Weekend Project: Closet Art

So I decided to start something new. I'm calling it Weekend Projects. Basically projects that I start and finish in a weekend. Honestly, the thought sounds really nice considering how long some of these take. Especially the ones that I anticipate taking me a couple of days, and a couple of weeks later I'm still working on them. There are times that a project drags on so long that by the time I'm finished, the only excitement I have is that it's done. Sounds bad, but true. My intention is to love everything I do, but some projects are just stubborn. Oh and let's not forget the fact that sometimes, I'm just doing too much. 

Now on to my newest creation. I created a piece of art for my closet room. I wanted a new piece for the back wall. I already had something there, but I wanted to change it out for something a little more girly. I contemplated a few ideas and I had settled on some sort of lips/kiss print, until I started looking for an image to reference and totally lost my excitement. Then somehow right before bed....it came to me. 

I started with a piece of 1/4" foam board. I had extra in the closet and cut it to 22" x 32".

I painted the foam board with a layer of white acrylic craft paint. While I waited for the paint to dry I started on my letters. I went to Hobby Lobby and got 4 big wood letters. Between you and me, all of the fun letters they have in craft stores excites me. I always want to buy them, but never have a reason.

I painted my letters gold. I had originally started spray painting them, however it was difficult to get an even coat around the edges. So, I switched to hand painting them instead. 

While the letters dried, I turned my attention back to the board. For design I went with stripes. I got out my blue Painter's Tape and taped off where my stripes would be.

Now comes the trick. People always ask how I get my stripes so precise. Well here it is. When I was painting the stripes for my office. I did a lot of research on what the best techniques were. I had done stripes in the past and even though I used tape, I would still get bleeding and thus not so crisp lines. I found out that bleeding is almost inevitable, so the key is before you paint the second color paint the first color at the tape's edge. 

By painting the edge with the first color, when the color bleeds under the tape, it is essentially bleeding onto itself. Ah haa. *Eureka Moment* Once it dried I went ahead and painted the black on top. 

Once the black dried I pulled up the tape, and I had nice crisp lines. (Of course I didn't photograph it. It was beautiful though...trust me) Then I put the whole thing together. I placed the letters down first to get the right placement, and used E6000 glue to secure them. 

Then I brought it up stairs and used nails to hang it on the wall.

I love it! Oddly it was nothing like what I had envisioned for the last month. Somehow though I've been having some of my best creative ideas at bedtime. Go figure. I might put a frame around it, but I'm not sure yet. We'll see what tickles my fancy. 

So, what do you think of the "Weekend Project"? I'm kind of feeling it. I always like smaller projects. I think about them, I get excited, I create them, I get super excited, and then it's on to the next one. Just like that. That means more blogs and more projects. YAY! *Snaps for that*. Oh and be prepared for a few back to back blogs. I seemed to have finished like 4 projects within the last week. So stay tuned...you never know what might happen over the weekend.