Trader Joe's wall hanger

I swear this thing looks like a wall hanger for Trader Joe's!

File under "not likely to happen again anytime soon". Turned out to be WAY MORE WORK than I anticipated. But its basically done now, according to me. My wife, on the other hand, says it still needs work - my greatest critic. She'll tell me stuff like "her hair is too brassy", "make her mouth more friendly looking - and soften her eyes, she looks too mean" or "what is this worm doing in her eye?".

This morning I just sandpapered the face completely off and started over. She kept bringing me pictures from her clothing catalogs, saying make the eyes like this, or make the mouth like this. I swear I spent as much time on those eyes as a woman spends in the morning! I don't see how they do it every day hahaha!

I didn't want to continue the mural into the fin area, and finally came up with the simple design you see here, after a lot of thought and sketches and a few false starts. I thought it would be funny to make the tail part look like foam - you know how you see foam boards painted to look like wood? So I painted a wood board to look like foam!

I don't know if it shows in the pic, but I painted it gray, then sponged white over it, to give it that stippled look of foam. It really does look like foam up close. And I added a fake "stringer" - and to complete the look, I carried the bogus stringer across the board, you can sorta see it in the blue water behind the mermaid. (might have to click on the pic to see it larger).