Goal of the Day: Wall sign

I really do love doing projects. My husband informs me I don't know how to relax (and I'm pretty sure he's right...sort of, I don't know how to do nothing, but luckily I find all my craft projects incredibly relaxing) you'd think I would have an enormous amount of crafty items around my house, but surprisingly I don't keep many of them. Most head out to others as gifts (which is great because I don't have the room, or the money to provide store-bought gifts at most occasions- so it's a win-win for me).

So in a secretive plot we shall call...operation incredibly thoughtful gift I wish I had thought of...my older and wiser sister (who coincidentally reads this blog every now and then... hi!) decided she wanted to surprise my parents (who are currently without internet access- so I'm not spoiling it) with a beautiful photo wall with the words from their song in a sign. She had looked at several sources for window-cling like signs and other items, but I had offered to make it as we wanted it to be exactly the words to the song- Anne Murray's Could I have this Dance. We had also discussed colors and what my sister was hoping for. Here's the process I went through and the finished project (did this in about 2 hours total).

First, I bought a sign appropriate stretched canvas (24 x 8) and broke out the rubber cement. I drew with the rubber cement a few dandelion-like poofs to make it kind of fun. Once that dried I painted the entire canvas with a coat of plain water and used water color paints to wash the background in blues, greens and burgundy (though mostly the blues and greens as I thought they looked the best).  When that dried, I rubbed off the rubber cement which left the white poofs on the colorful background.

Next, using the magic of photoshop I selected a font (Edwardian Script always looks nice if you want a fancy sign) and scaled the words to the size I wanted them to be on the sign (yay using that Graphic Design degree away from work too). Then I printed it out, taped together the sheets to cover the area that would be the sign. This is the fun part and the secret part to get a really nice clean looking sign- using a piece of carbon paper (ironically I had been given a piece with a cashier's check the day before) I traced the majority of the type onto the canvas and then free-hand the rest that didn't show up so I would have nice straight lines. It's a bit tricky to see on there...so hopefully you get the idea.
Next I got out my deep brown acrylic paint (I want this to be permanent after all) and filled in the lines (I'm a lefty so I started at the right of the sign and worked my way to the left to be sure I didn't smudge any of the text as I went along- also a little trick I've learned from experience).
Once that was dry I took a picture and Voila! A lovely sign that could pass as store bought, but is much nicer because it can EXACTLY match your decor.