Sunflower Seat - Teacher Gift

     About a week ago, Daughter Dearest decided she wanted to make her teacher an end of the year present.  "Can we got to Michael's?"  she aske me last Sunday night.  "Sure."  I am a sucker for Michael's Craft Store. 

     After about 3 tours around the store with me saying, "well, give me an idea of what you had in mind..." and my girl asnwering, "I don't KNOW!" she had only settled on a ceramic bobble-head dog that she was going to paint.  It would have a place of honor right next to the apple-shaped items, I thought.  On the 4th turn around, I suggested, "how about we paint a wooden stool and she can use it as a special seat in the classroom?"  

     "Oh, yeah!!"
      Finally.  A plan. 

     I remembered my girl saying how her teacher loved sunflowers.  How about we the top of the stool to look like a sunflower, and twe paint the legs to look like stems.  She liked that idea.  

     First, we found a few pictures of sunflowers online and printed them for reference. 

     Then I drew a circle in the center of the stool's seat where the sunflower's brown center would be.  I had my girl paint the edges of the seat with sky blue - where the petals would gap apart.  She also painte the underside of the seat this color as well, although, afterward I was thinking that maybe we should have painted it green, like the underside of the flower.  Oh well.   We went on to paint the legs darg green, and then the rungs a green that was slightly lighter. 

     Next came a row of petals - darker yellow/orange in color to give it some depth and make it stand out from the next row in front. 

     I added some squiggley lines down the stems in the ligher green (I might had painted a few leaves here and there if we had more time, but alas!  We are procrastinators!)  We added some more rows of petals in lighter and lighter yellow (and again, if we had more time, we might have...  but we didn't).  Finally, I dribbled black, brown and a bit of yellow paint around the center of the sunflower, and then dabbed it all together with the brush to make it blend.  Our internet picture was absolutely necessary for this part.   

And then, WALLAH!! the finished product.  She wrote a little message to her teacher underneath the seat.  

Unfortunately, the teacher was absent on the last day. 

:-( 

Hope she liked it!