graphic alphabet canvas...

Eek!  I'm so thrilled about this project.

It might be my favorite thing I've made for the nursery.  The funny thing is, I bought the canvas for 70% off with NO idea what I was going to use it for.  I eventually settled on some kind of alphabet design and this is what I came up with...

Here's the scoop on how I made it...

I started by creating a new photoshop file the same size as my canvas--12 x 24.  (Obviously, if you are making your own you can use any size you want.)  Then I went to town with all of my different fonts, mixing styles and sizes as I did each letter of the alphabet.  After I got all of the letters arranged how I liked, I played around with colors that match the scheme I've got going in the baby's room until I had a nice balance.  This is what it looked like...

Then I saved my file as a pdf, opened it in Adobe Acrobat, and tile printed it.  This created an actual size paper version of my design that I could use as a template.  I used transfer paper and traced each letter onto my canvas.

I carefully painted in each letter, one color at a time.

(So...I did all the browns, then the charcoals, then the blues, etc.)

You can see that I also opted to do the background white rather than gray as I originally planned.  The nice thing about printing an actual size template was I could take it in the room to make sure the colors worked.  When I did so, I realized a white background would look better on the wall... and it was less labor intensive.  Bonus! :)

Once all the paint was dry, I sealed it with a coat of matte Mod Podge and called it good.

The design turned out even better than I had imagined.  I'm lovin' it!

It adds a colorful, graphic punch to the nursery's decor.  I think it's going to look great with the other parts of the gallery wall I'm working on.

Hopefully Baby will love it as much as I do!