Monday, June 18, 2012

Subway / typography art

         So this last Christmas I was preggo, VERY preggo, and was nesting like crazy. Since I had lots of time on my hands, I was one crafty lady, and made all of my christmas presents. I love the look of subway art, and had seen it everywhere, but didn't want to pay the price....so I made my own. I made some with sayings, words, and some designs. Overall it was SUPER easy, and ended up being very inexpensive. Wanna make your own? D.I.Y. below:









Materials:
  • Wood- plywood 3/8 "
  • A few packages of sticker letter alphabets (walmart)
  • craft paint
  • paint brush/roller
  • stencils in a design you choose (walmart)
  • sandpaper
  • Sawtooth hangers 
stencils from walmart...



Plywood 3/8" before painting
1.)First I priced out wood. I went to my local lumber yard and asked how much a sheet of plywood would cost. I got a full sheet of 3/8" plywood for $11.00. ( I chose 3/8" plywood because I wanted to hang these on a wall, and wanted it to be light enough to do so. If you wanted them to stand alone on a shelf or something, go for 5/8" plywood, it is much thicker, and heavy.) I had the guy at the lumber yard cut if for me, which he did for free, and may not happen everywhere, but he was really nice:) I had him cut it into 6 pieces measuring 24" tall by 16" wide. I chose these numbers because it was the best use of all of the plywood. 


2.) Next I sanded all of the edges just to take away some of the roughness from the saw cutting them. I just did this by hand. 

3.) I applied a base coat of paint. What color you choose here, will be the color of your letters in the final product, so choose wisley. You can go dark or light, but the next color of paint will have to be the opposite so the letters show up.... I chose cream/ off- white for this demo...

two different boards painted cream

4.) Next, I stuck on the stickers that I wanted to create a saying. I bought the stickers at walmart. They were about $4.00 each, and I bought tons because I needed to make 6 of these boards, but you may only need 2-3. They were in the arts and crafts isle. I found that it helped to measure out lines at equal distances to that the lines of words were somewhat straight. There was some that really didn't want to stick to the paint, and I REALLY had to press on them to get them to stick enough, paying close attention to the corners of each letter to prevent leakage in the next step. They came in two sizes in the package allowing me to vary the sizes of lines...


The board after applying stickers


5.) next after I had all of the letters on ( which took a long time...) I painted my top coat on using a small foam roller. I painted the whole board, and over all of the letters.

The board after being painted black

6.) Next I peeled off the letters to reveal the cream paint underneath. There will be some leakage under some of the corners of the letters, but I kinda liked the way it looked and left it.
The board after pulling the stickers off

7.) Next comes the fun part, decorating it with stencils, and distressing it... I bought a package of stencils at walmart, that had a ton of different designs in it that can be combined together or be done alone. They were about 3 bucks, and had TONS of designs. I used a foam brush and stenciled on a design over the black using the same colors as the letters. I also sanded down over the entire thing to reveal some of the cream color under the black, and I sanded the edges to help distress the entire thing. Here is how this one turned out.
placing the stencils on the board

what is looked like after doing all of the stenciling

After sanding over the entire thing, and all of the edges.
Drill two holes, and stung some ribbon through the holes to hang it up...


Here are some other ones I have made:



This one was for my bathroom. Kinda fun just a bunch of different names for the bathroom, found them on Google, and arranged them in different directions to create bathroom art:)


Now have fun and create your own!! Post pictures and share what you make below I would love to see!!!!

- Amanda


1 comment:

Unknown said...

I love the bathroom one. I try to find more words every time I use your bathroom--that's the real reason I'm in there for so long...