Saturday, March 17, 2012

Finally Beloved

Doesn't it feel great when you have a project on your mind for awhile and it finally comes to be?!  Well, it happened this weekend to me. 

Sarah's been home for spring break and we've tackled a few things, but nothing major.  When I asked her if she wanted to help make her sign...her nod was quick and sure.  So, off we went to gather all the supplies.  It came together so easily, too.  That's definately a sign that says we were ready for this diy project.  (The board we used was free on Craigslist.  I picked it up in the fall - one can never have too much wood on hand, me thinks.  I hauled it to my sister's attic for safe keeping until that special day when I would need a piece of wood exactly this size and shape.  That day came in early February and it's been leaning up against a wall in my entry since then - that's how long I've been thinking about this project.)  We had everything we needed on hand.  I like it when that happens!  

I saw this idea on Pinterest and loved it!  The fact that this verse is one of Sarah's favorites make it even better.   



Here's the board getting primed.  We set it up on paper cups so we could paint the edges easily. 


While the paint was drying, we picked out lots of fun colors from my pile of cardstock and got busy cutting out all these words.  This would take a long time if I didn't have a CRICUT.  (btw, I wouldn't even attempt this project if I had to cut out every letter by hand...yea, that would be too much.  One could use stickers or chip board, if one had enough of these things.)   We could've stenciled the verse on like the rest of the letters, but we decided that we wanted the verse to stand out a bit, so we used the letters for the verse.  I know, I know...lots of gluing ahead.   
 
We wanted a little color to the background, so we painted on greens, blues and purples mixed with alot of white paint, so nothing would overwhelm the words.  We let it dry and decided it was pretty, but it looked like an easter egg.  So, we scrapped that and started anew.  Sarah thought shades of brown would be nice, so we tried that next.  It turned out to be exactly right!


Then we tied a string from the top to the bottom on the righthand side of the board about 3 inches from the edge to use as our guide; the words would be right justified.  We glued on the first line and determined where the next line would be and used a string for this too...a plumb line to make our words as straight as possible.  (Yea, I see a few crooked letters too; we decided it's all part of the plan...)



We continued the careful and time consuming work of gluing down each letter.  We hit our stride, though, and it went surprisingly fast.  (You can see the string we used for guidelines in this pic.)   

   

Some of the cardstock colors are cool colors and some are warm colors.  It's hard to see all the words in these pictures, but it looks great on the board.   We decided that we didn't want to stencil on any of the words, (like the inspiring original), so we left it just like this.  We used mod podge to cover all the words and make everything stick for sure.   

It was finished; all total it took about 4 hours.  Not bad for a weekend project.  We're planning to hang it in Sarah's apartment - in the kitchen above her table.

It's a great reminder to start out each day on a positive note. 


"Finally, beloved, whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable;  
if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think on such things." 
Philippians 4:8


 

 

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