So its almost fathers day…
and just like every other year I have NO idea what to get my dad.
(Whenever I ask he says all he wants is my continued love and affection.. sweet, but not helpful)
So I went back to the drawing board (sorta..) and decided to make him a piece for his office.
My dad’s very favourite musician, and possibly just all-time favourite person is the legendary Bob Dylan, so I chose a quote of his and off I went!
You’ll Need :
a canvas, pre-cut letters, glue (but only if your letters aren’t stickers like mine were..) 1 or 2 colors of acrylic paint (I used black and gold) and a paintbrush
Then the most irritating and time consuming step comes right away..
sift through the 325798 letters to find the ones needed to write out your quote (and make absolutely certain that everything is spelled correctly!)
Then lay out the quote however you please, in whatever way you deem to be the most aesthetically pleasing, then if you got these super cool sticker letters like I did, simply peel and stick. I recommend starting at the bottom and working your way back to the top so as to not bump your non-adhered letters out of position.
Once you’ve got them all stuck down, blast them with a hairdryer on hot to help the glue set…
…to be honest I have no idea if this actually made any difference, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, so I’m rollin’ with it!
Next squirt a big blob of your acrylic paint in the desired color onto the canvas, and blend it ALL OVER the entire surface. This is the background (…obviously) so I used two coats to ensure full coverage. Really make sure you get all around the letters, in between, in the cracks, everywhere. Check from all different angles to make sure you didn’t miss anything around the edges of the letters especially. Less is not more in this situation. I found using a circular motion with the brush worked best for getting the paint into all the cracks and crevices.
After 2 coats, or once its fully covered leave it to dry, mine took less than an hour because I did it outside!
Now you have an important choice- you can either leave it one solid color (if I was going to do one solid color, I would choose a lighter background color but to each their own) OR choose a contrasting or highlighting color to apply on top, I chose gold because I wanted it to look somewhat antique. Using very light brush strokes (dab any excess paint off of the tip of your brush before applying) go over the raised letters. I wasn’t very careful because I wanted that worn feel to it, but if you would prefer you can always be super careful and only paint the letters, and not the background at all. I deliberately used more paint towards the top and faded it more and more out as I went down. Then to give it an almost sunset inspired feel I did light upward brush strokes (again, make sure your brush doesn’t have much paint on it) and concentrated the color at the bottom. Leave that to dry, et viola!
Now you have one swanky piece of wall art.
