Pinterest Challenge: DIY Quote Wall Art

Two of my absolute favorite home blogs, Young House Love and Bower Power, are hosting a Pinterest Challenge today! I love when they do Pinterest Challenges because it really encourages all their readers to stop pinning and start doing. Though... I usually don't need that extra push but I love the opportunity to see what other people are busy creating.

My project was really cheap and really simple. I found it pinned from a blog called A Beautiful Mess. She took adhesive letters and adhered them onto an old paint-by-numbers canvas, painted over the canvas and peeled the letters off.

My first order of business was to find a piece of thrift store art that would be perfect for painting over. And then, I saw this cheap picture that cost me a whopping $5.24.

I found the Helvetica word stickers at Michael's for $5.99 a pack AND they didn't have all the letters I'd need in one pack so I would have had spend $12 for all my letters! I'm a cheapskate and I'd rather spend my time than money so... I decided to make my own letter stencils out of cardstock and printed letters.

I toyed around with the idea of just painting the quote over the painting, like Young House Love did here. But... I didn't care for the border of the picture.

So, I made up my mind that I would print out the letters, trace them and then carefully paint around them. I just played around with the font sizes until I found the size that would fit my artwork the best.

I tediously cut out the letters...

Spaced them out on my art...

And carefully traced.

I then just took some acrylic white paint and painted around the letters. I didn't want it to be completely white though. The original inspiration picture had some peeks of the original artwork showing through and I wanted that look too.

It's hard to photograph but it really turned out well!

I was going to wrap the white around the edges but I loved the contrast of the dark edge so I gave it a fresh coat of brown paint.

I'm so glad I finally got to use this quote/lyric somewhere in my home. Ever since I heard it, I thought it was a perfect saying for our family and other military families as well. Because... it's definitely true.