The other thought we had for the title of this blog post was “How to home-make a few presents this year and stay up until obscene hours of the night to do it.” But then I’d be admitting that procrastination played a larger part of Christmas than I’d care to admit.
Last year we used a Cricut to create subway art for Dustin’s family. Maybe we’ll show you what they looked like one day when we we’re desperate for some content to post. Despite the colossal mess it created and the length of time it took to complete, it was a big hit at the annual gift exchange. I think everyone liked how personal of a gift it was since we had carefully selected words that described each family. This year, it was my sibling’s turn and we figured that perhaps the process would go faster if we painted them instead of cutting out each word.
Um, wrongo.
While it wasn’t a quick project, I think that the finished product turned out exactly as I had imagined. Here’s how I did it:
I started off by painting the base color on my canvas. In this case, a bluish grey color. Then I typed up my selected words in various fonts and sizes, and printed them out. I then cut them down to size and arranged the words on my canvas.
Once arranged, I used tracing paper to transfer the words onto the canvas. Surprisingly, this took a chunk of time as I wanted to try and make the words as straight as possible.
Once traced, I started painting using a small brush and some white paint. This type of painting is therapeutic for me and I often do it at night when the kids are in bed and I can listen to a movie or a show.
It took a few coats of white to get the coverage I wanted, but I’m pleased to report that the project that I started just 4 days before Christmas finally was finished at about 1:00 am Christmas day – mere minutes before Santa unloaded his haul.
Whew, that was close! (oh, and never mind the spaces, we had to edit out some personal info stuff before posting this).
