The Perfect Ladybug

I like stencils. You know the things you use to create a the perfect letter "a" or the perfect picture of a flower? Those, I like those.

I like how there is a pattern I can follow that will help me create the perfect letter or shape. I just place the stencil on my surface and begin painting within the cut out of the stencil. I love how it is so precise, uniform and easy to use to create a beautiful project. Once I used a stencil, and the paint seeped under it and made my letter 'b' look like it had a growth protruding from its curve. I hate that. I have to start over when that happens. It's not uniform.

A week or so ago, I bought two aprons, one for me, one for Chloe, and a canvas bag for Chloe. Along with those, I purchased a package of 6 Tulip paints, a bag of brushes and foamy things to paint with, a package of alphabet stencils, so Chloe's name would be perfect on her apron, and a package of stencils that had a ladybug and a butterfly. My goal? To create beautiful things with my daughter.

I had put the project off for about a week. The paints, stencils and brushes sat in my room still in the Hobby Lobby bag. The washed aprons and bag moved around the kitchen depending on if their presence was in the way of kitchen chores.

I have a hard time to doing crafts with Chloe. I can't relinquish the 'craft control.' When I sit down to create something, even if it's a blog post I see it in my mind how it will look, sound, feel, how it will make others feel and how it will look when finished; like a work of art. This also happens when I take pictures, do scrap booking, create a photo collage and write out a thank you card. It all has to look perfect; to me. It needs to make the most impact.

So when we finally sat down on Thursday to create a beautiful canvas bag for Chloe, I think I had a mild panic attack. I visioned the paint under the stencil and the ladybug looking like a blob of sparkly Tulip paint. I visioned paint all over Chloe and all over me. I visioned the paint colors running together where it looked like sparkly black paint. My heart raced at these visions. I pressed on, knowing Chloe would love even a glob of black on her bag or a deformed ladybug.

I pressed the stencil on the bag. Nowadays they are sticky and won't move. Praise God! That eased one fear. I squeezed out 4 paint colors hoping Chloe wouldn't notice the lack of yellow and orange. She did, so we ended up with all six colors on our foil paint pallet. I dipped the foam brush dobber thing in the paint and did one dob on the ladybug's antennae to show Chloe how to dob and not to brush in strokes.

She's smart and caught on. I dipped in paint, she dobbed. At times, I saw her dob in places that already contained vast amounts of blue, pink and purple, but to her it needed the yellow and orange and green. I did reach for her hand in an effort to relocate the paint, but I resisted the urge. I let her do it. I thought, "This is going to look awful." And the very next thought that passed through my narrow mind was, "But it will look perfect through her eyes Megan. Get over it and let her paint a beautiful possibly deformed ladybug."

So I did. And you would never believe how it turned out.

I think Chloe has a good eye for 'perfection.'

What in your life do you try to put a stencil around in an effort to achieve perfection?