Box 3: 14th Wedding Anniversary Project

So, on my To-Do list was:

1 hr. morning yard work

1 hr. evening yard work

Put Roast on / Do Dishes

Sort & price yard sale stuff

and Work on Blog.

What actually happened today was actually more like 3 hours of yard work, it was such a nice & overcast & cool day that I just kept working till I was shaking. You know that, "oh dear! I'm out of carbs/calories" feeling. And, then I needed a bit of a break plus a very long shower & to eat some protein to be able to going again! Maybe, not in that order .. 

 Luckily, I had already put on the Roast in the slow cooker & did most of the dishes while I was searing the sides. 'Cause I haven't gotten around to working on the yard sale stuff, yet. Though, I do hope to be able to go back outside and maybe do a bit more yard work. Our yard is in a sad need of it. I kill off pretty much all types of green stuff except for weeds. They actually seem to be attracted to me. A lot! o.O

Anyway, as promised & planned, here is the break down on how I created my prezzie to my hubby for our 14th Anniversary!

This was like the 6th (+)
draft of what I wanted.

Where to start? Well, at the beginning I suppose. And, to start I had to figure out what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to, you know, 'craft something' and I wanted it to be something interesting and of course it had to be something easy 'cause I'm not the greatest Crafter except in MMOs. And, since we have a lot of blank walls in the house, I figured I'd do some kind of Wall Art. And, of course (again) since I can't draw above doodling I figured it would need to be a Word Wall Art. But, what kind? That took me a few tries to figure out ..

After finally (mostly) nailing down what I wanted to say, I then needed to figure out what I was going to do it on. I had thought about doing it on 1 big Art Canvas but after checking out the prices, even taking in consideration for a 40-50% coupon, the big ones were just out of my budget. Plus, I was nervous about poking a hole through the canvas and thereby ruining it! Simple paper with the thought of maybe matting & framing it was a thought but it seemed a bit too much like work & again kind of on the expensive side for the size I wanted.

Eventually, I figured out I should use wood. heh, that in itself was an adventure. Home Depot & Lowes here don't have a scraps section like our old small local Hardware & Lumber store did before the aforementioned Mega Giants bankrupted them & forced them to close their doors. And, while I wanted a decent sized plaque, I didn't think I really needed a 12 foot one. Not to mention, it wouldn't have fit. I don't have 12 ft long walls. I have an average sized and average looking house. Nothing spectacular or anything sadly. Though, I am working on making it better than average, the side effect of this blog and all.

But, I got lucky, in Home Depot, while cruising the aisles I stumbled upon their Craft wood section. Here they had several different sizes in several different types of wood.

I choose the .20" x 24" x 24" poplar wood. I had originally thought to get one of the 5 ft ones but the prices on them were still a little more than I wanted to pay. Which is how I wound up with (2) 24 x 24 pieces of wood. Besides, after a little thought on the matter as I was considering wood, I thought that the break up of the words would add to the interest of the Wall Art. Plus, they were only $4 each!

To add some more interest, though in the end I didn't do enough to it, I gouged a few dozen marks in the wood.

After I got the wood & painted it white, I went off to my local Micheals and bought a Stencil Pack that I liked. Brush Font 3" originally $10.99 but I had my trusty 40% off reg. priced item coupon - and - Michaels gave me an additional 20% off my total order (which was only the stencil) for being a member of MichaelsReward program (I totally recommend signing up! It's free & easy to use, all you need to do is enter in your phone number every time you shop) so I got my stencil pack for just under $5 after taxes!

When I started to use the stencil pack I quickly found out that there was a bit of a issue. 

For 1 thing the letters/number/etc aren't always in logical order. Some of them are, like the 1st one "abcd" but there are a few that are all over the place such as the one shown in the pix to the right. "qtvu".

And, then there's the problem with the lines not being even. Quite a few of the letters (even ignoring the fact that you would need to have space for the 'j', 'q' & etc with various dangling pieces) lines didn't match up with the rest of the lines when used in order of a word. I had done a few practice words before I got down to the serious business of word placement.

So I came up with the idea of doing individual words instead of doing it letter by letter on the wooden board. But, what to use for all these words? I considered going back to Michaels and seeing if they had any plastic or cardboard that would work for stenciling (I'm sure they do) but decided it would be a waste of money. After all I recycle religiously and I had just happened to buy something like 10 boxes of Fry's Waffles (on sale for $0.99!) for the hubby's early morning breakfast and they were still in the recycle box! I did have to break into a few other misc boxes, such as the cereal box that was still full and the bag ended up just sitting on the shelf till gone, and an old shoe box that was just sitting in the garage for some reason. I also had to break up a few of the words to fit on whatever piece of cardboard I was using, esp. the larger words, such as Tom -orrow and M - arch .. etc.. etc..

I was able to bribe my mother to come over and help me cut them out with promises of snacks and some Root Beer!

Only took us about 2 & half hours!


Somewhere in between the 1st & last word, I was really wishing for a Cricut machine to just drop out of the sky to my table! *sigh*  But, sadly I was not so lucky, nor rich enough to "invest" in one either.

As a side note it took 3 days for my thumb
and that spot where the pencil rests on my 3rd finger
to stop hurting and feeling like foreign objects.

Originally, I was going to have a word be
broken up between the boards but
decided that would be too much of a pain
in the ass keeping it there with just tape.

After cutting out all those words then I got the fun job of trying to figure out exactly how all of them were going to fit on the boards.

I divided up the boards into 4 lines, easy with 24", and then went up on each one of them by 1" to give room for my imaginary line. Used a pencil to draw real lines of course and then played around till I got a placement I was mostly happy with.

Waiting for it to completely dry.

Well, even though, I don't have a Cricut machine I don't think my first ever attempt at stenciling came out too bad!






As you can see by the squiggles on the pix, above, I did have a few boo-boos to fix but not too many.  Way less than I was expecting.

So after touching it up a bit and then waiting for it to completely dry, again. Then I just needed to spray a couple layers of Clear Coat paint spray over it. I got it over at Micheals, of 'course!  It was $3.59 but I had another 40% off coupon so it was $2.15 (plus tax). 


Then I got to figure out how to hang it!  Actually, I had already figured out that at the same time I bought the boards. Got a pack of (8) of these little weird sawtooth picture hanger things on clearance at Home Depot for $1.25!  I used (4).  (2) on each board 6" away from the edges, 1 inch down from the top. But, I did have a few problems.  For one thing, the part you hammer into the board was actually a teenie tiny bit too long. So, I had to break out the wire clipping thingy to 'nip the tip' so to speak.  *snickers*

My mother had dropped by just as I was getting ready to actually hang these things up before Lance got home on the 22nd (I had it planned to be up and then to have a nice dinner, at home, and snuggle a lot (*grin*) for our Anniversary) but I was running a bit behind because I was having troubles figuring out exactly where to place them on the wall itself. So, I was very glad my mother stopped by to drop off her anniversary present to us.

I wish we'd had had a 3rd person to take pictures of this operation because (in hind sight) it was hilarious! There I was trying to balance on the top of the squishy love seat while trying to use a ruler, a level and a pencil to mark placement. Yah, it's lucky I didn't sprain something or break the sofa or any number of things that could have happened.  I -should- have moved the sofa and brought in the step ladder.  That's what normal people would do .. right?  

Well, there ya go!  My 3rd Blog post and this time it's actually a walk-through of an Actual Project! Yippe! I'll get this blogging thing down soon!  Will ignore the fact that it's April now and not March. *snickers*.

Chat at'cha later!