I saw this project posted eons ago and filed it away in my head.
At one point, I even purchased the wood to build my own.
I never got around to it, though.
This is the view from my front door when looking directly to the back of my house.
The little wall over the stairs has never bothered me before, but a couple of weeks ago I suddenly decided it was the perfect place to hang something. I was putting my Valentines decor out at the time, and all the "Love" themed pieces must have reminded me of my Beatles inspiration piece.
The wood I had in the garage, however, was far too big. Instead I picked up a 2 gallery canvas's at JoAnn's.
For my letters I created a custom document in microsoft publisher that was the same size as my canvas (24x12) and played with the size and stretch of the letters until it fit the way I wanted it to. Then I turned those letters light grey (so as not to waste too much ink) and moved them to a standard letter size sheet of paper to print them out.
Then I cut the letters out and attached them to my canvas with a regular old glue stick.
(I started by just doing one canvas. That way, if it didn't work, I'd only ruined one, lol)
I love this reverse-stencil technique - and using a glue stick to make the paper stay works perfectly. It peels off without too much trouble but stays well enough if you don't jostle it around.
Anyway, I sprayed over the entire canvas with black spray paint. Two light coats.
When it was completely dry, I peeled the paper letters off. They came off surprisingly well. So, instead of printing and cutting out an entire new set of letters, I reused these ones. They were a bit curled, but I pressed them with my iron between two towels and they were perfect.
The letters stood out as extremely white and the black was just a pit too perfect for my taste, so I took some fine grit sand paper to it. Then I diluted some bronze paint and rubbed it over the canvas, giving the letters a bit of color and softening the black.
I love the result. The question is, is it Valentines Decor, or not?
I'm leaning towards not. I think I'll probably keep these up all year long.
Before and After:
Now I just need to replace those hideous sconce's. Bleck!
