Laundry Sign Inspired by Ballard Designs

I finally finished a project that I started about six months ago.  Have you ever done that?  Started a project then for some reason or another it sits there forever, unfinished?  I hate that.  Back in December I decided to make a piece of art for my laundry room.  I used this beautiful sign that I saw in the Ballard Designs catalog as inspiration:

Ballard Designs

Here are the materials I used:

• 16x20 wrapped canvas from Michaels
• Martha Stewart Crafts Multi-Surface Satin Acrylic Craft Paint in the following colors:
• Putty
• Vanilla Bean
• Acorn
• Martha Stewart Crafts Weather Crackle Effect
• Adhesive Vinyl and my Silhouette machine

I started by painting two coats of the "Putty" paint color on the canvas front and sides.  Then I created the wording in my Silhouette program.  I used Times New Roman font for all of the words.  The word "Laundry" is 200.0 point, the second line is 93.6 point and the rest of the wording is 63.0 point.  And THIS is when my project stalled.

Canvas with 2 coats of "putty" paint

I have used my Silhouette many times for cutting paper, but not often to cut vinyl.  I wanted to cut the letters onto vinyl so that I could stick them to the canvas and use them as stencils.  I could not get the smaller letters to cut without them pulling up and getting all tangled and mangled in the machine.  I spent hours working on this.  Finally, in frustration, I put the whole project away until last week.




I got the vinyl loaded into the Silhouette and tried again.  Same problem.  Yeah, I'm not sure why I thought time would solve this issue.  :)  I sent Silhouette Customer Service an e-mail describing my problem and asking them if I was trying to cut letters that were too small.  They responded in ten (!!!!) minutes - awesome!  Their suggestion was that I slow down the cutting speed to 1 and decrease the cutting thickness to the lowest level.  WHADDYA KNOW?  It worked!   

Using transfer tape, I transferred the wording to the canvas.  Then I put one coat of "Putty"-colored paint over the words to kind of seal them onto the canvas in preparation for the darker color.  I let this coat of paint dry.

Once the coat of "Putty"-colored paint was dry, I put one coat of "Vanilla Bean" on the canvas.  When this coat was dry, I applied a coat of the Weather Crackle Effect.  The photo below shows the canvas at this point in the process (while the Weather Crackle was still wet):

I let the crackle effect dry overnight and this is what the canvas looked like in the morning:

At this point, I worked quickly and didn't take photos of the process, but here's what I did:  I covered the entire front of the canvas in "Acorn"-colored paint.  While it was still wet, I removed all of the vinyl letters using the weeding tool that came with my Silhouette.  Once the letters were removed, I used my hand to get the canvas wet with a bit of water and I scraped the acorn paint off with my fingernails and with a paper towel.  I wanted the sign to look like weathered wood.  I just scraped and rubbed until I liked how it looked.  If the paint started to dry too much then I just lightly wet it again so that it would scrape off.

So now, in retrospect, it wasn't a difficult project.  I couldn't be happier with the customer service department over at Silhouette America - they were so quick to respond and their suggestions were right on target.  Now, if you've got a project that you've set aside, I encourage you to pick it back up and finish it!  It's a wonderful feeling!



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