Christmas Projects (now that they can be talked about)

Most years, I try to do at least one major DIY gift. It varies from year to year, who on my list will be the recipient, but this year it was Hubby.

A couple years ago, he was excited to discover (via Wikipedia) that the poem "Ring Out Wild Bells" had far more lines than those used in our hymn book. He's always liked that hymn and wouldn't be sad if our congregation sang it more than just right around New Years. Then, again last year, about the same time, Hubby waxed rhapsodic about the same thing.. It struck me that something he'd felt continued interest in for that long ought to have more notice. Truthfully, since our congregation wasn't likely to sing this song more often, I wanted to bring more emphasis to this poem for him at home instead. So, I made him some Word Art.

DIY gifts are ever so much more fun when you can upcycle something or give an old and busted thing some fresh, new life, so to start the journey for my Word Art project, I hit up my local thrift store. I was looking for a frame, tall and narrow, and found the perfect thing with this mirror:

Ok, the original text made me giggle, plus it gives this project all the more flavor and sass, though, ultimately, it was still scraped off:

Then, I started playing with watercolors. That is not my medium of choice; it took something like 5 tries (and a teeny bit of acrylic paint) before I was satisfied with the way things turned out:

Next, I cut the paper to fit the mirror.

As typography really isn't a strong suit with me, I used the computer to make the text for the poem uniform and well spaced. Hooray for tracing paper! Then I inked it all with permanent marker.

To finish it off, I used Modge Podge to seal it all in. (Modge Podge, excellent stuff).. Love it!

Finally, here it is all assembled!

It was a hit! And  (one of these days) it'll go up on the wall as a part of a gallery collection in our room.