2013 Gift for Tae Kwon Do Masters

Last year I felt that the gift I gave to our TKD master was pretty cool. You can see it here.  So this year, I was kind of stumped.  I feel like if you do something really heartfelt and cool, you can't just revert back to gift cards the next year.  I brainstormed and brainstormed and came up with a big fat zero.  I even scoured the aisles at Hobby Lobby looking for anything martial arts or TKD.  I couldn't find anything.  So then I thought, maybe a chipboard word that says "Thank You" would be good, and I can customize it.  I couldn't find anything like that anywhere. 

But as we were driving home from visiting the family, I thought of maybe doing a TKD word cloud.  You've seen those, right?  You can actually make them online for free on sites like Wordle.  Then I was trying to think of how I could create the word cloud online and have it print decently enough to make a finished art piece.

What I came up with was using 12x12 canvases that I found at a thrift store for $2.50 each as my base.  I love the look of the colors of belts students go through, so I wanted to include those too.  I used ribbon that was about a quarter inch wide to block off roughly 1" wide stripes on the canvas.  Then I used some embossing paste (again, found it at a thrift store) mixed with the paint colors I wanted to make the belts.  I did have some leak under the ribbon, if I had had some painter's tape I would have preferred to use that.

I made Miss Kelly's word cloud first, and I learned a few things from it.  The first was I made 2 purple belts and then went back in with white paint and added the white stripe to the purple trim belt that way.  On the second picture, I mixed white with the embossing paste and applied it to the second purple belt while it was still wet.  I like the finished look of that one better.  The other thing I learned with the first picture was that while it is easier to fit those last few words in with sharpies, they tend to smear when you apply the sealing layer of mod podge on top.  Also, beware of the helpful cat who walks through the embossing paste before it is dry.  I ended up adding little dabs of color throughout the canvas to make the mistakes Jack caused look intentional.

So for the Masters' (they are married and so get 1 gift) picture, I really had to work an rework where everything went.  A lot of the words were applied and then shifted if they were crooked, if I misspelled them, and if I used up too much room for a word and then needed the space later for another word.  I also depleted my alpha stickers.  But I love how they turned out and I know the Masters & Miss Kelly will love them.  Both of my girls attend TKD now and it's our family hobby.  I truly appreciate every minute the Masters and Miss Kelly spend helping my girls.