Painting and a Prayer

Hi again, friends! It may seem like I've disappeared lately. We're in the middle of four different projects right now and everything is half done. We're chipping away at them, it's just taking for-ev-er! Good news, though! I finally finished one project! Hooray!

I've been searching for artwork to go above Little Girl's dresser. Because of the board and batten, a shelf seemed a bit much. I didn't want to do a collection of anything because the opposite wall will be a gallery wall. I was getting pretty frustrated because walls are not the easiest thing for me to decorate.

Thankfully, I remembered I had an extra canvas on hand that has endured 3 moves and still had nothing on it. It was a good size (16x20), so I decided to do a painting for above Little Girl's dresser.

Jeremy and I picked a couple meaningful verses for Little Boy's nursery back when we were pregnant with him and loved having them on the wall to be reminded of and to pray over him. We've been stewing over verses for Little Girl's room and finally decided on two. Painting one of the verses on the canvas seemed like a no brainer decision! We settled on a paraphrase of 1 Peter 3:3-4:

"Let your adornment come from the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit which is very precious in the sight of God."

When I read this verse, I instantly think of my friend Julie. She displays this verse so well with her life and I learn so much by watching her live it out. She is strong and hard working all while being servant hearted, a great listener, thoughtful, kind, considerate, and gentle. She respects, loves, and considers her husband well, is not attention seeking, knows when to speak and when to be silent, and serves her family and church self sacrificially without complaint and without calling attention to her service. I'm so thankful to be in her community group and pray that God will work these things in my own life and in Little Girl's life.

So, on to the painting! First, I used wrapping paper to make a stencil of how I wanted the center of the canvas to look and traced it with pencil onto my canvas. I originally tried to free-hand it, but couldn't get the shape as symmetrical as I wanted. I used wrapping paper to make the stencil because it was the biggest sheet of paper I had around the house. By using paper to make a stencil, I was able to fold the paper in half, draw on the design, then cut it out, insuring that both sides were the same.

I painted the border of the canvas white to freshen it up since my canvas was old and yellowed and had a lot of pencil marks on it. Then looking at a picture of Little Girl's crib bumper, I lightly drew some of the patterns and prints onto my canvas with a pencil. I wish I had taken a picture of this step, but I was yapping on the phone. Real life, people. ;)

I filled in all of my drawings with acrylic craft paint and good paintbrushes. I did one color at a time, allowing each color to dry before starting the next color. With something this precise, you really need a good liner brush and round brush. No snitching your kid's paintbrushes for this project! Use a decent brush. It'll save you lots of frustration!

After the border was complete, I painted the inside with two coats of green. Then, I went back and added a blue border to the center shape to make it stand out. I drew on my text with a pencil, then used a liner brush to paint on the words. I wanted the center words to stand out, so I used a paint pen to draw them on first, then painted the blue over the white to give it a shadowed effect. (Thanks, Amy and Jeremy, for helping me decide on background and text colors!)

Excuse the sun glare!

And here it is, all finished!

I love how colorful it is and love how it looks against the pink walls. And did I mention, because I already had the canvas, green, blue, and white paint on hand already, this project only ran me $3?! All I needed to buy were two shades of pink paint and a white paint pen. The paint was on sale for 50 cents a piece at Michael's and I used a coupon for the paint pen. Score for cheap artwork! If you are planning to do something similar and have nothing on hand, it is still very inexpensive and would probably run you about $15 between the canvas and paints. Still not bad at all for a large piece of art! 

Hope you all have a great weekend! 

Linking up to Thrifty Decor Chick and The Humble Brag link party!