One evening during my winter break my boyfriend asked me what we wanted to do for the night and one of the options that he gave me was to do crafts! Like, we can do crafts together??!!! YES boyfriend, let's do a craft! (Ladies, get a man that loves to make things with you!!) So he asked me what kind of craft I wanted to do, I acted like I did not know for a few minutes, but really, I knew what I wanted to do. I have been loving so many floral wallpapers lately and for a while had the dream to make one for my apartment, but I had not figured out what I wanted it to look like, all I had was an idea, and a rough vision. So, when Zac said crafts, all I could think about was this wallpaper dream. I wanted it to be portable and sturdy, so I can take it when I move out of my apartment. While he was searching his mind for craft ideas, I began to piece together mine. A large floral patterned tapestry all painted by hand. Then I blurted it out to him in a jumbled mess of excitement. He, being the sweet man that he is, said "Yes, let's do it!"
We zipped over to the hardware store (my favorite kind of craft store!) and bought a large 6 x 9 foot sheet of painters drop cloth canvas, and hurried back home. I was ready to dive right in, but Zac, a real organized artist gathered some thick paper, an X-acto knife, and a cutting board and pronounced that he was going to make a stencil. I am so BLESSED--was all I kept thinking while he worked long and diligently to cut out all the flowers and leaves of our design (inspired by one of my favorite brands--Rifle Paper Company). The stencil was finally ready and we had time to paint one panel, so we did, and I fell in love.
The pattern looked great and the colors were just what I had imagined! I wanted to finish the whole thing right away... but sleep... so it would have to wait. The next evening I went to Zac's and we continued to work on it. We finished a 3 x 3 section and were feeling proud of ourselves until we opened up the whole canvas and realized how much more we had left to do. My realistic Zac began to think of ways to make this process quicker, like painting the panels in a checkered pattern to cut the painting down by half, I gave him an ehhhhh kind of look, then he said, "what if all the blank panels were filled in with vines?" I nodded and pretended to really consider his idea knowing, however, that I really wanted it ALL painted--my stubbornness won out. I had more free time than him during the day (no school or anything) so I took the canvas home with me to work on and boy was Zac right to consider other options. Remember when I thought that the stencil took forever to make? Well that was nothing compared to the painting step. I loved it, but my goodness, it sucked a lot sometimes. About three weeks after we started--when I was back at school--I finished it all and just in time. Zac came to visit me last weekend to celebrate our Anniversary, and we were able to completely finish it by hanging it up in my kitchen.
This huge painting makes me think of my last year with Zac; the start of it all being so exciting and the two of us imagining the final product with hopeful and moderately naive eyes. Then after a while realizing that it is a big task and that it is not going to be a fast or easy road to the finish; that it is going to be a lot of work, that sometimes we will feel the urge to cut corners and settle to make it easier for us to continue, and that our stenciled plans may clog up and make things blurry and alter our pattern. But, holding onto the feelings that we had in the beginning; the hopeful excitement when we imagined what it would look like when we finished, and remembering our purpose, made us able to push through the frustration and resist the short cuts that we really knew would not make the painting as beautiful as we imagined. When we hung up our project on our anniversary and took a step back we felt so much joy and accomplishment--WE DID IT!
Alas, our real project goes on, and it will never be finished, but everyday we are adding a little bit more to our painting; making it more beautiful, and just as God intended. I love you very much, Zac, and I pray that we may never run out of paint.
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