The Big Reveal!

Remember 2 weeks ago, when I announced this month's "Unfinished Project Closet" goal? Well, as promised, I'm linking up with Xazmin to reveal what I did with Mod Podge to improve my opinion of my mantle. Before I show you what I did, I just wanted to say that sometimes, it is a real pain in the rear to have a creative mind. I see a project in my head, that theoretically should be super easy, and should look flawlessly beautiful. Now, my project turned out, in my opinion beautiful...but it is most certainly NOT flawless. Seriously, guys, DO NOT enlanrge the picture and zoom in too closely, or you will see all the bubbles, and imperfections, but from certain angles, it looks just how I wanted it to look. Also, please pay no attention to the fat girl in the picture. That girl has since lost 15 pounds, and is much less, shall we say, robust. Without further ado, here is what I did.

First, I took a family picture, and had my husband (a photo shop whiz) blow it up, but break it down to twelve 8x10 photos. We turned them black and white, and printed them out on our printer. (Sorry, I'm totally a novice to the whole "tutorial in pictures" kind of thing, or I so would have taken pictures of every single step.)

Then, I trimmed down the pictures, from 8x10's to 7.5 x 9.5, by taking a quarter of an inch off of each side.

Then, I gathered my materials.

I took two poster board size pieces of foam board, and cut them down to 12-7.5" x 9.5" pieces. I cut 3 pieces of 12x12 scrapbook paper down to be big enough to cover the edges of the foam board. (I did this to try to make the picture look like it was actually done on canvas, as opposed to cheap foam board.) I applied the scrapbook paper to the edges first...

I applied the longer pieces to the long sides first, by putting Mod Podge on the paper, and then placing the foam board onto it. I folded the ends up, and then folded it up like a present. After both long sides were done, I put the shorter pieces on the shorter sides, that were not already covered. When I was done, it looked a little something like this:

Notice, that I did not make any effort to make it perfectly straight. It doesn't have to be since the front is going to be covered in a picture.

I did not take pictures of the next step, because this is where I got frustrated, and almost gave up on the idea completely. I put a LOT of Mod Podge on the front, smoothed a picture onto it, then sealed the crap out of it by slathering the whole thing in mod podge. Problem was, I ended up with a TON of bubbles.

I repeated this process 12 times, until my entire "picture" was done. Then, I had Roon hang it, and we threw on the vinyl. When all was said and done, it looked like this:

Right now I'm trying to convince myself that the bubbles make it look more "textured" and that they give the piece character. My perfectionism is telling me that it is not nearly as cool as what I had pictured in my head. Is anything really as cool as we picture in our heads? Overall, I like it. I especially like that it cost less than $10 to make, so I don't feel like I have to keep it the same way all the time, if I don't want to. What do ya'll think?