Whale of a Good Time

Happy Monday all!  I hope you are all fresh off the heals of a fantastic weekend.  Mine sure was, and I'll be sharing some details of it later this week, but for now, I wanted to give you a peek at my latest DIY craft project.  This one started with this lovely Pinterest image (I mean, where did I get inspiration before Pinterest?)
                                               
I liked her collage, but I was more inspired by the technique.  All that beauty involved was some old magazines, a canvas, and some mod podge...all things I already had on hand.  Naturally, I got my wheels cranking and tried to come up with something I could collage.  While I was giving Colton a bath one night, my eyes landed on this and I immediately had my idea:

Yep, that's his super-cute whale bath spout...I've always loved that thing and thought a print of one would be the perfect addition to his green/blue (gender neutral...just in case) bathroom.  So, I got to work.
 My first step was to draw a whale on the canvas.  I did this free-hand, which I am usually opposed to, considering my drawing abilities are like non-existent (seriously...my first graders used to laugh at my drawings on the board), but I figured the filling it in would work out the imperfections (or at least hide them).  Luckily, it turns out I was right...phew! ***Sorry no pictures, but just imagine a whale drawn on white canvas...crazy stuff***
My next step was to hit up my old magazines in search of green (for the background) and blue (for the whale).  I learned a couple things while doing this.  At first, I was trying to tear each piece...scissors are definitely more time-efficient.  I also began by trying to get my pieces pretty small.  As I got to work filling in the collage, I definitely realized, bigger pieces were my friends because they were easier to mod-podge AND they took up more space which meant less work.  And finally, I had started off by trying to avoid any other colors on my green/blue (ie: text, other small images, etc).  This left me looking through a lot more magazine pages, when ultimately the ones with a little variation just added some interest to the collage and the text, etc. is not even really visible.
Once I had all my magazine pieces in their bowls (one for green and one for blue), I got to work filling in my collage.  To do so, I just painted a layer of mod podge on each piece, applied it to the canvas, and then painted a layer of mod podge over it.  I repeated that process over and over again...although, it was pretty incredible how quickly the time did go by.  Although the entire process took about 4 hours (divided up over 4 Colton nap times), it was actually pretty pleasant work...just sitting in front of the tv mod podging on a lovely 100 degree afternoon!

Oh, I should mention that I also quickly hit the magazines again in search of a few black pieces to make the whale's mouth and eye.  But anyways, back to the final result...here's our new friend proudly taking residence in Colton's bathroom:

What do you all think?  It actually looks like a whale, right?  I don't know why that was such a surprising conclusion to me!  Like I said, I'm pretty happy with it.  Colton's bathroom has been a decorating conundrum for me since the day we moved in...mainly because it doubles frequently as a guest bathroom and his bathroom, so I wanted it to be childish/fun without being too over the top.  I think I may have finally accomplished that now (although there are still a  project (coughshevlingcoughJoshcough) I want to conquer in this room).

We're getting there, right?  Let me know what you think...