It's been a long time coming, but I finally made some forward movement on our stampin' work space yesterday. (Formerly known as a dining room, but now given over 100% to our stampin' purposes.) I've had this plan in my head for a long, long time – to use this particular wall to hang pertinent stamp-related "stuff" on, but there'd been a piece of furniture that was in the way, and IT had to be moved, causing ANOTHER heavy piece of furniture to need moving……. and, well, YOU know how stuff like that goes. And so basically none of it was getting done. For month after month….
But yesterday my wonderful brother, Eric (from Flat Rock Productions, just in case you or anyone you know might be looking for THE most awesome building design firm in the Northwest, btw) – came over to help me with the muscle work of swapping "Furniture Piece A" with "Furniture Piece B". I'd already unloaded both cabinets, so it didn't take us all that long to get them rearranged.
So after reloading 'em both with their former contents I was finally able to get started on the wall that's mostly still just an idea in my head. (And probably WILL be for a while, lol.) But I did get one thing accomplished; I hung that Decor Elements image (from Stampin' Up!®) that I've had for months, and have been so anxious to put up!
Now, the thing is about 4 feet long, and about 6-1/2 to 7 feet up the wall, so it probably WOULD have been easier with another pair of hands on tap. But by just being careful and taking my time I managed to do it all by myself! (Woo hoo!)
It never occured to me to try to document the process with pictures until the most challenging parts were behind me, wouldn't you know…. but those parts I'll try to explain. Read below to see what happened prior to what you see here……
First of all, I had to decide WHERE on the wall I wanted it. That probably would have been easier, if I already *had* the other things I eventually intend to add to the wall (some shallow ledges, framed artwork, etc.) But lacking any of that yet I figured I'd punt. Initially I temporarily hung it centered in the space…. but quite quickly decided that wasn't gonna do it. So I moved it left…. just to the right of the drapes at the slider. The height off the floor was another guess, too: something "up high", but not all the way up close to the ceiling in case I should eventually decide to put something above it.
To begin, I hung the entire piece (still sandwiched between its two layers of paper) in place with lots of that blue painter's tape. I knew it was critical that it end up perfectly level, so I checked and double-checked, and triple-checked that with both a metal tape as well as a level. Again and again, until I was certain the words were level to about 1/32 of an inch all the way across. Then I ran a strip of blue painters tape exactly along the top edge of the piece.
Once that strip of blue tape was in place I removed the entire piece from the wall and laid it down on my big table to follow the instructions included with it to use the applicator tool to transfer the image from the backing sheet to the transfer sheet. Then I peeled the backing sheet off, pulling it back on itself as explained in the directions. There was one little spot where the backing sheet had some kind of flaw or something, and it would not let loose of the vinyl image and instead began to tear, but I easily remedied that with a little gentle urging with the tip of a stylus. Once the backing sheet was gone my heart started pounding; THIS was now where I was afraid I could really mess it all up if that transfer sheet (which now held the exposed vinyl and is sticky so it acts like a giant piece of masking tape) should accidentally touch the wall before I was ready for it to! But with my heart in my throat, up the ladder I went.
And much to my relief I discovered it wasn't as challenging in real life as my brain had built it up to be. Beginning with the upper left corner, I very carefully placed the top edge of the transfer sheet exactly along the bottom edge of the blue tape. I tried to be careful to only make contact with the wall just along that top edge at this time. So THAT is what you see in the picture up above; the Decor Elements is hanging only from its top edge, but not yet smoothed into place.
The next step was to adhere the entire image (including the transfer paper) firmly to the wall. I began by simply rubbing the applicator tool over the entire image area – stroking outwards from the middle in long, firm strokes with the applicator tool.
After that, I traced over each letter with my finger, pressing it onto the wall, figuring that because my wall has a bit of texture to it, it wouldn't hurt to give it a little extra bit of attention.
Then it was time to begin pulling the transfer paper off the wall, leaving the vinyl images
in place. Again, the technique is to pull the paper completely back on itself – and to work slowly and deliberately. I began at the upper left corner again, and here's what it looked like with about 1/3 of the transfer paper pulled back.
Well, this has gotten long enough for one day, so check back tomorrow for the 2nd half of the story, including pictures of the finished result – and a little custom surprise!
