Subway Art the Super Hard Way

***

 This is a stale post.  Don't you smell the stank?

For fresh ideas and the newest new new stuff 

why don't you head on over to the blog we actually update.

www.b3hd.blogspot.com

Love to see you there.

Carry on as you were.

***  

So in this post, I revealed how little I value my time
versus how much I value not having to whip out my credit card.

In an effort to create my take on subway art,
we built and stretched our own canvas.

Framed and stretched canvas

Photo (c) b3home designs

The frame was built in probably about an hour by Mr. Handy Guy

Took me about 3 hours to stretch the canvas on both frames

with the staple gun, brad nailer and canvas stretcher pliers.

and a hammer

Took me about another hour

including "drying time"

to prime the canvas.

In some ways, I think now I would have been okay with natural canvas

but the primer was good for making sure all the texture mediums

stuck to the canvas.

After primed, they were placed in the office.

Where they sat.

For 4 months.

Finally, giving into the fear that I would be imperfect

and not be able to do a faux encaustic

I just went to town with texturizing and playing.

And yellow (smile)

Because yellow makes me happy

Almost as happy as yellow and gray together.

After about a week of off and on playing on various nights

This is what the canvas looked like

Textured and washed canvas
Photo (c) b3home designs

To get all that yummy texture,
I threw every trick in the book at it

I used some acrylic gel mediums

some pumice stone

some drywall tape (my fave texture of all)

some GAC40

some retarding agent

some spackle

some caulk

Like I said, I threw it all on there
over the course of a week
to allow for drying times

Generally, I used an artist knife to throw stuff on
and a sponge or dry brush to splash on water tinted with acrylics
or ragged on some thicker blotches of thickened paint

Once that was all done,
I took out my Making Memories Simply Fab foam stamps
and I went to town stamping out funny quotes | sayings | heard abouts.
I especially loved many of the quotes from
YeeHaw's shop on Etsy.
I mean really.
"What homewrecker are you mixed up with now".
Classic Storetry.

These prints are totally on my Christmas wish list.
My faves are No. 140 Lumpy Gravy, No. 017 Blue Plate Special, No. 103 Booty Call, and No. 203 Amateur Hour
 
But I digress. 
For a little longer.
At Cornell,
In the Big Red Band
We had t-shirts made up
off of quotes I collected one season.
They were hillarious
I wish I still had my t shirt
or the quotes
 
man I miss being in the Big Red Band.
I miss college
 
Oh yes...the project.
 
So when I stamped all those sayings
from the t shirt
and from my general life
and from the web
all individually by hand
(yes, each little letter)
I realized that my perfectionist tendencies
were going to be the death of me.
 
I couldn't just use some white paint and call it a day.
I had to use a dab of white paint
a dab of gesso
and a dab of off white paint
 
And sometimes,
those dabs,
had texturizers mixed in
Because, clearly, I didn't want to make this easy.
 
 

Once I threw this bad girl up on the dining room table

after a massive fail on her twin

I had to work quick.

Because I'm the last scrapbooker in the world that doesn't own a Cricuit 

and I can't seem to win one for the life on me on any of the 128 blogs I stalk

and I can't afford to buy one because well, puppy needs to eat...

I proceeded to do this (by hand)

And I thought my husband was going to have me committed.

two days later

subway art handcuttings

photo (c) b3 home designs

I "finished" cutting them out.

I use "finished" loosely

because I had to reprint about half of them

I used three font sizes (huge, huger and bolded huge)

and three colors (black, gray and grayer)

However.

My original "huge" was too small

and I was going to poke my eye out with scissors

before giving myself permission to kill another tree

and just print them bigger already.

Because I did it in word and wasted lots of space,

I ended up printing about 150 pages of letters.

ouch.

Once they were sliced out, it was easy going from there.

I started by gathering all of my supplies

subway art project supplies

photo (c) b3 home designs

My subway art didn't use street names. 

Instead, I used names of cities we had both visited before

Super bold names were cities we had been to together

Medium font cities are cities we've both been to,

but not with each other.

Smallest font cities are cities that either he or I have been to

The colors of the cities have nothing to do with anything

because I didn't have the patience to come up with a theme.

I laid out my letters on my canvas

travel themed subway art in progress

photo (c) b3 home designs

And then I went to town with my fave deluxe retractable exacto knife

best scrapbooking and now home deco tool I EVER bought

I removed the centers of letters

and kept words stable as I slapped Mod Podge

(holly heck!  of course Mod Podge has a blog and Facebook page)

to the back of my letters.

After three days

two of which involved trips out of the house

and moments of panic realizing the puppy mutt

would be home alone and probably scatter

my carefully laid out cities to the wind

I finished up with this

travel themed subway art

photo (c) b3 home designs

I LOVE how these turned out.

Didn't so much love what came next.

You'll definitely have to tune in to see the drama

with this mama

trying to hang these bad girls.

*** You just read an award winning, featured post ***

***

Subway Art Gone Wild

***

 This is a stale post.  Don't you smell the stank?

For fresh ideas and the newest new new stuff 

why don't you head on over to the blog we actually update.

www.b3hd.blogspot.com

Love to see you there.

Carry on as you were.

***  

So when I say subway art, I don't mean graffiti.
I mean that I've been on the Internets and seen lots of awesome font/subway sign inspired pieces.

When we moved into this place

I instantly fell in love with the art cut outs in our entryway

Photo (C) B3 Home Designs

That was, of course, before I realized just how expensive

not one, but TWO gigantor pieces of art would be.

Never fear

Being the cheap-o that I am

From the start, I knew I was going to "create something" for those spaces

I love Planet Janet Art and actually have done open studio with her

I knew I could never afford one of her pieces for the space

(though I have a scheme to get some of her smaller pieces for the space in between

But I love her open spirit of open studio inspiration

So I started thinking I would use the encaustic/collage technique to liven this space up

Thought half a second about how intoxicating/annoying beeswax would start to smell

in large quantities, on my wall, like that, for a long time to come

researched how much encaustics cost

(WOW!! Holy for the love of sanity!)

Realized we needed to go to plan B

In the meantime, Mr. Handy looked up stretching canvas online.

Because, really, even with my super Mike's coupons,

they just didn't have a big enough canvas.

Never fear.  That coupon went to good use on a pair of stretcher pliers.

Why yes.  Yes we did.  We built our own canvases.

One of the best tutorials is here by Ray Schloss.

Building the canvas frame was his realm.

We went to Land of Crappy Non-Straight Wood

(aka, Home Depot, Issaquah)

and bought a yitload of 2x2s and a couple 2x4s

the latter of which was a PLEASURE to split with a circular saw

free hand

because we don't have a table saw

nice

Mr. Handy was super concerned about positve reinforcement

So these suckers are heavy

But not "I can't pick those up heavy"

and really braced through the corners like you would not believe

That was the easy part.

Then I craweled around on all fours to actually, you know,

stretch the canvas.

I bought two 6x9 drop cloths

at the Land of Everything but Wood is Great to Buy Here

(aka, Home Depot, Issaquah)

And it took me, the non-math girl, about 17 minutes to convert 9 x 12 feet

to 108 x 144 inches

as I tried to figure out if I should buy one 9x12 or two 6x9 cloths

and I gave up trying to figure out

hence why I bought two 6x9 drop cloths

at $10 each.

vs 19.97 for the one and the extra work of having to try to cut a straight line.

The Expert DIY label is generally for the whole project

Any project that needs to be blogged in a billion parts is expert to me

but also, if you suck at math,

don't play with power tools

and have no patience for power staplers and scratching up your hardwoods

Then the patience level alone will bump this to expert. 

You'll see.