Ringing in 2012 With Bedroom Wall Art

Happy New Year!

I hope each and every one of you reading this is abundantly blessed 

with health, happiness, and love in 2012!

Nothing like kicking off the start of 2012 with a completed project!  I actually started this one back in December, but I finally corralled Scott long enough to get him to hang it up, so I could tell you about it.  LOL!

This was probably the quickest and easiest project I have ever done.  In fact, if you want to do one yourself, the hardest part will be finding the barn door to do it with! ;)  It was only by luck that I found this one...

One day in the beginning of December, Scott casually mentioned that as he was doing some cleaning up at his parents' farm he had noticed a couple of old doors I would probably like - if he hadn't ruined them when he shoved them into the burn pile.  WHAT?!  You mean he didn't take the time to get out and drag them off to the side????  So much for all the "training".  LOL!!!!!  

A few days later, I had a chance to go over there and see what he had found.  Not only were they fantastic doors, they were BARN DOORS!  So, picture me standing on top of this huge heap of old, splintered wood and trash, grunting, pulling, and pushing trying to get those suckers out!  I'm sure I was a sight!  I was just holding my breath hoping he hadn't ruined them!  It had just rained the day before and then turned cold, so everything was rock solid and frozen together.  And since they were wet, they were H-E-A-V-Y!!!  (Exclamation Point!)  I shoved one in the back of the Yukon, put one off to the side, and had him bring it home in the back of his truck a few days later.  Luckily, they were both intact.  YIPPEE! 

I've been seeing all these lovely pallet board signs hung as wall art all through blogland, and I knew that was the direction I wanted to take the wall above our bed - however, I didn't want to have to do all the work involved with pulling a pallet apart and then nailing it back together.  The barn door was perfect for my lazy self.  ;)

Seriously, all it took was a few simple steps:

1)  First I googled "Love Quotes" and looked and looked until I found the one that spoke to me.  I chose this one by Audrey Hepburn:

"The best thing to hold onto in life is each other."

Ain't that the truth?  Especially during these extremely tough economic times and everything that life can throw at ya!

2)  Then I fooled around on the computer with different fonts and font sizes until I found a combination that I liked - rearranging it in iMac Pages.

3)  I wrote down the font and monkeyed around with different sizes - blowing them up anywhere from 250 to 325 in size, printed them off, cut them out, and then placed them on top of the door to see if they looked good.  Then I tweaked the sizes some more and fooled around with the placement.

4)  Then I made stencils with the printer paper (cutting them out with an X-acto knife) and used chalk to "stencil" them onto the wood...

Until I had done the whole thing:

I have to admit that I got tired of cutting out the stencils, so "Each Other" and Audrey Hepburn is my handwriting.  LOL!

The great thing about using chalk is that if you screw up (which I do often), you just take a damp rag and wipe it off.  I wrote Audrey Hepburn crooked and my spacing between onto and in was terrible, so I just wiped it off and did it again.  Audrey's name is still a tad crooked on the finished one, but oh well.  Its authentically me.  ;)

5)  After finishing up with the stenciling, I just painted right over the chalk with my paint, giving it a hand painted look without the iffiness of hand painting. I assume that the paint dissolves the chalk.  The paint still adhere's well and holds up to some distressing.  When I finished painting on the quote, I distressed it slightly to give it an aged looked (which drives Scott nuts :P).

Finally last night, it was a family event hanging the darn thing.  Greyson and I held it up on the wall over the bed, while Scott and Ian stood back and decided up, down, right, left.  Exciting times! ;)  Scott used screws to drilled in between the boards to hold it onto the wall in five different places - two on each side and one in the center.  Here's hoping it doesn't fall off the wall in the middle of the night and decapitate us.  HA!

And the final product...

I so LOVE it.  And better yet?  So does Scott!  Best words I've ever heard come out of his mouth, short of when he asked me to marry him...  "And to think that was in the burn pile."  LOL!  LOVE IT!