St. Patty's Subway Art

A few days ago I showed you my St. Patty's mantle where my subway art hangs and promised to show you how I made it. Let's discuss this idea of "subway art", first, though. WHY is it called subway art? What does that even MEEEAAAN?! I've taken the subway. A LOT. No fewer than 10 times a week, and sometimes more. I've never seen art in the subway. I've seen maps. I've seen ads. I've seen "tags." I've even seen, well, nothing you wanna hear about. None of it could be considered art. Somebody help me out here. Where did the name come from????

Ok, now that I've gotten that off my chest, let's talk about my wall hanging. First off, there's no way I could have done this freehand. Buuuuuuut....I wanted to decide what it was going to say and how it would be placed, so using someone else's image wasn't gonna do, either. Lucky for me, LeAna from A Small Snippet posted this Easy DIY Handpainted Canvas tutorial. The trick is transferring pencil marks, which is something I wouldn't have even know existed if not for her post :) Knowing what steps I'd be taking, I downloaded some free fonts and got to work with an image editor.

Don't forget your fadas!

This is what I came up with. Not all of the fonts included characters with fadas, so I made a little reminder to myself to add the ones that weren't printed. It came out a bit smaller than my canvas (don't ask...). From there, I followed LeAna's instructions and got t' tracin'. One of the commenters on her post suggested placing your print on a glass table with a lamp underneath. Pure genius.

I did this over the course of two evenings. No lie, I write hard and my hand cramped up after awhile. I DID have a large-ish image with a lot of letters, though. The knots in "sláinte" (which gets a fada over the "a" and I DID forget it, despite my note to myself) didn't help, either.

It worked! Holy crap! I totally expected it not to. Not because I didn't trust LeAna, but because that would just be my luck (contrary to popular belief, the Irish are NOT a lucky bunch). In the original tutorial, she tells us to place the print, right side up, on the canvas and trace back over the letters. I'm not a great tracer to begin with, so when I went back over, sometimes I didn't trace over the PENCIL MARKS on the backside if they didn't line up with where I traced the front. Did that make sense? So I scribbled over the front. True story. And I didn't have a pencil sharpener, so I went through three pencils because mechanical pencils, which we have in abundance, do NOT work well. But. There's always a but, isn't there? Three of my fonts had knots in them. You can see in the "MAR" that's not a huge problem, but where I used a smaller size font, you just can't get the detail [presumably] because of the texture of the canvas. See?

I removed them from one of the phrases (well, blessing, really), but left them in "sláinte." I also needed to outline the knots in black so they looked like knots and not just swirls once they were painted.

With the letters/knots in "sláinte," I used the pencil marks I WAS able to make out, and just kinda made up the parts I couldn't. If you look closely, you can see some of them don't actually work out proper like, but whataryag'nnado, right? Then I hung it, still wet. I didn't trust Boots not to destroy it trying to sharpen his claws on it or trust any of the three of them not to walk or sleep on it while it dried. So yeah, it went right on the wall. 

The Girl thinks we should leave it up year round. I'd consider it if it wasn't dated. Wish I'd thought of that...

TL;DR: 

1. Full instructions are on A Small Snippet and the specific post is HERE.
2. If you're using an image with a lot of words or detail, expect to take a break or few because your hand will hurt.
3. If you can put a light under your image, do.
4. Try to avoid small, extremely detailed fonts (such as ones with Celtic knots). Get rid of them completely, or use a larger font size.

Me Father, He Was Orange and Me Mother, She Was Green

Teaser. *cue stripper music*

Ok, that's not true. Me mother was Orange. My grandfather was Green, though, so there's that. Any ol' way, I posted this teaser on Facebook earlier yesterday and promised a post to go along with it. To hold me accountable if I didn't update. It's tomorrow. But this is progress, people! And I blame me mother for my tardiness. We went to Target. Shenanigans ensued. I fed my peeps McDonald's for dinner because I didn't make it home early enough to cook. True story. Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about St. Patrick's Day! Some more, I mean. Let's talk about it some more.

So, I'm Irish. Me ma (as she'll be known henceforth) almost named me O'tilly. They'd have called me Oat for short. I'm not even making that up. Literally, on her birthing bed, she changed her mind. Granted, we're protestant (except for my grandfather's side), but we're also American. So of COURSE I celebrate St. Patrick's Day. With gusto! And whiskey. And decorations...which is the reason you're here. The teaser above is part of my mantle which I've changed up as often as possible.

I mostly used things I already owned. The apothecary jar and candle holders are mantle staples. I change out what's in the jar and the ribbon around the candles as I get bored the occasion calls.

The books and beer glasses came from my already existing collection. The Irish books have the perfect style/color for the scheme already. I added a copy of Great Expectations because of the green cover. Considering adding a few more green books, but we'll see. The beer glasses were filled with water and green food coloring with some floating candles.

The wooden shamrock garland was an impulse buy in Ross a few years back. I've never really been able to do anything with it before this mantle. The length just wasn't quite right for anything in my old homes. Seeing it now, I think it needs more orange. A trip to Jo-Ann Fabrics for some ribbon might be in order.

Pictured: less coinage than you'd think 2 lbs would be :/

I wasn't sure what I was going to put in the jar...I had a few ideas and wasn't sure which was my fave or which was the most practical given the size of the thing (and by practical, I mean cheap). I ended up buying two pounds of these chocolate coins, not because they were my fave (I hadn't yet made that decision) or the most practical, but because they were convenient. Like, I was in the grocery store and they had them in the loose candy aisle, so I bought them because if I let myself think about it, I'd never decide and my mantle would never be finished. But really though, they ARE fun, are they not? SN: two pounds of coins was NOT enough to make it look full enough. I wadded up newspaper, covered it in masking tape, and put that at the bottom of the jar. I placed the coins systematically around the "ball" to add bulk. Now it appears half full rather than a quarter full. W00t!

Now this...THIS is my baby. I made it myself. I can't paint or draw or anything like that. This is the closest I've come to being an artist lol I'll post tomorrow about HOW I did it (spoiler: it was totes through the help of another blog. Tune in tomorrow to see whose!!!!). I won't post a tutorial, as the original does a fine job of explaining it (and I'll link you to it, never fear!), but I will share some tips and pictures from my own experience.

In the upcoming week(s), I plan to share some of my favorite St. Patty's Irish recipes. I make the same thing every year -- and no, it is NOT corned beef and cabbage because hello...corned beef?! Hold your breath...it's not Irish, although there is some debate as to whether what I DO make is Irish, but we'll cross that bridge later. How do YOU celebrate the holiday?