Over ambitious?

Graham is away for a couple of days and I have been scheming away.  My grand plan:  to transform the entire flat.  Clear out!  Clean up!  Create art!   Make curtains!  Make cushion covers!  Frame pictures!  Hang pictures!  Hoover!  Mop!  Polish!  Sweep!  Scrub!  Surprise!

Day one, one innocent trip to an art shop, and I've blown it already by getting sidetracked by a project that sits somewhere in the triple figures of my to do list.  And it's all going a bit time consumingly wrong.  Lack of planning!  Impulse buying!  Bad me!

Did you watch Mad Men?  I spent most of the series eyeing up the sets and there was a piece of wall art in one scene that got me really excited.  You can see it here if you jump to 41 seconds into the video.  Now, when I bought the materials to make it, I hadn't seen it since it was in the show for all of three seconds (I only found the above clip of it today after months of searching) and I don't think I've really got the right stuff...

Anyway, I made this little sketch:

Perfectly 1960, non?

And then I recreated it out of the very weak and easily breakable balsa wood I bought this morning.  This was tricky.  Who knew balsa wood was so attractive and interesting to cats who can break it with one swipe from their tiny paws?  Not me...

Voila:

It's quite big in real life, over a metre across I'd say?  

So I glued all these sticks together trying not to glue it to the carpet.  Of course, I should have put down some sort of protective layer but after such a long time arranging flimsy sticks I did not want to move them.  The carpet has survived thus far...  Now I'm in the process of coating the entire area with pva glue (with protective bin bags underneath - don't panic!) because it turns out you can't paint directly onto balsa wood without sealing it first.  Again, who knew?  Then I will paint it all black and then varnish it just to try and strengthen it up a bit.  After that, the plan is to attach some beautiful glass mosaic tiles but I think I chose completely the wrong colours (which look a bit darker and nicer in real life): 

I like the blue and the red but is the contrast too much for the style of the period? The yellow is not doing it for me at all when I see it in situ.  My plan is that the 'art' will be hung on a very pale blue wall above a navy blue sofa.  I'm thinking, now that I've seen the original inspiration again, that I should do it in various shades of blue with maybe just the odd red tile in there?  Or replace the yellow with brown?  Or just shades of blue?  With maybe the odd green?  I'm not very good with colour...  Please help if you are reading this!  I can guarantee you know more about colour than me.  I would like this to be a nice surprise but so far it's looking like it might be a nasty one, especially if it does end up stuck to the living room carpet!

Some brown might go with the cushion covers I made last night:

The crafty gods were smiling down on me when I made these.  They did not fit the cushions I had made them for but by some bizarre fluke fitted our other naked cushions perfectly!  If only I was having that sort of luck today...  

Oh well, back for the second stage of pva coating.