Mom's Birthday Present

One thing that's funny about my Mom...if you ask her what she wants for her birthday, she'll say, "Oh, nothing. Don't buy me anything." But if you don't ask her and just listen to things that she admires, she's actually easy to shop for.

 I lucked out this year because she actually "assigned" me a project.

Which I figured would be easy. But I was wrong.

She wanted a saying to put on her wall. It's from Conference this year and she just loves it. "Imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with. That must be terribly frustrating to him, but he deals with it. So should we!" - Jeffrey R. Holland.

Since I have a Silhouette machine, that should have been easy.

I've made projects with my Silhouette machine...found here....and here.

Mostly little projects. Nothing large. We peeled those stickers off by hand and re-stuck them one by one. Which presented a problem when I started planning this project....no way was I peeling and sticking a million little stickers for a saying. Plus it would definitely look weird and would not be lined up.

First I found the perfect sized frame I was going to use. I thought about doing a piece of wood but I don't own a router and I would have wanted it to have nice edging.

Then I designed in in the Silhouette program. Asked my sister Kristi what she thought because I am definitely not a designer and she has a better eye than I do. I had to make sure it was within the correct constraints and had good sized letters. It took awhile.

Then I had to decide how I was going to complete this project.

I cut out a word (very cleverly seen here as "test") and used the vinyl as a stencil and painted it.

It looked like crap. Also, the stencil was hard to peel apart. Did you ever get those fruit roll ups with shapes cut into them? They were popular when I was a kid and I loved them. The shapes never came off easy, it always stuck to the rest of the fruit roll up and the fruit roll up would stretch and tear. It was like that. It wasn't a big deal on past projects when it was only a few characters and the technique was different, but it was not going to work for this project.

So I do what I always do when I don't know what I'm doing.

I watched some online videos.

The lady on the online video was using actual vinyl, not my cheap-o, short-cut way of using shelf liner (because I'm CHEAP, ok?). So I figured I buy some vinyl.

I my vinyl came in the mail pretty quick, and I cut it out, and ta daaaaaaa.

It just peeled right off. It was glorious. And a relief. No way did I want to fight the fruit roll up vinyl. (Plus, the Silhouette machine says you have to set your cutter to a "one" but it needs to be a "two." Love online videos.)

So I just had to get the little pieces out, and I was almost ready to go. I put my Silhouette machine and vinyl away...and thought to myself I wonder if I should have waited....but everything was cut and ready to go, so I thought nah, just put it away.

Well...I have long maintained that God has a sense of humor. And it is TWISTED.

The large sticker that I peeled off got stuck to my saying, and peeled it back.

Peeled off the part about imperfect people. Very funny God, haha.

So I had to get my machine out again and re-cut it. It only cuts in 12 inch pieces, and the saying was longer than that, so J helped me line it up and tape it together. Love my Handsome Man.

Can you see the three separate pieces? Geez.

Then came the transfer paper. Which I had to buy. Did I mention that I am cheap? I saw online that you can substitute Glad Press N Seal. Which we have. But this is a BIRTHDAY present for my wonderful MOM. So I didn't cheap out.

Luckily this part of the project didn't have any problem. The transfer paper pulled it right up and J helped me center it on my paper.

And it's all ready for my Mom. I hope she likes it. Between the design, the plan, the testing, and the overall labor, this was quite the project.

Only cause I love you Mom.