Fun with Typography!

I love word art, especially when it's on a wooden plaque. I've always thought it'd be cool to have some displayed in my house. Soon after I'd gotten all my existing artwork up on the walls in our new place, I noticed a bare spot. It didn't take me long to decide some word art would be the best solution.

To fill the spot, I knew it'd have to be a good sized wooden plaque. Since I didn't expect to find what I was looking for at a store, I opted to make my own; best was to start completely from scratch. First step was to figure out what words I wanted to display in my living room.

Pretty early on I decided that it should be a scripture; preferably one from the Bible, be not too long, and one that would inspire me and my family to draw nearer to God in our daily life. So, with these parameters in mind, I started searching topically through my scriptures and giving an extra ear in Sunday School.

It was such a gradual process, I don't actually know when or how I found the list of scriptures I settled on, but eventually I narrowed things down to a fairly short list. To help me remember, and to better visualize it, I wrote them down on a piece of paper that took up residence on my worktable. Clearly, it lived there for quite a while before I made my final decision...

After I'd narrowed it down, I took my list and chatted it over with Hubby, that way it'd be a verse we both liked well enough to live with for a good while. In the end we chose Hebrews 4:16.

"Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need."

Next, I had to art-ify the words. Turns out the technical term for this sort of word art is "Typography". Lovely stuff! Pinterest was invaluable to helping me figure out how I'd want it to look. This was my first foray into this type of art work, so I had a good amount of trial and error to get my first draft done. Though it still needed a little tweaking, I was so happy with it!

Even with such a satisfactory First Draft, it still took several more go-rounds to get things just right (hooray for my light box and tracing). As I was first starting out, I'd figured out the ratio of my loose-leaf to the board that I'd be using for the final product so, in preparation, I'd cut some non-lined paper to size so I could be sure my words would fit on the board.

Finally, I got the spacing and the fonts to my liking and I did the final transfer onto the plain paper. Next, I inked the whole thing. Boom! Love it!!

Eventually I'd need to figure out how to enlarge this little 9" x 6" paper rendering to my 36" x 24" board. However, before I could get to that point, I'd need to paint and assemble the pieces.

I've been curious about chalk paint for a while now, and this was a great time to experimented with it. Real chalk paint is a little spendy, and I only needed a little bit, so when I found a DIY recipe for it on this site, I jumped on it.

Since the plan was to distress the sign, I used some of the left-over paint from the living room for the bottom coat, then covered it was a white wash. Once it dried, I sanded the edges and roughed up the surface. Then I assembled the boards together.

Once that was all done, the easiest way to copy and enlarge the design was with a grid. I drew lines on the paper and then made some to correspond on the board with some washi tape, that way there'd be no lines to erase on my newly painted boards.

The enlargement went well; I was feeling pretty good. Text was a reasonably close resemblance to my little paper sketch, so I went on with the painting. However, it was in the painting that I started having troubles.

I distressed the edges of the boards, and filled in the letters and went over the outlines several times. But I still was not happy with it.

Here it is after I'd finished.

My overall feelings on this draft were an overwhelming "meh." Enough so that I really couldn't leave it as it was. So, it was back to the drawing board.

First, I painted a layer of black. Starting with a dark base would make the distressed edges pop better; the first time 'round, the roughened edges were nearly invisible. After the black, I painted a layer of powder blue, followed by a pale sage green. On top of it all, I put a nice white paint for the final background color. Then I waited 2 weeks to make sure the paint had set before moving on to the next step.

Next, trying again with distressing. All the layers payed off and the distressed edges really pop this time. So great!

Now, for the text. This time around, I decided to side-step the manual enlargement process and just print out the design enlarged on the computer. This way I could just trace it on and know the lettering would turn out well.

Once the letters were traced on, I used some acrylic paint to fill in the words. Since the color scheme in my living room is pretty muted, I decided this typography would be best done in different grades of gray. I let the gray be pretty light, overall, with some extra distressing on the text to match that of the board.

Here it is all done! I'm much happier with it this time around!

And here it is up on the wall! 

It took me nearly 5 months to complete it but, in the end, I'm loving it!