Shannon Roycroft- Kindness Bench

This past week was really fun and challenging. We started off working out every morning and then leaving to go to work on our bench. As easy and simple as painting a bench sounds it definitely has its difficulties. We have so many small detailed parts to our bench that makes it hard to paint. Mack had to use one of her make up brushes just to be able to paint over super small writing. We got a lot accomplished. We finished the top of the bench, we just have to go over it again so the paint stays. We messed up on a few things but it turned out to be a good thing because it lead us to new ideas. We were going to write across the top of the bench who the bench is to and who is is from but when we messed up on writing that so many times we decided it would be better to change the location of it. We put it on a smaller piece of the bench that turned out better than we thought it would. There are a lot of pencil marks and scribbled out writing all over the bench that we have to go over but i...

Today we started to draw out or outline for where we are putting the "To Proctor, From ....." I drew out the words with pencil so I had room to mess up. I drew them too close first so I erased it and rewrote it. When I outlined it for a second time I thought it looked really good. I started to paint over it and it was coming out good. Painting words really small with paint brush is harder than you would think. I really did underestimate how long this bench would take. We have put a lot of effort into it so far and it is coming out great! We are continuing to take our time painting the little details because we want it to be perfect! Tomorrow we are working on doing the legs of the bench and painting the design we have in mind!

Today we worked on touching up the little things on our bench. I fixed the part of the tree with the quote on it that got messed up. Mack fixed the top of the bench that we rearranged to have a proctor quote on it. Katelyn went over all the marks on the bench that were covered in different colors with white to make it look more clean. Fixing the marks by the tree that got messed up was a little challenging because it wouldn't blend in all the way with the rest of the white bench. I had to scrub off the black completely and then paint white all over again. After we made these tough ups we started going over everything again to make it look neater! Now we are moving onto finishing up the bench and will be adding on the final touches on it soon!

On Thursday we just continued to do what we've been doing. Around my tree design I wrote a quote that goes along with the symbol of a tree. I messed up on writing the quote in black so I had to redo it. Whenever we mess up on something it takes so long to redo. You have to take of the paint and then paint over it 3 different times with white. It takes forever to dry and is extremely frustrating. Painting the bench was for sure harder than we all thought it would be. Including all the details and images we chose to has been challenging, but also really fun. Tomorrow we are going to start by fixing what we messed up on today. We are at 24 hours.

Today consisted of painting all of our outlines and designs. We went over all the bubble letters again and perfected the edges of the letters. We painted over the the arms of the bench that we wrote the zip code of Andover on and Andover, Nh, in green to have more Proctor colors. We decided to change up the top of the bench and write proctor's motto on the top instead of our names. We put that in a different location. We started to paint the quotes but realized that the brushes we had were to big. First thing we are doing tomorrow is getting a thinner brush so that we can paint the quotes and make it neater!

On Tuesday we started our day by getting breakfast and working out at school. When we started working on our bench we went over all the designs and writing we did with another coat of paint so it comes out better when we're finished. We began to paint the tree and the hornet. I painted the tree on the side corner of the bench and Mack painted the hornet. We are starting to paint the quotes on Wednesday and add on more designs. We want the bench to be as colorful as possible!! We are up to 18 hours.

Today we made a lot of progress. We started out by making the finishing touches in our outlines and our designs. We wanted to make the bench to have more "proctor" things incorporated in it so we decided to draw a hornet on one side and a tree on the other. I drew the tree and Mack drew the hornet. After this we decided our outlines and designs are good so we started painting the big capital letters that spell out "Kindness Bench" in different colors. It started to really look like the bench we were imagining! We're going to continue to paint it tomorrow and add on as we go!