Subway Art for the Nursery

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I wanted to show you one last project for my daughter's nursery before I show you the room as a whole, which I'll be doing next week. Here's a little peek.

After the sonogram where I found out that I was having a girl, I found myself humming a little song by the Temptations quite often. Can guess which one it is? It became one of the main songs that I sang to my little bump as she grew, and I still sing it to her now. I knew I'd like a little piece of this to make it's way into her nursery, as it expresses how we all feel about her addition to our family and our lives. So this is what I came up with. Do you like it?! Want the details? Read on.

I started this project by rummaging through my small stash of wood, where I found a piece of old weathered barn wood that I thought would be perfect. I measured the width and length so that I could see roughly how large the letters needed to be and then turned to my Silhouette.

I browsed the wide selection of fonts available, tried a few of the lyrics in the different fonts until I found a few that I liked, and printed them in black and white on regular printer paper.

I laid the words out on the wood, picked the fonts that I liked best, went back to the Silhouette and played around with the sizes a bit until everything fit just the way I wanted it to.

I got some sturdy card stock and cut out each of the words using my Silhouette SD Cutter. I laid them out on the board just to make sure that I had everything exactly where I wanted it to be, and then took a picture that I could reference once I started my stenciling.

I pulled out my DecoArt paint in Daffodil Yellow and White, a few of the same colors that I used for the damask stencil on my nursery walls, in addition to Americana Paint in Grey Sky.

I used the cut out portion of the card stock as a stencil for this project. I laid it out one line at a time on the board, using my photo as a reference for spacing and centering.

I used this little sponge stencil brush, loaded it with paint, blotted off the excess, and lightly dabbed on the paint.

I wanted a light coverage, so I purposefully didn't work the paint into all of the cracks and crevices of the wood. I removed the stencil and gave the paint about 5 minutes to dry, which was all that it needed. I worked my way down the board, doing one line at a time and was finished in a flash.

There were a few places where the paint coverage was too thick for my liking, so I got a coarse sanding block and lightly sanded in small circles until I got the aged look that I was going for.

I then used my wire brush to scrape some lines into the paint and give it a further distressed appearance.

I sprayed the finished board with a light coat of polyurethane, added hanging wire to the back, and popped it up in the nursery.

I love love love it! It is impossible to rock Hannah in her room and not sing this song, and it brings a smile to my face every time I see it. It is one of those rare projects that turned out exactly the way I had pictured it in my head and I'm so happy with it!

I love the contrast of the coarse rugged wood and the crisp gray paint on the walls. It is a lovely addition to the nursery and I had the hardest time deciding where to hang it. I'm looking forward to showing it to you next week along with the rest of the nursery. Please stop back and let me know what you think!

I'll be linking to these amazing parties this week, and thanks to all of the wonderful hosts!

Have a great week!