IN WHICH our heroine makes an attempt at art

In my attempt to turn my house into "decently cool college pad" to "vintage and fun adult home," I've been trying to move away from band and movie posters and toward collecting art--pieces that speak to me and reflect my sense of humor, values, and how guests feel in my home. Working for an arts organization has been a really great part of that transition, and has introduced me to a million artists and perspectives that I wouldn't know otherwise.

Clearly, I don't have the budget to get anything super impressive, so I've been scouring the internet and local artists for prints and small pieces. I was lucky enough to pick up the piece I mentioned in this post, and I spend hours going through 20x200 and Etsy.

And then I found this--and, of course, it's out of stock everywhere I look. But because I'm determined, and relatively crafty, I rounded up the boyfriend and we riffed on the idea:

 

  

I only have two "process" pictures, because it wasn't until I was almost done that the boyfriend reminded me that I wanted to blog about it. ... Oops.

But, here's a brief rundown of what we did:

• Create a stencil by printing out the quote and cutting out the letters with an X-acto knife. The font we used was Captain Howdy (the same one used on my banner--download for free here), in 250 point font (Good was in 275)
• We watered down the aqua paint and then used a dry, foam brush to drag it across about a 1/3 of the canvas
• Let the paint dry
• Tape down the stencil to the canvas using double stick tape
• Using a foam brush, almost sponge the paint into the stencil, come back over in a brushing motion to remove the sponge texture
• Let the paint dry, and paint the heart

Here's the finished product:

 

Cute, right? The boyfriend and I are going to hang it in our bedroom, I'm just not sure where yet.

It was a pretty simple project, but making our own stencil was a pain. Cutting out all those letters sucked pretty bad, but I'm pretty sure it would have sucked worse to try and do a whole little quote using the pre-made stencils from the craft store.

The canvas came in a pack of two, so I still have one left, but I'm waiting for inspiration to strike before I get my art on again.