Letters and Canvas

I'm having a hard time moving around today, so I decided to just go ahead and post this super easy project. We are heading to Ohio with the whole family to enjoy four days of camping and amazing music at All Good Festival. Did I mention it's going to be hovering around 90 degrees? No? Well, it's worth it and we will be covering lots of ground walking and I couldn't be more excited! So, while I'm letting my body take a break you get to read about this simple and cheap project. 

   What you'll need: I got everything I needed for this project at Lowes, Hobby Lobby and my mother in 

                                    law's house (scrapbooking paper)

• Letters, numbers or what ever you like (letters $1.50)
• Canvas ($3.00)
• Oil based spray primer (I used Kilz Odorless)
• Spray paint (I used Valspar high gloss, white lacquer)
• Paint, scrapbooking paper (We used what we had lying around)
• Painters tape (We used Frog Tape)
• Spray multipurpose adhesive (I used 3M Super 77)
• Liquid nails

 Optional- I didn't use these products, but really wish I had!

• Wood filler 
• Sandpaper

First I spray primed the letters with two coats of Kilz. This is where I screwed up. I really should have used the wood filler because there are little holes in the T. I know you can't see them in the picture, but they are there and you can see them when looking at the letter in person. I also should have used sandpaper and sanded them to make them smooth as glass. Oh well, next time!

I was also in the process of changing some of my picture frames, so I just did it at the same time. A quick word about the spray primer. I am a very messy spray painter and I got it all over my feet and hands! So, do it outside in a place where your neighbors won't freak out! The picture above is where I used two coats of the lacquer on the letters and the canvas. The lacquer was super stinky, so it definitely should be used outside!

Here is what the letters and canvas looked like all glossy white. You could just leave them like this and call it done, for modern look. I like it so much I'm thinking of doing it for the back of the bathroom door and adding a hook under each of our initials for towels.

For the B, our daughter used the painter's tape and taped out her design. To get the nice lines without removing some of the paint, just pull the tape as soon as you do your last coat of paint.

There's our daughter, Baylee hard at work. Actually, she's ignoring me taking pictures of her painting. Don't you just love the purple hair? It's purple for her summer swim team. Don't worry grandma, it washes out... eventually!

 

Here's the final project. For the E, I used painter's tape for the pattern. For the T, I simply flipped the canvas upside down on the scrapbooking  paper and traced away. I then took it outside, sprayed the adhesive on the canvas and put the paper on top of it. The next morning I put the liquid nails on the back of the letters and positioned them on top of the canvas and snapped the picture. That's why they are laying flat and not hung. The liquid nails package said to wait 16 hours before hanging. The only things I needed to buy were the letters and the canvas and it came to a whopping $4.50 a piece. Super easy and cheap, new wall art!

We will be welcoming a new niece very soon and I see another project like this in the near future with a J on it. Or a larger canvas with her whole name!

If anyone else has done this project, I'd love to see your interpretation!

About Me

   

   I'm a Midwest mother of a wonderful daughter and her dad and I have been together for 13 years. I've been making jewelry for over ten years and still get excited about different color combinations. The same can be said for the way I garden. I love changing it up every year with different plant colors.
   
    I just graduated with an undergrad in communication and have found I finally have time to completely redo pretty much everything in my house. I am super excited about this. I am trying to take as many before pictures as I can. I have already made some mistakes and will post those too. Hopefully, someone else can read my mess ups and learn from it!

I was sitting outside on my front porch and noticed the shadow cast by the plant made a heart. I ran in and grabbed the camera and took a few pictures. Since it was night, I tried the night feature on the camera and it wouldn't capture the heart. I also, turned the porch light out and tried to use the light coming from the camera, no such luck. This was pretty much all I could get, until I manipulated it...

The most important thing to me was, I really wanted to keep the integrity of the night photo. I can still tell this was taken at night but everything is brighter. I used the fill light, highlight, shadow, and color temperature features. I then straightened and cropped the photo.

I picked this one because the left side of the photo is really dark. The one side of the cat looks like a big blob of black, lacking any definition.

This one is a lot lighter! I changed the fill light, then the highlights a little. I then changed the color temperature and noticed I could change the highlights again, which gave the cat more definition. After all this I cropped the photo.

I truly loved doing this assignment. I really just wanted to keep the color to a minimum, so I stuck with blue. The "T" was a photograph of a lamp in my house. I straightened it and used the infrared film feature to get rid of most of the color. The "I" is a staircase. I rotated, cropped and used the vignette feature. The "N" was a bright red, hand cart. I straightened, cropped changed it to black and white, then used the boost and vignette feature. The "A" was the one I was most worried about finding and it turned out to be my favorite! It was an A-frame which I straightened, cropped, and used the vignette feature.