Distressed Spring Artwork Tutorial.

The day the LORD created HOPE
was probably the same day
He created SPRING.

I love that!

Let's make some artwork based on it!

• Grab a piece of wood. In this case, I used 1' x 2' scrap of 1/4" plywood.
• Grab a paintbrush and some good white primer. ( I like Kilz.)
• Put 2 generous coats on.
  

Once your primed board has dried, you're ready to put on your letters. I used my Cricut to cut out the letters for the Spring quotation that I chose. You could also use pre-cut adhesive letters.

(Tip Of The Day: You DO know you can use regular old household contact paper/shelf-liner instead of the expensive vinyl, right...? And that it comes in black...?)

So using some of the contact paper I had on hand, I cut out my letters and kind of eyeballed where I wanted them to go. I just played around with the spacing until it worked for me.

• Once you know where they're going, peel off the backing and stick them down on the board.
• Rub them on with your finger until you get a good adhesion, then take your primer and put another thin coat over the top of the letters. (This ensures that you've got a good seal over the letters)
• Once dry, take the paint color of your choice and paint the entire board. In this case, I chose a Robin Egg blue.
  
• When your color base coat is dry, paint your bird (or leaves, flowers, bunny, whatever...) onto the board. I did this free-hand (and boy does it show) but you could use a stencil too.
  

You will be painting the bird (or whatever) over the top of your letters. While the bird's paint is still wet, start pulling off the letters under the bird. If you let the paint dry, it winds up pulling off the blue base color as well and you want the edges of the letters to be as crisp as possible.




See? Sometimes it pulls up anyway.
No worries. Once I'm done I will take a smaller paintbrush and touch up the black paint. (Possibly a Sharpie if it needs to be really detailed.)


Let it dry overnight.

• Toss it on the floor of your garage.
• Dig around on your husband's workbench for an orbital sander because yours is buried somewhere on Your side of the garage under arts and craft supplies, holiday decor and other thrift items you bought but haven't put away properly or finished working on because you have decorating A.D.D. and. Oh yeah....
• Sand it really well.

It's OK to distress it really heavily. I would have done more, but I worried the script I chose wouldn't stand out enough if I kept going.
Mix a few drops of a pearl or silver acrylic paint with some water and lightly brush it over the artwork. (Think: brushing egg on a pie crust. It just finishes it off.)

Try to figure out where you're going to put it since you have the asymmetrical mantel from hell.

Like it? Give it a try!
 Like it but would rather buy one? Go here.

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