Writing on the Wall

I decided to update my mantle recently and really like the idea of the painted word.  Lots of people are making painted words on canvas...  here is one by Elsie Larson:

Here is one by Elise Blaha Cripe:

I love the simplicity of it and how easy it is to achieve.  Most of the examples that I have seen are quoting a song or some lovey dovey poem, both are really not me.  I guess I am an atypical girl on this note, mushy stuff makes me want to gag.  Seriously...  If I open a sentimental greeting card, I just move my eyes to make it seem like I'm reading it and then put it in the recycle bin because I don't enjoy being sick.  With that said, I thought long and hard about what I wanted my wordy canvas to say and I decided on my favorite Amy Sedaris quote from this book:

Here is my process:

1st step: I painted the canvas white.  Why paint the canvas white if it is already white when you buy it?  Well, there are a lot of reasons for this...  from an artist's perspective, when you paint the white... white, it will look intentional instead of looking like you forgot an entire section.  An additional coat of paint with also help stretch the canvas even more and the most useful reason is because if you have any touch ups to make at the end, you can paint over them with the same white paint.

Step 2: I cut a piece of paper down to scale with the canvas.  I measured out the lines on both the paper and the canvas, then wrote the quote out on the paper to figure out spacing.  Then I transferred the words to the canvas with pencil:

Step3: Then I painted the words.

With a quote this long, I would have liked to have had a bigger canvas.... but I was limited since the space between my mantle and the ceiling is pretty small.  I still love how it turned out and I get a chuckle out of the irony that you assume that this is going to be a sentiment of sorts and then you read it and it's about throwing up in dishwashers.  Heh heh.  This is a really easy project and I would recommend it to anyone that needs a little update to their decor.

Until next time, Happy Painting!