Whale of a Step Stool and Ribbons o' Plenty

And, I'm done!

Just put a coat of polyurethane and I'm about ready to set it on fire.  Because I like it?  Nope.  Because I hate it.

Ms. Martha has only one whale on her stool and I'm trying to figure out how the template that she provides, enlarged by 113% (per instructions that, yup, I read), covers the stool.  I'm guessing that either she found a stool from a dollhouse, or maybe one that she uses for her dogs.  

A refresher of what I began with

Then, I sanded down the paint drips, added two coats of primer, two coats of a sky blue satin paint, then three coats each of a light and dark blue acrylic craft paint to the top - all because I wanted to make things as difficult as I could for myself so that I could complain about it. 

I then painstakingly cut out the whale template using two different pieces of blue scrapbook paper and "decoupaged" them to the stool.  I didn't like how it was looking (a little plain if you ask me), so I cut out Milla's name using "Sorority" lettering - as my husband likes to call it.  You know, the letters with the dots on the ends.  Cute, but cheesy, yes! 

Lastly, I put on a coat of polyurethane just for good measure!

One last thing that I had to share... I have a tendency to buy a lot of spools of ribbons.  They're always in those bins at the front of the craft store and they're so cheap!

They were starting to take up some precious real estate and were getting messy, and then all of the sudden, I had an epiphany.  I was looking at a shoe rack that I had purchased a couple of years ago that used to hang on the back of our bedroom door.  Nick HATED that thing because if you shut the door a little too forcefully, the entire rack of shoes would come crashing down.  Let's be honest.  I was typically the one closing it a little too forcefully, but those are just details.

Wellllll.  Those spools fit perfectly on the wiry dowel-like shoe racks - and for those that didn't, I made them fit (with a little elbow grease).  This is what it looks like, and the best news is that I now have TONS of space to put a bunch of new ribbon because there are three more racks just like this one (with a tier in front and back!).