Another one bites the dust...

Another year that is! I cannot believe that my hubby has turn another year older, making it almost 5 years ago that we met. And I can honestly say I completely remember our very first conversation. It was at Dairy Queen, and I remember him saying something about fonts and I said, "My favorite website is DaFont!" Well, he was just way too excited that I even knew what DaFont was, ya know, being a girl an all... that is when our friendship began! :) A few short months later, and we were dating long distance (He had to go back to the US and I was stuck here in Canada), then engaged, and finally married! I think we knew each other 1 month shy of a year on the day we got married. Hey when you know, you know! :) I swear that with every year that goes by, I fall more in love with him! But onto why I really wanted to share this blog post with you.

Now there was a reason why I told you that long sappy love story. Really. I wanted to do something special for my husband because every time I ask the man what he wants for his birthday/Christmas he always answers, "Nothing!" Am I the only woman who has to play a guessing game every year? *sigh* So while searching ETSY.com, I came across this really awesome digital print hand stamped piece of art that was perfect, since he is a graphic designer by trade and this reminded me of the first time we met! Since his birthday was in less then 4 days, and I really didn't want to shell out $40, (nor did I have $40!) I thought I would just attempt it myself! SO glad I did. Turned out fabulous! (and he loved it!)

For this project you will need;
- Blank canvas (I got mine for $2 at Dollarama!)
- Printer
- Small scissors
- Black paint (or any colors you'd like!)
- Paint Brush
- Tape

{ I apologize for crappy pictures, my beautiful children decided to smash my lens :( }


So I started by taking an old applesauce container, and mixing some white paint with just a smidge of brown paint to cover the entire canvas. You could just keep it white, but it was too stark white for my liking and I wanted more of an antique white look. (When I say smidge, I mean an itty bitty droplet. Literally!)

While that was drying, I ran up to my computer, opened up my favorite program (photoshop!), and picked out my favorite font. Make sure when choosing a font that you choose one that will be easy to cut out as a stencil!

I wanted my canvas to say, " AH FONT IT!" But you could change this out to whatever you want! :) Make sure that before you start cutting, that the font is the right size for your canvas. You don't want the font to be too large for the space or too small!

Then I sat on my couch, put on a movie for the kidlets, and cut, cut, cut! This only took me about half an hour as I only had 9 letters to cut out. Do not worry about it being perfect, that is the beauty of it! Make sure to cut just the black part of the letters out!


(my font all cut out!)

Once I was done, I laid the paper with the cut out letters on my canvas and arranged them where I wanted them. I used a little tape when it came to the inside of the "A" and the "O" to hold them in place, as well as on the outside of the paper to make sure they didn't shift too much.





I then took my black paint and held down the paper as I painted inside the stencil. I did two coats to make sure It showed up.



When I was done, I lifted my stencil off and viola! I had my little piece of art! When you are done, you can always take a small paint brush and touch up the letters to make them look cleaner. I decided not to as I kinda liked the rugged non-perfected look of it. :)




{ Original art piece and inspiration! }