Kimba: Le Tree of Stressfulness

Another project I worked on for Christmas, the one that took up most of my time, energy, thoughts, and entire self was this one, the mammoth of all projects. And I didn't even take any pictures of it. Most likely because I was completely insane, couldn't stop thinking about it, stressing about it, obsessing over it.

So you can go see it here. Because this is where I got the idea, except that I didn't want to spend $120 on it, not even $98 (so NOW it's on sale...) because hey. Dude. I could totally make that on my own.

And I could, it just added about nine million decibels of stress to my already stressful life in the most stressful season of the year (how do you calculate stress? Miles? Metric tons? Jiggawatts?). Except for CPA's of course, April is their stressful hell.

I was lucky too, because my lovely friend Bridgette already had a nice tree that I could use as a template and I just needed to come up with the frames, a mat, paper, some sort of die cut (let me tell you how fun THAT was to find, especially for one as creatively / artistically challenged as I am) for the leaves and of course, the names. An ordeal in an entire other realm.

I spent hours on this project, cutting, gluing, stickering, tracing, and completely stressing myself out. The first frames I bought at Ikea broke the second I pulled them out of the package. So that sucked. Also, the frames were a freaky size, so at 9 pm one night I made Caleb run to the frame store AGAIN (for the gabillionth time) to have them cut me four new mats. This is just a small sampling of the OCD-ness that overtook me with this project. Caleb can attest. This is the one I stayed up until 2 am completing the night before we left. Plus hours logged at Mark and Bridgette's house, forcing them to stay up until well over midnight while I freaked out. Sorry guys. We owe you several baby-sitting nights.

It also looks great, and produced the desired effect when presented to it's owners, who in this case happened to be both sets of parents. I highly recommend it, despite the stress it induced, and am even going to make one for myself. In a few months, when I've sufficiently forgotten how much it sucked. I'm hoping I'll mentally block those few weeks, sort of like what they say happens with childbirth. Or else why would anyone ever do it again, right?

Comments

I saw those also!!! Please make me one too! I love them.

Posted by: Bethany | January 18, 2008 at 08:37 AM

Thanks for the warning on this project. I downloaded templates for this a year ago and keep meaning to tackle this project. Now I know how much it sucks I might wait some more. I already have enough of "le trees of stressfulness"

Posted by: UncommonBlonde | January 18, 2008 at 02:59 PM

Didn't mean to scare you off! :) It IS worth it, just make sure you have the correct names / spellings etc. before you embark on the journey. Trust me on this one.

Seriously Bethany, I'll do it! Let me come up with an Etsy Shop or something. I'll figure it out and let ya'll know...

Posted by: Kimba | January 19, 2008 at 01:20 AM