Pinterest Project #2: Word Canvas

This Christmas I was trying to make some Stashbusting Christmas gifts and combining that with my desire to make some of the things that I've pinned (Things to make some day)

I've seen signs like this all over, and I really like them.

(source)

This one costs about $550 USD! Are you kidding?!

I wanted to make this with just stuff that I had on hand, which didn't include small wooden letters.  

So instead I used chipboard glitter letters I had on hand as a stencil & plain chipboard. 

I cut them out with scissors

I then glued them onto scrap wood that I had.  I used Gorilla Glue because I didn't want them going anywhere, but the glue expanded (as it tends to do) and that was a problem.

So I took my craft knife and carefully trimmed the glue off.  It worked really well.

Much better!

Then I took some cream acrylic paint I already had and painted the whole thing.  This would have been much easier and quicker with spray paint, but I didn't want to have to buy anything.

Second coat:

I felt like the letters didn't stick out quite enough because they're just chipboard, so I decided to dry brush some brown around the letters.

But it looks a bit too dark, so I painted some cream overtop to soften it a bit

Look at the difference between "rest" and "relax"

When it was all done like that...



I didn't like it.  lol


So I painted all over the brown, and returned it to it's original cream.

I put picture hangers on the back that I picked up at the dollar store.



  Unfortunately, even the shortest nails were still too long, so I accidently put one through the board. Whoops!





I fixed it by using a couple pieces of balsa wood that I had lying around to make some space behind the hangers.





Much better!



Total spent on this sign:
$1 (for the hangers)
Wood, chipboard, paint and gorilla glue was all on hand.  




I know it wouldn't have cost much more to go buy wooden letters, but I was really challenging myself to use what I have!