Mary Ostler

I wanted to pretty up the cone tent. I had by this point realized the mistake I had made when making my template, and decided to make it pretty to make up for the fact that it wasn’t going to look like the tent I was trying for. Sadness!

I did a quick doodle of a paint design I could put on the tent. I was hoping to have the Tir Righ Star encircling the tent.

The design cut out and taped. Looks more teepee that anything else <sulk>

My work place has a storage bunker they allowed me to use. Good thing, as I have no place large enough to paint the tent in one go.

First step was to stretch the canvas out on the floor. I used a strip of duct tape stuck to the underside of the canvas, on top of this strip, another strip (facedown) was then attached to the cement. Each seam was pulled taunt one at a time, trying to keep everything stretched out as much as the tape would allow.

Having spent a good portion of time mucking about with the painter tape, I decided to simplify the design. My back was starting to object.

I was using a 1:1 ratio paint to water mix. The paint was acrylic latex exterior house paint. I had a bit of a score on the paint. I went to Canadian tire on my lunch, and they were having difficulties matching the color I wanted. My lunch was over, so I had to leave the store without the paint. The next day I went back and I guess they had continued trying to get the color and succeeded. I got the can at 1/2 price in the mistint section. Score!

When I got to the bottom of the pin striping I looked at how much paint I had left. I decided I didn’t have enough paint to get all the way to the floor so I added more painters tape to make a strip  around the bottom. I think it looks pretty good.

My Back was right pissed off at me by this point. 4 hours mucking about either stooped over, or on my knees. Not Fun.