Love to the Moon

My Squirt is now 9, much to my disbelief. She shares a bedroom with her 5 year old step-sister, albeit only part time. I've been trying to revamp things now that she's getting a little bit older but still keep them okey-dokey for a younger child too. Which means the pink and yellow flag bunting we've had up since Squirt was 3 is now coming down. For years it's been all pink all the time, and while pink is still the color of choice for them both, I'm trying to incorporate other colors and make the overall feel a little older. The project of the moment is an art collage wall.

When I saw this on Pinterest (no link attached, the photo was uploaded by user), I knew it was my first endeavor.

 

See, Squirt and I say this all the time. Only we say it in a one-upping kind of way. She'll often say "I love you to PLUTO and back!" 

As usual, I wanted to re-create the idea but use only supplies on hand. I had purchased a three pack of flat 11x14 canvasses at Walmart for somewhere around 6.98 or so and decided to go that route instead of wood. 

To start with, I painted the canvas black and used the Elmer's glue crackle paint technique circulating Pinterest (tutorial here). The only glue I had on hand was Galaxy Glue - which is more of a gel glue filled with glitter. I smeared that all over the black canvas without diluting it. Then, once the glue was tacky (which was almost right away for the gel glue) I brushed a slightly thinned bright blue Art Deco paint over the whole surface. 

I had no idea if it would work but it did! And the best part? The glitter is totally visible and adds the perfect subtle but amazingly awesome amount of bling. LOVE how that turned out and I completely recommend trying it. 

I played around a graphics program to figure out the size of lettering I wanted and printed out the text outline on cardstock, cut it out with an Xacto knife to create a stencil, and then used my favorite craft tool: the Sharpie. Tracing and coloring the letters went really quick. I had toyed with painting it and then lightly sanding the surface (even on the canvas) but decided I didn't want to mar the glitteriness and crackles. Sharpie was fast and perfect for what I was after. 

Which leaves us with this:

At first I lined the stencils up so the spacing between lines was identical and it bugged me. So I moved them to emphasize the "I Love You" a little more. Time will tell if I think that was a good decision since I'm usually anal about spacing :) 

This project was crazy easy (you can tell I did half of it while babysitting!) and I absolutely love how it turned out. Project art wall is well underway!