Quote Art: DIY Defeat

This was SUCH a let down, as I have been wanting to do this for awhile.  I have never had any kind of quote art in my house, but after seeing all of the inspiring images on Pinterest, I thought it was time to put something up.  We need some more art in our guest bedroom, so I was especially intrigued by a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson saying that "the ornament of a house is the friends (I used "guests") who frequent it".  How cute would that be on the wall of a guest bedroom!?  Fortunately, I had an old canvas picture of a ferris wheel from Target I no longer had a use for, so this DIY project was officially on.

I took my old canvas picture, and arranged vinyl letters (I also used stickers, which was a mistake…) on the canvas to spell out my quote.  (A ruler will be important in this step.)  Once the quote was arranged, I used spray paint to paint a layer of colored paint all over the canvas.  When the paint had dried, I pulled off the vinyl letters.

The GOAL of this project was to have a fun, colorful, and whimsical display of my guest bedroom quote on the wall.  In reality, the spray paint pooled in odd places on the canvas, and the paint bled under the letters.  I used a mixture of vinyl letters (larger) and sticker letters (smaller), and the vinyl letters worked MUCH better than the stickers.  There was still some bleeding from the paint along the edges, but not NEARLY as much as the stickers.  In short, this project did not turn out how I wanted, and I am disappointed!

Why it failed:

I used sticker letters instead of all vinyl letters.  Vinyl letters work much better!

I did not use a paint primer before painting the color.  This would probably have minimized the bleeding.

I used spray paint - I think if I had rolled the paint on by hand, I would have had more control of the coverage.

LAME!!  You can see from my picture that the edges (especially on the smaller letters) have bled a lot, and the quote is pretty hard to read.  On top of that, I think it looks pretty darn amateur, which is NOT what you want from a DIY home project.  Regardless, hopefully this will help you to create your own quote art that is better than mine!

Inspired By:

Infarrantly Creative:  http://www.infarrantlycreative.net/2012/02/guest-room-art.html, from my Pinterest.