Valentine's Day Mantel {Mantle}

"This is the song project that never ends, cause it goes on and on my friends....."

It all began with a little challenge to myself. (Yes I do that because no one else will lol)
I wanted to do a different Valentine's Mantle. One I haven't seen.

How hard could that be?

.........................................Well that is what I thought!

I mean I came up with an idea and all I had to do was implicate it.

So I started out with a bunch of these......

I wanted to make something with books. And since I have a whole bonus room filled with these babies I just knew I could do.it.

But we have all seen folded pages and mod podged print. How was I going to make something different?

I decided to make a heart out of books.....

So I gathered and built and stacked.

Then I looked for all the red books I could find.

.............................................and that's when the trouble began......

Was this going to turn into an epic fail?

I did't realize how many red books I needed. I also didn't realize that most of my books aren't red!!

Fail
..........................Fail
........................................Fail!!!!

Then I came up with a brilliant idea. I will only use the red ones as an outline. I will turn the others around to show only white pages.

So back to building....

It was like playing Tetris. Do you remember that game? You had to get the pieces to fit within each other. Well that is how the books were. I had to piece them together like a puzzle and they were all different sizes. I had to try and keep them all straight too with all the different thicknesses.
To top it all off, I had to make sure they didn't all come tumbling down.

When I stepped back to see my masterpiece...... I couldn't see a heart.

So I started again. In the mean time are you still with me?  I wanted to add a backing on the wall to give another layer. So I added some brown paper.

Then I wrote in script my favorite poem. Actually it is our favorite poem.

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."  My husband and I have always wrote and spoke these words to each other. I knew it would be great for Valentine's Day.

A subtle, lightly inked, handwritten poem to be the message....of love.  Like having a huge card on my wall.

I have used it before in french when I painted my French Hutch.

And after stacking a few hundred books....trying to be creative
                                                                                         and artsy
                                                             I ended up with this.

My problem is I feel it needs something else.

This was supposed to be a simple project.      HA!

So I decided to just go with it. Let go of the obsessive behavior....

Stand back and relax....Take the picture write the post and press publish!

So here it is! I think I accomplished it being something different. My outside the box project.

 Is it an epic fail?

I will let you decide.

 I still want to tweak it. Since Valentine's Day is in a few days, I knew I had to let it be...

Now I am cringing thinking about putting all those books back upstairs!

It is growing on me:)

Do you spend WAY too much time on simple projects sometimes?

I want to thank Donna from Funky Junk Interiors for featuring my Coffee Sack Heart!

Hugs

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