On The Second Day Of Craft-Mas

On the second day of Craft-mas the crafting gods game to me, some word art totally sparkly.

This whole art project started with a little “pin-spiration” from Pinterest.  I came across a pin with the phrase, “When you stop believing in Santa…you get underwear,” and absolutely loved it!  I knew I wanted to make some art and incorporate the phrase…enter today’s Craft-mas project.  After cruising around the house for a little while, I came across this location in our parlor (just a fancy name for our second living room), which was perfect for some Christmas themed art.

There are a pair of framed photos hanging above the console system that was just screaming to be switched out with something more Christmas like.

Those prints are an old art project of mine from back in college.  They’re from my college photography class where we used fancy cameras with manual settings and film…remember film…and we developed our own pictures.  These were two of my favorites, both taken at the beach.  Oh yeah…I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before…but yeah…my college was right on the beach.  Jealous?!  So I gathered my supplies and got to work:

My supplies included a sheet of sparkly red scrapbook paper from the craft store which only cost $1.49, an alphabet stencil which I already had from my scrapbooking days, a stick of glue (I prefer the liquid glue pen variety), scissors, and a 16″ x 20″ white picture frame that was $24 at AC Moore but with a 50% off coupon it came down to $12.  By the way, I chose to trace/cutout the letters as my preferred method (option number two was to glue directly onto the paper and add glitter).  I made my choice mostly because I felt it would be easier, less messy, and would give the letters more of a three dimensional feel since the paper was slightly thicker than typical, computer paper.  My first step was to trace the phrase onto the glittery paper:

I chose to trace the letters on the backside of the paper since it was plain white.  The glittery side probably would have worked too but I just thought it would be easier on the plain white side.  Because of this, it was super important to make sure that I was tracing the letters backwards onto the paper.  I did have one happy accident on a “q”/”p” incident.  Then it was time for the fun part…the extra, super sarcastical fun part…cutting out all the letters.  I did it in stages otherwise my fingers fell asleep from all the detailed, tiny cutouts.

After all the letters were cut out, I cut a piece of white poster paper to fit the mat and taped it down.  Then, I worked on the layout, tweaking letters here and there until everything looked evenly spaced and symmetrical.

Taking one row at a time, I glued each letter down using a glue pen and a piece of cardboard to help keep everything even and level.

After everything was glued down, I put it all together and assembled the frame with the new piece of art.  Then down came one of the usual pieces of art and in came the new piece.

I know it looks weird right now with the mismatched frames/art.  Rest assured, there’s another art project planned to replace the frame on the right for the Christmas season.

Pssst…So today I was reading the “7 Habits of Highly Organized People” and I am happy to report that I exhibit 6 of the 7 habits.  Woo to the hoo!  My one pitfall is the “file don’t pile” category.  Hmmm…I blame the lack of a desk/file structure, otherwise I would be a filing machine!  Here’s to FINALLY finishing the desk system post Christmas!