Crafty Friday: State Love

Do you need some ideas for Valentine's Day for your sweetheart?  Try this great DIY project!  I made this art for my husband for our anniversary. We met, married and started our family in Charlotte, NC and this artwork was a way to highlight what a special place it is to us.

I started by taping off the wood background with painters tape - overlapping the tap layers.  I then printed off a silhouette image of North Carolina from the internet and taping it down over the tape layers.

 

I then traced along the silhouette with an exacto knife. It was kind of hard along the coastline, darn awesome coastline of NC! 

 

I was then able to peel away the excess tape around the silhouette of NC.

 

I was left with a tape version of NC 

My first thought was to use dark stain to paint over the wood.  Turned out to be a bad idea. I may have done it wrong but I painted it on and wiped off the excess but when I pulled off the tape there was a lot of excess that bled under the tape.  I abandoned ship on that piece of wood - actually used it for another craft - so it wasn't a total loss.

 

So I started again - I liked this longer skinnier piece of wood anyways.  I repeated the steps from above and painted over with some paint that we used for another home project.

 

Before it dried completely I peeled up the state of NC and was left with a crisp outline.

 

To match our room I painted a blue heart where Charlotte is - its gotta match the decor!

 

Ended up with a meaningful piece of art.

 

Great and easy way to impress your Valentine - and you get to look at something pretty as well!  Sounds like a good deal all around!