Custom Wall Art

I’ve been seeing tons of “family rules” artwork for a while and I really liked the idea of it. Then I found this photo online

I love the painting leaning against the wall… it’s so out of place in the formal living room but it totally works. I liked the idea of incorporating something like this into my living room, but one with “family rules” on it. The problem was, I couldn’t find any paintings to buy that fit into my rules, or values, or goals for this family… and so I decided to make one.

First I went to the hardware store and had them cut out two boards for me. One i’ll use horizontally and the other I’ll use vertically. This is the story of my horizontal painting. After getting the board home I used a roller brush to paint on white primer paint. I didn’t make it perfectly even, in fact there were some patches where the wood wasn’t covered at all, I wanted it to feel imperfect.

Vinyl Time

Once the paint dried I used vinyl letters to spell out my words. Originally I was going to do “rules” but then I decided I wanted to do our beliefs. I liked the idea that the boys, or even guests in our home would know exactly what we believe because it’s hanging on our wall. Note to fellow crafters, this vinyl process took me a couple of hours to complete so settle in.

Once the vinyl was attached I used black oil based paint to go over the top of my sign. I suppose house paint would work or maybe even spray paint but I wanted it to feel like a painting so I got my supplies at the art store.

I ended up using black, dark dark brown, deep purple, and deep blue too so it would have some depth.

Once I finished I put the painting outside to dry… be forewarned, because of the thick oil based paint it took several days until it was totally dry.

Once the paint was dry I used a pair of tweezers to pull up each of my vinyl letters revealing the white paint underneath.

Almost done…

Ready to Hang

Once it was all dry Dave helped me hang it on the wall using mollys and his mad power drill skills, luckily I didn’t buy a heavy wood so it actually is fairly light on the wall.

The end result sits over our piano in a place that just a week ago seemed too big to fill with anything. The painting itself is crooked in parts and discolored in others, it’s not perfect, just like us. And just like our family, I love it, just the way it is.