Whalecome: How to paint perfect letters

I have always thought that Whalecome is the funniest word ever. Since the first time I heard it that is (yes I realize its not a real word). It would not be funny for everyone I guess, just nautical lovers probably. I have wanted to make a pillow that says Whalecome for a long time now and I finally did! In fact. I made 2. One for Joss (the sailboat in other posts) and one for Ca-Sea-Ta (my in-laws other boat).

 You can't deny that is the cutest thing ever!

Materials:

Pillowcase or other surface

Paint

Print-out of picture/writing on any type of printer paper

Sharp Ballpoint Pen

Paintbrush

Sponge

Scissors

What I did:

I chose to put this stencil onto a pillow case, I have also done a similar project on a piece of fabric to make a type of flag. This can also be done on wood, or many other options. 

First cut out the large area with the scissors. The whale in this picture was easy to cut with scissors, but once I got to the letters is when I had to get creative. They were too skinny for my scissors, and my exacto knife ripped the paper so there was not a straight edge. 

Tape the word onto the fabric where you would like it to be so that it does not move. You might need to cut down the paper to include only the letters.

Use your pen to puncture holes in the paper. Once you are done the full word it should look something like this. 

Take the paper off and underneath should look something like this. The second time I did this project I used way less dots because I realized I did not need so many. Less dots = faster.

Consider taking the tape off slowly incase your pen died or a letter was missed for some reason.

Paint inside the dots. 

Finally use the sponge to paint inside the whale stencil. (I painted the whale first, order does not matter) A sponge will give the best results with the paper because you will be only dabbing the fabric. There is almost no chance that the stencil will run on the edges. 

Finished!

Joss: Boat tiles and Nautical Rope Mirror

I have always loved all things nautical. It worked out that the first person I ever sailed with is now my husband. His parents own a Catalina 27. Its great, we mostly do just two hour afternoon trips in the bay, but we did our first overnight trip not too long ago. Since we have never taken an overnight trip before, we spent very little time inside the boat. Spending time inside motivated us to make some major updates to the boat.

This is a picture from our boat (of another boat)

There is a lot of work to do, among the regular maintenance that is required, but I started with the bathroom tiles because my husbands mom could not stand them.

Materials:

Ugly tiles

Martha Stewart Multi-Surface Paint

Painters tape

Paint foam roller and brush

Mirror

Hot Glue (or stronger glue if your mirror does not have a frame)

Nautical style rope

Sand paper (optional)

Rag and cleaning products

What I did:

Nautical Rope Mirror:

Not much required here. Hot glue rope around the mirror adding small sections of glue at a time and quickly placing the rope overtop (because it dries so quickly). I was only able to wrap three times because of the screws holding the mirror on the wall, but feel free to wrap as much as you want. Finish with the rope at the same place you started. 

Tiles:

Let me first note that this was for a small area with not too much traffic. I would use a different method for larger areas or more traffic. 

I forgot to take a before picture. Here is after one coat
you can see a bit of the dated flower design on the tiles. 

I started with a light sanding the tiles, nothing serious, just to be on the safe side. The product does not require it, but I wanted to be extra safe. I then cleaned the tiles with bathroom cleaner to remove any sanding dust, and other previous gunk that had built up over the past 20 years. Next tape the edges of the tiles to prevent painting the walls. 

Paint the tiles. I did my first coat with a brush to allow for a bit more coverage, and because the roller uses more paint and I only had a small bottle. Let the paint dry for 1-2 hours between coats as per instructions. Paint 1-3 more coats with a foam roller as required. I used white over cream tiles so 3 coats was enough, but I would suspect darker colors might only require 2 coats.  

Remove painter's tape. The paint can take up to a month to completely cure before you want to do any abrasive cleaning.

I tried to hide from the picture, but the bathroom is so tiny!

Canadians: A Painting

Canadian's are not known for their patriotism, but we love things that are Canadian. We love outdoor gear like rain, snow, and other winter jackets. We love our landscape, like the mountains, the rivers, the lakes, and the Prairies. We love to hear how Americans stereotype us, and think we live in igloos, even though most of us have never even seen an igloo. We love outdoor adventures like hiking, biking, fishing, hunting out our back door, and others. We love our local animals, like Bears, Moose, Foxes, and Salmon (but not the Geese). And we LOVE hockey!

This was a project I did was about our local animals. Its a Black Bear! We are more known for our Grizzly Bears in this area, but they are much scarier, and not as common to see.

I chose to do a Black Bear because, for some random reason, I like to paint things for my younger brother. Its not that I don't like painting for my older brother, but his wife is 1 million times better, so it would be pointless. I told him I wanted to paint him something that I could paint a solid color, he wanted to be sure it was something manly, so we picked a Black Bear. It was fitting with the color of choice.

What I did:

It was a very easy craft! I looked up a few pictures of bears online so I could remember exactly what they looked like. I then covered a cheep dollar store canvas in news paper clippings. I cut out small pieces because I wanted it to be all words, and the news paper normally has a lot of pictures. You could also do this with book pages, but I was more willing to cut up my news paper than a perfectly good book.

I used a glue and water mixture to put the paper onto the canvas, then I sealed it on top with the glue and water. 

Lastly, I painted a picture of a Black Bear on top. If you are not good at painting, here is a cheater idea for this project. Print off a picture of a simple object(like the bear) in the right size. Then, cut out the picture slightly smaller than it is. Trace around the cut out onto the canvas, and paint inside. Since you cut is slightly smaller, it allows room to go out of the lines if there is a mistake. 

Finished!