Labour Of Love

24 hours of potatoes

I really do love my little sister.

She set me to the challenge of making 4 canvases for her firstborn's Eclectic Nursery.

Her and hubby decided on some song lyrics they love, picked out some bedding for colour inspiration and forwarded their favourite font.

Lettering is tricky and I debated taking the project to the printers.

Instead I cracked down, made potato stamps and mapped out how the letters would fit on each, different sized piece.

 Halved & Held in H20

The potatoes have to be cut carefully so there is as flat a surface as possible. 

Otherwise the paint will not adhere evenly.

They also have to be kept in water from going brown, or worse, shriveling and changing your font shape.

 Felt Stencil

Then I took a piece of heavy felt and cut it into a square, the maximum size I had planned to work with. 

To figure this out, I had to measure how many letters would fit into each line on each canvas. Urgh!

 Lettering

Fortunately, my sister chose a font that was all capital letters and fairly square.
Letters have to be cut backwards in order to be read correctly when stamped.

The first round of stamps turned out to be too large and would not fit onto ANY of the canvases. 

So I started again.  

Cutting each letter off the original stamps, we cooked them up for our daughter to have alphabet potatoes!

Water Tray

I laid the stamps out in alphabetical order on the lid of one of our totes, so they could sit in a layer of water.

 

Mapping & Stamping

Though I tried to cut the potatoes carefully, I still had to blot off the water and paint each stamp before applying it to the canvas, so each letter was completely covered with paint. This also prevented giant paint blobs smudging the font. When I applied the stamp to the canvas, I had to run my hand along the back to help the canvas and stamp make complete contact. 

There are still a number of "holes" in the font, but I think it gives it a little character.

Chocolate Brown

The white lettering went first and was fairly 'clean'.

The brown lettering required hand washing in between so I would not get paint all over the rest of the canvas.

The end result, I liked much better than the white, despite the extra time it took to wash up.

Still have one circular canvas to go, but that will be script free-hand.

Now, we just have to wait for my nephew to arrive!!

 He's Here!

April 21, 2013

Wyatt Dawson

 Lyrics Canvas

Look at the beautiful nursery his mom and dad made!!