Bedroom Progress - DIY Artwork

Our "Master" bedroom that it. Yeah... remember that project? The one that we were working on way back in February so that we could get Peanut's nursery all set up. It's been quite a while since I've brought this one up, huh? Well, I've actually been working on a DIY art piece for months now to address the giant blank wall between our closet and doorway... pretty much right at the foot of our bed...

After seeing a post on Under the Sycamore where Ashley Ann shared their new master bedroom, it got me thinking. Ashley mentioned that when her and her husband were engaged someone had told them to keep their bedroom about them... and with baby on the way I knew that would be a great idea for B and I as well. So, with that in mind, I wanted the artwork in our bedroom to be meaningful.

For a while, I've been inspired by this photo here...

{via}

I'm a big music fan, and an even bigger Bryan Adams fan (oh yeah!). So not only did a piece of artwork showcasing wonderful lyrics stick out to me, but Bryan Adams lyrics! Come on! Right up my alley! 

In the end, I knew I didn't want to copy this exact piece, and I also knew I would love to use a song that was special to both myself and B. Back when I was first considering this project, I was listening to some songs from Adele's album 21, and I heard her cover of the song "Love Song", and instantly knew this was the song. 311 also did this song and they are B's favorite band. The first time that we celebrated his birthday together, I bought two tickets for us to see them live in Toronto. I'm not the worlds biggest 311 fan, but I've been to 2 shows with him, and the lyrics to this song are perfectly us.

So the day that we finally picked up our framed artwork from Michael's, I also picked up some essentials for creating a new, personalized master piece for our bedroom.

What I grabbed was 2 canvas' for $14.00, 3 tubes of acrylic paint for $4.99 each, and some plastic letter stencils for $4.99. My total was just under $40 for everything.

My first step when I got home was to get the background colour on. I mixed together some blue, grey and white and ended up with this...

Once the canvas was dry, I got to work stenciling on my letters. About one word into the lyrics, I realized there would not be enough space on one canvas to get anywhere near the whole song on. SO, B suggested painting the second canvas as well, and having the lyrics run across both. Genius! Lucky for me, the paint colour was super easy to mix again, and I got my second canvas coated pretty quickly.

The longest process of the whole project was lining up and stenciling each individual letter. In between each letter, I whipped out my good ol' hair dryer to make sure the letter was completely dry and wouldn't smudge when I lined the next letter up. The lines aren't perfectly straight, and the greys vary from line to line, but once I started, I decided to roll with the imperfections. I also decided to take the key words in the song and use a chocolate brown for them, just like the brown that trims our beautiful duvet cover and pillow shams. I am completely thrilled with the end result...

Oh, and even though the longest process was lining up and stenciling each individual letter, what really caused my delay in completing this project was when I messed up part of the lyrics and THEN had problems mixing a similar colour of blue. It discouraged me for a while and then I just got caught up with Peanut related projects and activites and our artwork went on the back burner. Now I'm just happy that it's done and hanging in our bedroom where it belongs...

Have you created any custom and/or meaningful artwork for your home?