table l'amour - a valentine's project?

michelle gives an old ikea table (now discontinued) a little bit of love.

she writes, "it's an old ikea café table that has been painted and weather-proofed based on a design found on the cover of the art book Les Cent Noms de l'Amour (right). i've always been a fan of highly stylized arabic calligraphy (in this case of one of the arab words for love), so this project was a great opportunity to explore its sinuous forms on a functional canvas.

i used several layers of liquitex acrylic heavy body paint and a helmsman semi-gloss urethane finish. the 'strokes' in the calligraphy are actually composed of many small paintbrush strokes."