(diy tutorial) distressed wall art

My husband and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary earlier this month. He’s my best friend and my biggest supporter. He doesn’t question my need to decorate our house for Halloween in August or why we can’t eat at the dining room table because I’m in the middle of a project that has taken residence there. He’s an easy going person, which combats my always-have-to-be-doing-something personality. Like in any relationship, we’ve had our ups and downs and I’m grateful to have a partner who is as strongly committed to his family as I am. I look forward to the next 5 years.

For our anniversary, we agreed to not get each other a gift. We planned on a nice date night and that was it. Of course, we both broke our no gift rule. My husband sent me a bouquet of chocolate covered strawberries (my favorite kind of bouquet) and balloons, which my toddler quickly hijacked. I made him this distressed wall art, with a quote from our first dance song “Feels Like Home” by Chantal Kreviazuk. He loved it and told me that he thought I bought it…pretty sure he was trying to butter me up.

Enough with the mushy stuff Vanessa, these people came here to craft. Here’s how I made it. By the way, you can find this project and other stencil projects over at Crafting In The Rain today.

Materials

Wood Board (I bought a long board from Lowes and had them cut it in half)
Base Paint (I used a neutral color)
Paint Brush
Contrasting Acrylic Paint Colors
Sandpaper Block
Stencil Brush
Printer
Martha Stewart Crafts Adhesive Stencil Film
Martha Stewart Crafts™ Multipurpose Heat Tool or Exacto Knife

Directions

Step 1: Paint the board with your base color and allow time to dry.

Step 2: Print out the words you would like on your wall art. I used impact font and played around with the font size until I got what I wanted. It helps to lay them out on your board to visualize how they will look.

Step 3: Place the stencil paper on top of one word at a time and use the Martha Stewart Crafts™ Multipurpose Heat Tool or an exacto knife to cut out the letters. I recommend doing one word per stencil sheet.

Step 4: Adhere the first stencil sheet/word to the board and use a stencil brush to fill in the stencil with acrylic paint. Repeat with the remaining words.

Step 5: Once the acrylic paint is dry, rub a sandpaper block over the entire board to distress.

Step 6: That’s it, hang it up!