I recently noticed I have a lot of wall space. I never really paid any attention before, because it was filled.

My former manpanion had skillfully covered the walls with artwork of architecture, city scapes, interactive pieces and his own photography. With his departure, the walls opened up and I noticed a lot of blank space.

But one thing sticks out: my artwork. I actually have a few pieces I’ve painted myself over the years hanging on my large walls. So, why not fill the blank space with my own art?

Project 1: silver leaf.

My apartment now has colors like blue, silver, white and touches of black. So to stay true to the new color theme, I thought silver pieces of art would be a nice complement.

Silver leaf seemed like a good idea.

My bestie, Stacy, was in town, so I asked her to join me in this adventure. To quote her, “We really can’t screw this up.” Famous last words.

Forget Disneyland, the craft store is the happiest place on earth

Walking up and down the aisles of stickers, paint, brushes and knick-knacks (I honestly have no idea what most of those things were), I felt like I had entered into a wonderland of sorts.

Did you know there are 17 different types of craft glue? I counted.

I could wander around this store for days, but we were on a mission. We cut our trip to just one hour.

Adhesive, a brush and silver

In my head, the blank canvases I’d purchased would be covered with square silver leaf pages and transformed into a beautiful two (or four if we were successful) panel of art.

The guy on YouTube made this seem entirely possible. All we needed was adhesive, a brush and the silver. Done. Done. And Done.

We are an impatient duo, so we decided to get fast-drying glue. I mean, we had 24 hours and many shenanigans ahead of us. We didn’t have time to wait for glue to dry.

Rorschach test in silver leaf

The issue with fast drying glue is that it can be almost instantaneous. We spread the glue across our entire canvases, but by the time we were able to start applying the silver two things happened.

1. I lost a number of paintbrush bristles in the glue.
2. The glue dried so fast it became un-sticky.

I’m nothing if not persistent, so I used every sheeet of silver leaf in my craft packet.
The result looked like a kindergartener rolled around in silver leaf (which is also what my workspace looked like).

Stacy’s canvas looked flawless. Every piece of silver found a seamless home next to the others.

Then, we realized a problem. We didn’t have enough silver for both canvases. The good news: we got to go back to the craft store!

How are things disappearing?

With a new set of silver leaf packets, we were ready to conquer this sticky mess of a project. (Did I mention the silver that didn’t stick to the canvas turned into small sticky silver flakes?)

When I started applying the new glue and silver, not only was it not sticking, it was lifting and removing the silver that was already on the canvas! Suddenly there were more white splotches in places I was sure I’d covered.

Ta-da?

After several more attempts to cover the sudden white spots, I felt as if I was in a good place. Then, I looked at Stacy’s. Hers looked exactly like I’d envisioned. Mine looked like an aluminum foil mess.

Wait – can I just wrap this canvas in foil?!

Overall, it was passable. I mean, no one understood Picasso at first either.

Blank spaces

I still have three blank canvases, a little glue and silver left (and plenty of flakes popping up all over my apartment) and a LOT of wall space.

This hobby is just getting started.