I love having glue on my on my fingers and allowing my brain to focus on a project w/o the day-2-day tasks of life interfering.
I kept checking for what I call “Dreaming Trees annual large Halloween project”. And I’ve got to say this one took the cake. As soon as I saw it, it was in my cart & purchased.
It took MUCH longer than I anticipated and was beginning to wonder if I’d complete it by Halloween.
If it wasn’t for Leo’s gift of explaining & demonstrating how to construct this labor of love, I’d either still be wondering what I’m supposed to do with “RFS” - or it would have just hit my recycling bin after hours of scratching my head.
Again, if Leo hadn’t occasionally offered encouragement to “not give up, it will be worth it in the end”, I might have quit.
The main issue I experienced was: I watched the beginning of the first assembly videos & don’t know if I missed something, but Leo was just starting to showing which pieces to assemble first and he explained how he used a mallet for embossing. Lacking the proper tools I embossed as best I could. My big mistake was that once the pieces were embossed, no matter what how hard I looked - for the life of me, I couldn’t see the letters & numbers through the embossing texture. I apparently also embossed pieces that shouldn’t have been. I feel that a word of caution to mark the pieces BEFORE you emboss. Marking the pieces was discussed later in the video - but for me, it was too late. I learned a lot of tricks while making this & it will definitely be easier if I make another one for next year.
After hours of work and multiple times of stepping away for a breath - I have a project that I’m so happy with, I refuse to give it to the kids until next year. It’s sitting in a place of honor where I can admire it in the evening with all the windows lit up (even if it is only for a few nights)…
I doubt I’m ready to call myself a Master yet, but I’m happy with the results!