Painter Girl

Apartment Complex Work

Yesterday, I began Phase 1 of the Apartment Complex/Clubhouse Job.  This is the job where I am using 3 wonderful stencils from The Stencil Library, the Alium, Fennel, and Rattan designs.  I have the Alium and Fennel in different sizes, and the Rattan in 1 large size.

There are 3 Apartment Buildings and 1 Clubhouse being renovated.  Only 1 Apartment Building is done at this point, so that's where I am.  Each of the Apartment Buildings has 6 floors. 
When you step out of the elevator on floors 2-6, you are facing this niche.  Here, I used my smallest Fennel stencil.  I varied the placement of the flowers a bit on each floor.  My friend, Marc Bordet,  is the designer on this job and when we first talked about this area, the walls were to be painted.  Somewhere along the way, the client decided to use a slightly textured wallpaper instead.  Last week, I was given a small sample of the paper to do a sample on.  Of course, I had no problem there.  The problem occurred, naturally, on site.  Because the wallpaper has tiny ridges in it, and perhaps just the surface coating of the paper is causing this, but my stencils are not adhering to the wall for long.  I've sprayed them to death with spray adhesive and am using tape, but boy... I have to work quickly before they fall right off the wall!  It was not too bad with this smaller size stencil, but when I got to the lobby and used my larger stencils... YIKES!  Here are 2 other floors:
   

Here's a close up where you can see the "ribs" of the wallpaper.

Because I was moving so quickly, I was able to complete all 5 niches yesterday. :-)

Today I returned and completed the 2 panels in the Lobby.  Here is the Before Picture.  I'm just doing work in the center panel on this wall and the opposite wall, which looks just like this one.

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Here is the Alium stencil in 2 sizes.
I wanted the top left Alium to look like it was just floating, so I did not include the stem.  Now that I look at the picture, I'm not so sure I like this look.  I'll let Marc decide if I should add the stem or not.  I will return one more day to do the Rattan design on the entryway ceiling.

Where is my post???

Grrr... I wrote a post late last night to appear here this morning, but I see it is nowhere to be found!  I just began some work at that Apartment Complex job yesterday and thought I had posted those pics.  I am rushing this a.m. to get to that job site again, so will re-post (is that a word?) when I get home tonight.

I was able to finish my newsletter and get that out.  If you have not received the May/June issue in your email and would like to, please subscribe using the "Sign Up" box to the right. :-)

E-newsletter

I am working on the May/June edition of my e-newsletter so cannot spend too much time blogging today.  I really love doing this newsletter.  Most of my clients are not into reading blogs, but they do love to receive the e-newsletter.  It's been a great way to keep them informed of new stencils I have, or to show some new uses for my older stencils.  Many of my clients follow up with an email to tell me what caught their eye or to just say hello and re-connect.  For those of you with small businesses, I highly recommend giving Constant Contact a try.  They have a 60 day free trial period, which allows you to send out mailings to 100 addresses during this free trial period.  They also have a great referral system!  For every friend you refer who becomes a Constant Contact customer, you'll both receive a $30 credit to your Constant Contact account.  If anyone should decide to go for the free trial, just email me and I'll send you a referral post so we can both receive a $30 credit, should you decide to sign up after the free trial period.  :-)

My Ipod Seems To Be Controlling My Life!

I recently acquired an Ipod Shuffle.  Now, I am not one for a lot of new high tech products and up until now could only answer "What Ipod?", when asked "What's in your Ipod?" 

Because this is all still quite new to me, it's taking me a bit to get the whole system running smoothly.  First, I had to get the music on the this little thing.  The first few days, I did not have nearly enough music on there to get me through the work day, so I listened to the same series of songs a few more times than I would have liked.  After a few days of this, I added more.  Then... I discovered Podcasts.  So I added some of those.  Of course, adding all this takes some time!  I'd try to do it at night, but you know how that goes.  When you're at work, you have the best of intentions of getting x,y, and z done when you get home.  Then, you get home later than you had hoped, other priorities need to be attended to, and by the time you crawl into bed, you're exhausted with no new music/Podcasts on the damn Ipod for the next day!  When that scenario would happen, I'd try to add a few things in the a.m. before I left for work.  Of course, it took longer than I thought to download and I'd then be late for work.  One day last week, not only was I running very late for work due to this Ipod, when I finally got to work and plugged myself in... my battery was not charged so I could not even listen to anything!

This week I am trying something new and put a lot on this Ipod over the weekend.  Hopefully, there will be sufficient content/context to keep me entertained through Friday!  I really didn't think I would use the Ipod all day while I worked, but since I am on this job alone most of the time, it's been great!  I decided that a few days of a solid mix of music was fun, but I really should be using these hours a little more productively.  I have now subscribed to several NPR podcasts for variety and will add some books and perhaps try to learn Italian over the next few months.  I think I'm going to like this little Ipod once I get a good system down.  I love that it is sooo small.  Only about an inch square.  I clip it onto the side of my bib overalls and run the wires under the bib so they are not hanging down in my paint or catching on my ladder.