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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Homemade Valentine's Present

I surprised my husband with a homemade valentine’s gift this year! I was excited to try out a craft I originally found on Pintrest. Yes, I actually did something on Pintrest! While I changed the “how-to” a bit, the end result was the same and Honey loved it!

You might have seen the idea floating around Pintrest already: putting the yrics to "your song" on an over sized canvas. I first saw the idea from The Steen Style. Our song is “Then” by Brad Paisley and if you’ve read our First Date Review or our Love Story, then you might already know that this song tells our story in only 3-minutes… something I can never accomplish!

Here’s my finished product:

Here's what I used:

  • 30x40 canvas ($30 but found a 40% off coupon online, score!)
  • 1 can of Krylon Brushed Metallic spray paint in Carmel Latte with a satin finish
  • 1 white paint pen with a medium tip
All purchased from Hobby Lobby.

First I made a template for the lyrics using Power Point. (This was the same idea that "The Steen Style" author used but I was not able to download the template she provided so I made my own!)

Making my own template was so easy I almost thought I had missed a step! Using Microsoft PowerPoint, in portrait (to match the canvas) not landscape, I placed a single text box on the slide and then typed all the lyrics in the box. I played with the font size until the lyrics fit just inside the text box. The finished product looked like a miniature version of what I wanted the canvas to look like! (If I knew how to upload a ppt doc to the blog I'd do it!)

Next I called Kinko’s and asked them to print the file onto a 30x40 sheet of paper. They asked me to email the file to them and told me I could pick it up in 20 minutes! Whoa, how’s that for service?!

Once I had the printed template in my hand, I was ready to get busy!

I spray painted the canvas using almost the entire can to get the color I wanted! While it was drying I prepared the template. I trimmed off the edges and centered it over my freshly painted canvas. Since I wanted to use the template as a guide while I wrote the lyrics on the canvas, I moved the template down so that it was no longer centered but instead was shifted south by one row.


I used painters tape to hold the template in place and started writing the lyrics directly onto the canvas with my white paint pen. After I finished each row, I folded the template under to make room for the next row of lyrics. Using the template helped me to make sure I didn’t write too large or too small!


I surprised Honey with this homemade gift when we celebrated Valentine’s Day!
We have a couple of options as to where to hang it, more to come on that…






4 comments:

  1. Oh my goodness! That is SOOO neat and thoughtful. I'm sure he loved it! I am very interested to hear/see where you put it.

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    1. Thanks Lindsay!! It was so much fun to put together too! I think it will go in the stairway but we'll see...

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  2. Stopping by from Becky's blog. That's gorgeous lady! I wish I could take on something like that but I'm not sure my handwriting would hold up! I would have to stencil it!

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    1. Thanks for visiting!! And thanks for the compliment :) I tried to do my bestest handwriting EVER and wrote sooo slowly. I'm left handed so I actually wrote from right to left so that my hand wouldn't smear the paint. Writing that way forced me to focus on each individual letter so I was extra super careful! :)

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Comments make me smile :)

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