Valentine's Artwork

I wanted to make something for my husband for Valentine's Day this year, and with tons of Pinterest ideas floating around, the hardest part was picking one. Have you seen the heart-shaped 'Love' in wooden letters on canvas? That's what I landed on.

Above is my completed project.

I got frustrated at Hobby Lobby because the selection of wooden letters was pretty slim in terms of letter size, font, and even the letters I needed. I wanted to incorporate four words from our wedding vows, taken from I Corinthians 13:7.

At the height of my frustration at what seemed like a failed Plan A, in walks my brilliant friend who happened to be shopping at the same time! She suggested I look at chipboard letters a couple aisles over. Did I mention she's brilliant? I was able to get all I needed between a multi-pack of letters and one set of larger letters sold as a single-alphabet pack. Also purchased: a 20x20 inch canvas and white acrylic paint. I had satin varnish and glue at home.

Once home I punched out the letters I needed and played with various layouts as seen here. You can see in some of the pictures my freehand heart template I lightly penciled onto the canvas to guide me.

This last one is the layout I decided to go with. To make it easier to choose which layout I liked best, these pictures helped a lot. As you can see, the multi-pack of letters I bought came in different colors. I had to go with a few non-white letters, but since I'd be painting them, I thought it would be fine.

I used wood glue to stick the letters to the canvas only because I couldn't find my Elmer's glue! So I'm sure regular old glue would work great. As I started putting the letters in place with glue, I'd draw light guidelines on the canvas with pencil so I remembered where to start and end. The glue got a little tricky because it liked to ooze out from under the letters. I had a paper towel handy to wipe up oozes.

After everything was glued, I painted at least two if not three coats of white acrylic paint to everything - canvas and letters - making sure to get the sides of the letters covered too. Like the oozing glue, painting the letters proved a little tricky with paint globs that liked to pool up in the crevices of the letters. I just used my foam brush to even out the paint as well as I could.

The colored letters got another coat or two of paint until I couldn't see anymore color. Then as a finishing touch I used some satin varnish on the letters so they'd stand out shiny against a matte canvas.

And that was it! It took some time, especially waiting on paint to dry, but it was a pretty easy project.