I just recently finished what might be one of my new favorite pieces of wall art. It's for my niece, Bren's, room that my mom and I have been working on. She and her family moved into a new house over Christmas and we were given the opportunity to get to decorate Bren's girly-girl room. We have been working hard to pull it all together and plan on installing it all this Wednesday. I can't wait to see how it all looks together!
The inspiration for this quote art came from Beth's (Bren's mom) Pinterest board that she had created for Bren's room. The original pin can be found here and while I loved the quote itself, the colors of that piece of art just weren't going to work with the room we were planning. So I had to get creative.
I had already finished a little watercolor project for above Bren's bed, and thought it would be good to somehow tie those colors in with this piece of art. One weekend during the Christmas holiday, I asked my Dad to make me a wooden canvas measuring around 2 feet by 3 feet. When he finished it, we were ready to get started on KW's pantry, but I told him to give me just a second while I put on some quick paint that could be drying while we worked. TWO HOURS LATER and I was finally finishing up with the base water color layer. Chalk this up to one of those things that looks and seems a lot easier than it actually is.
I didn't take step-by-step pictures because I didn't really know what I was doing even as I was doing it. Basically I blobbed paint on and then added a whole bunch of water and tried to strategically blend the colors together.
I only watercolored the top of the canvas. I had a general idea in my head of how I wanted this to go, but had no clue if it would work or not. In my head, the sides would be painted later.
To add the quote, I cut out vinyl letters using my Silhouette SD. I downloaded new software to use with the SSD so it took me forever to get these done. I'm such a slow learner with techy stuff. I used several different fonts and sizes to cut out all the words and roughly laid them out on the wooden canvas. After three hours of working that night, I called it quits after getting the first row of words stuck down.
I got back at it a few days later to finish it up. I always hate sticking vinyl letters down because it's so hard to get them straight. Stresses me out!
I had told myself that if the canvas looked good with just the white letters on it, that I would leave it like that (and paint the sides somehow) instead of risking ruining it with the idea in my head. The white letters didn't show up on the watercolor at all though, so I moved forward with my idea.
I laid the canvas out in the yard and got ready to spray paint. I knew if this had any chance at all at being successful, I would have to do thin, thin, thin coats so that the paint wouldn't bleed under the letters. I originally was going to use white spray paint but after seeing how much it blended in with the watercolors, I switched to silver paint for more contrast.
This is the canvas after one coat of silver (on the left) and then after about four coats (on the right).
Then came the most nerve-wracking part of the process...time to peel off the letters! Would this crazy idea work or was I about to have a messy silver bleed-through mess on my hands?? I really didn't want to have to start all over with another art project.
I chose the smallest thing to peel off first - the apostrophe - and miraculously, it peeled off perfectly with nice crisp lines! Aww yeah!
Within no time all of the letters were peeled off and Mom and I could stand back and get a good look at it. I love the way it turned out! These crappy iPhone pics in terrible lighting don't really do it justice, but in person the shiny silver paint is a good contrast to the watercolored letters. I don't plan on adding a coat of polyurethane because I like the shiny silver up against the dull letters.
I love all the colors in the letters too. And the quote is a pretty great one, don't you think?
If all goes well on Wednesday, I should have much better pics to show you soon of how it looks in Bren's room. Fingers crossed it looks good against her pale pink walls!