A bit of DIY: Inspirational Quote on Canvas

Hey everyone, I hope you are doing well!

Although I've never been the greatest at Art, I've always loved painting and doing some DIY. So a few months ago, I got lost in the depths of the Internet (probably during a revision break) and found this really cute idea of Quotes on Canvas. To find out exactly what you will need, a detailed description of all the steps and what the optimal outcome looks like, definitely check out this blog post on it. 

Put very briefly, you choose any old canvas you might have lying around (mine had a very abstract looking red rabbit on it - probably stemming from my 'books about rabbits are the best thing ever' phase). You then glue pieces of newspaper all over the canvas, stick your letters on it and paint all over it. Once the paint has dried, all you have to do is peel off the letters and you should be left with a quote on a canvas. 

A few weeks ago, I decided to give it a shot myself and this is what my attempt turned out to look like:

it's definitely not the most perfect looking one, but, hey - DIY hahah

Although it doesn't look nearly as incredible as the one in the blog post, I'm still very happy with it. It took me a lot longer than expected, mainly because I really wanted to be careful when doing it and made sure to follow all the steps. 

The hardest part - by far - was actually choosing the quote - I had so many floating around in my head that it was super difficult to pick just one. In the end, I went for 'Let songs be the bodyguards of your dreams' - In May, I watched the BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend live stream (sadly, I couldn't go to the actual thing because I had a uni exam the following Monday), and in the middle of their set, Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy said that he hopes that their songs will be the bodyguards of our dreams. I thought that that was an absolutely beautiful thing to say, so I modified it a little bit (just to make it more quote like) and decided to use it as my inspirational quote :) 
But of course, you can choose anything you like, which I think is the best thing about this kind of DIY.

Things I learned in the process:

1) It's not a very good idea to start painting when it's 30+ degrees out there. The paint will dry a lot quicker than you will want it to, and this might lead to cracks.

2) It's an even worse idea to try and stick bits of newspaper on a canvas when it's very windy. I spent A LOT of time chasing rampaging pieces of paper and whilst it had the nice side effect of making me exercise, it probably wasn't ideal.

3) On the subject of newspaper, try and rip it into smaller bits to stick onto your canvas. That way, you will have more exciting looking letters. 

4) Make sure to get those self sticking letters, if you can get hold of them. I couldn't find them anywhere, so I cut my letters out of an old wall sticker (which wasn't actually the worst idea since the letters were sticky enough not to move when I painted over them, but not too sticky that they would rip off the newspaper when peeling them off the canvas.) However, it took a very long time, and let to some of the letters turning out a bit wonky. 

5) MIND THE INSECTS. I had to rescue a lot of flies that had decided to land on the freshly painted canvas. 

Let me know what you think! And definitely try it out if you feel like you would enjoy doing this kind of DIY :) xx