Ironing Board Nemesis?

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"Here you go, Mom - I made you a picture so you'd always look at it and think about how mad you got!" She announced with great pride in her merriest voice.

I'd been working for 4 days on a painting.  4 days!  I'd read up on this neat-o technique that I just couldn't wait to try.  Got out the canvas I'd been saving, the glass beads medium that cost me an arm and a leg, and a whack of paint.  Off I went, playing and developing and turning this blank bit of taut cloth into something that I thought was going to be the best thing I'd done yet.  I was so thrilled with the way that this piece was turning out!

I carefully placed the acrylic skins where I wanted them, attending to details and making sure that things were "just so'.

I poured on a layer of polymer medium to make the watery part of the painting shiny and crackly.

I put the piece in the laundry room to cure.

On the ironing board.

Which wasn't level. 

Which made the dang polymer bleed a thick, pimply line of gloss into an area it wasn't SUPPOSED to go!

Well, that did it.  My perfectionist self reared its ugly head and started procuring (in a muttery sort of way) that colorful vocabulary that is rewarded in childhood with Ivory soap.  I picked at it.  I prodded.  I examined.  I fumed.  I criticized.

I did the dishes and vented to my family.

My husband took us for ice cream.  He's my hero and that's all there is to it.

Darling girl that she is, my daughter drew me a picture to commemorate my first "mistake", which now hangs on my basement wall beside my work area.  (No, really - nothing like this has happened in my 5 years of painting!)  I am standing beside a wilted painting, arms ended in tight fingers, and above my head is a pitch-black squiggle of fuming anger.  I have on the most impossible frown.  I'm also 25 pounds lighter.  It's a great picture.

The erroneous painting cured, and through some creative miracle hidden from my understanding, I was able to salvage the piece.  It may even be accurate to say that it looks better than it did before Mistake Day.

And now I have a wonderful hand-drawn "snapshot" of that moment when I perfectionism won out over the beautiful influences of crooked ironing boards.  (What a good reminder that I don't need an eraser.)