Framed!

A couple days ago I shared pictures of the various frames/artwork that I've managed to put up since Derek and I moved in, and I thought I'd let you folks in on quick (and technically fantastic and free!) project that I did to upgrade one of the frames. 

This is the picture that I shared of the frame Derek's brother, Jeremy, and his girlfriend, Adrienne, gave us for our wedding. Clearly the people in the pictures are not us, but we'd been waiting for some wedding pictures to fill those, so it was up on the wall - though rather unpersonalized. 

So, I decided I'd do some work to get it more personalized, until we could put some wedding pictures in - or if I liked it enough, I'd consider just leaving it as is. I started by tracing the filler pictures onto this fantastic paper that I have from Stampin' Up. After cutting out the pieces, I googled the letters "D" and "C" and the ampersand symbol.

I traced them onto the paper with pencil. Here's the outline of the "C" that I used.

Then I started filling it out with black pen.

And once it was all filled out (and dry! because I used a gel-type pen), I erased the pencil markings.

With the new art added to the frames, I put it back up on the wall, with my votives ($1 each from Chapters!)
and one of my toilet paper tube flowers. In the end, I've found myself torn. I lurve the way the "C" and the ampersand turned out, but I really don't like the "D". Maybe someone (my dear friend, Amanda, for instance?) would be willing to design me a "D" with a similar pattern to the "C", or would that be far too feminine for a letter meant to represent Derek? I'm also finding that there's a lot of black and white (or rather off-white) going on in the arrangement, and I feel like it needs some colour, so I might be trying to find a way to add that in. Painting the inside of the votives? Painting the flower? Colouring the ampersand something bright? Switching out the paper for another kind (oh please no! Drawing that "C" took absolutely forever!)?

So, there it is, a project that I've done that I'm not quite satisfied with. Any of you have that experience? High hopes for something, but then the execution of it fell just a little flat? Never a fun experience, me thinks! But share the deets and let me know I'm not alone!