"Home" + An Easy Painted Word Project for Word Lovers

Home. Such a special place, or at least it should be. A place to leave your worries at the door, a place to relax, a place to love and to be loved. I suppose in a perfect world, every home would be free from tension and squabbles between it's members, but in reality, it exists at times if we aren't careful, especially when there are growing children who are finding and exerting their own independence and opinions. It seems that I'm constantly reminding my girls that though they may witness name calling, cattiness, disrespect, and unkindness at school and elsewhere, they are to never pick it up and bring it home with them. It tries to seep in daily, of course, but I hope that one thing that my kids remember when they leave home years from now is that they were never allowed to hurt each other with their words or actions, and whenever they did, they were corrected with consequences if necessary. I am just now reminded of a piece that I saw on Good Morning America yesterday. It was about a video uploaded on YouTube by a father who taped his toddlers hitting each other - while he encouraged them all the while.

We may not be able to prevent others from treating us unkindly elsewhere, but at home, we need to know that we are special, loved, needed, and respected. Don't we all need to know that we can always come back to a haven of peace and rest and security- our home - and that of the very few things that we can count on in life, we can at least count on that?!!!

Speaking of home, I wanted to share with all you word lovers a fairly easy project. You've seen Wallwords and Wonderful Graffiti, nifty sites where you can custom order vinyl letters, words, and phrases for any surface of your home...and I love the idea! Someday, I'm going to put in an order:) Until then, here's a great way to get the same look for pennies (and we're trying to save every one of those!). I found this technique many moons ago from another site but I don't remember where. If it looks familiar, please send me the link!

For this project, all you need to do is print out a word, phrase, or even an image in an a nice font. For the word that I used, HOME, I enlarged my font size to 400 in Microsoft Word. I cut off the excess paper and positioned it where I wanted it and marked the position lightly with a pencil. In my case, I chose our fireplace surround. It just needed something...But you might choose a wall, a piece of furniture, or just about anything paint will stick to.



Next, I colored the back of my printed word with a crayon. You'll want to color nice and hard and make sure you cover all of (the back of) the word. This coloring will serve the same purpose as carbon paper, really.



After I colored like crazy, I positioned my word on my our fireplace surround again, lining it up with the marks I made earlier. I taped it securely on all four sides, but I found that I ended up taking the tape on the bottom off so that I could lift the paper and see my progress as I worked. With a pencil, I traced my word with quite a lot of pressure. I actually had to trace twice because of the heavy texture on the surround. It helps to trace with an up-down motion (or side to side, depending on the direction you are tracing)...make a stroke up, retrace your stroke back down, then go up again, and so on.



When my tracing was complete, I removed my paper word template and with a very, very stiff, angled brush, I began to fill in with brown paint. This was a little tricky, but I took it really slow and used a tooth pick to "paint" in the hard to reach areas, and a toothpick with a wet tip to clean up any mistakes.



It's not exactly like the word I printed as I added a little more flourish to the H (not on purpose, though!) but it came out pretty well for my first try.



And finally, here is the finished look. I think I found the something I was looking for!



If you try this, please let me know - I'd love to see your project!

(Just want to add, I am not left handed as it appears in the photos. I needed my right hand to hold the camera and just "posed" with my left hand so you could get the idea...I can't imagine how this project would have turned out if tried using my left hand for real!)