At least, I haven’t yet.)
The hard part (ha! Like there’s only one.) about writing is that in my mind, the story is already finished. So pacing myself and writing it down is a challenge. Anyone who knows me knows I love immediate results. I’m the type of person who will give you your Christmas present in October, right when I buy it. (I got the boy the most incredible Minecraft T-shirt for Christmas that I’m dying, dying, dying to give him now. But I’ll settle for telling you.)
So I was so happy to spend a couple hours Sunday afternoon working on a project I knew would give that right-away payoff. Behold! This old oak teacher’s desk that my in-laws gave to my daughter.
It’s incredible, solid wood, heavy as sin and completely beat up from decades of use. In fact, it was one of my elementary teachers’ desk. For real!
I wanted to follow my usual route of painting it white, giving it a nice wax and calling it a day. But Emma insisted on something bright. She picked out a vibrant green. But she also wanted me to jazz it up a little.
I’ve hand-painted designs on a few projects, but I usually use chalk to trace the design and then paint it in. For this one, I couldn’t print out an image large enough for that. But I found a beautiful stock image of cherry blossoms with birds (Emma’s obsessed with trees and birds) and tried sketching it out on my own. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.
So here’s the “after” shot. What do you think?
