Clover

Shamrock and clover are not the same, although they are often used interchangeably to symbolise luck or Ireland. Personally, I view the three-leaf shamrock as more of a religious symbol because, in Christianity, the three leaves represent the Holy Trinity. On the other hand, the four-leaf clover is considered the ultimate symbol of good luck. To avoid any religious connotations in my choice, I decided to lean towards the secular side. Anyway, the four-leaf clover has always been more elusive, and in my opinion, it embodies the concept of luck better. So, I made my decision and built the four-leaf clover.

I started by printing out my template. The problem I faced was to scale it up and instead of printing on a single A4 sheet of paper, do it on 4 sheets – I think I can call it “poster printing”. It turned out that this could be easily done using Paint in Windows. The “Page Setup” option in the “File\Print” menu allowed me to change the scaling and instead of fitting it to “1 by 1 page” I chose “2 by 2 pages”. It was literally that simple. Next, I taped all the sheets together and cut out the shape with scissors. From that point, I could carry out my work not in the office but in my shed. I traced the template out on the board and then cut it out using my jigsaw.

I sanded all the edges and the front, eased the arrises and cleaned the gaps between the leaves using a small file. I marked the back, screwed in the picture hanger and prepared everything for spray paint. A coat of lime green was applied first, then the workpiece was flipped over and all the edges were sprayed with racing green paint. I turned over the clover again and with the same, darker paint, sprayed the edges and created a fade. I let it dry for 24 hours and the next day hung it on the wall. Some additional plastic feet were also installed on the back to keep it evenly spaced out from the wall, all the way from top to bottom.

I’m happy that the wood grain still shows through the paint, that was important to me since I didn’t use MDF but a real wood panel to build the project. In general, I try to avoid using paint on wood if possible, but sometimes it just makes sense. The clover brings some positive vibrations to the look of that wall and recalls feelings and emotions like hope, smile, cheer and luck. It looks a little naive and childish, but I guess it has to be that way. Finally, that empty space beside the letter K is filled out with something nice, that corresponds with the rest of the decorations.