sunshine canvas with sticks!

So spring break is officially over.

Physics at nine in the morning. ugh.

But look at this beauty I made:

Makes you forget about phsyics, huh?

Oh wait... that's just me. :)

So me and little man were outside playing and there are sticks everywhere.

You have to understand... I grew up on a big plot of land that had pretty much NO trees. The ones we did have were Cedars... no leaves, no sticks. You didn't really notice them.

When I moved into town after getting married we have massive amounts of TREES.

You should have seen me during fall.

There were leaves everywhere.

Seriously... I about had a cow.

My husband just laughed and laughed.

Our driveway was covered... they got tracked into the house and I had to pick up a rake for the first time.

Ack.

So I digress...

regardless... we never had sticks either so I was quite inspired.

It might not be your cup of tea but my little man wanted a sun and we love the song 'you are my sunshine' so this was born.

Materials:

*canvas (I used one I had on hand)

*Hot glue gun

*Leftover scrap of fabric or twine

*phrase of some sort

*lots and lots of sticks

I washed my sticks before just to make sure no bugs decided to live with us forever :)

I had a canvas on hand that was from a project forever ago... the color is not the right blue and I've been using it to check out techniques of other stuff so I decided to give it a makeover.

I grabbed several colors of paint because I wanted a streaky color... not just one bright yellow.

I mixed browns and tans into the yellow until I got it how I liked it:

Doesn't it make you smile?

I scuffed the edges up a bit and even streaked a little blue in there :)

Then... (shame on me for no pictures) I laid out the sticks in the arrangement I liked. It took me several tries but finally ended up with this:

I just put some hot glue on the back of each and went around in my little circle.

Then I tied some twine and fabric in a little bow and glued in the middle :)

I decided I wanted a phrase on it so I made my own rub-on on the computer (love rub-ons!)

I scuffed it up to make it look old and worn.

and voila!

Easy easy.

and it brightens up my hallway!

I brushed a little blue paint over the sticks to make them stand out a little :)

I LOVE how the colors turned out.

So I'm pretty much in love.

Bring on the sun, arkansas.

....but not toooo too much. :)