One Thousand Years Wall Hanging

anyone who knows me really well will tell you that i love to shop. i do. love it. love it. love it. doesn't matter if it's groceries or shoes or paint; online, at a store or an outdoor market. i'm a shopper. for some reason though, when it comes to valentine's day, i don't head to a store to buy a gift for my sweetheart. i'm all about the handmade kind. the hearts and doilies, cut-out collages, finger-painted chocolate-smeared glitter-sprinkled kind of gift.  this year, i went big with the creativity. wall-hanging big.

if you're on pinterest (of course you are) you've probably seen this pin from sugarbeecrafts in which she takes a small picture and blows it up super big and then mounts it on foam board.  i had repinned it to my "totally trying this" board and when it came time to come up with a v-day gift for my husband, i knew what i wanted to do. ok...so there is some shopping involved. but only for supplies, not the actual gift. smile.

for my wall hanging, i chose the words to 'one thousand years' by christina perry. gorgeous song. and since my picture consisted of text instead of an image, i first created what i wanted in picmonkey. saved the finished product as a jpeg image onto my flash drive which i took to staples and had them print out their largest print: 3'x4'. only $6.99! then i walked down a few stores to michael's for some spray adhesive $7.99 and then down a few more stores to lowes for a big piece of styrofoam $9.99. gotta love town centers.

because i chose text instead of an image, this project took a couple of days to do. for me, this means getting out some of my favorite movies to play while i'm working. one's i've seen so many times that i don't have to watch them to know what's happening. and some snacks are definitely in order too! one thing i hadn't really counted on was that the font i chose pixilated A LOT when it was enlarged. i'm thinking this probably wouldn't have happened if i'd chosen something like helvetica or verdana. not completely sure. what it meant, as you can see, was me outlining and coloring in EVERY letter. all i can say is that he's lucky i love 'im!

once i finished the letters, it was time to mount it onto the styrofoam and here's a little tip: it doesn't cut well. at least it didn't for me and if you have any tips please pass them along.  be sure to peel off the shiny lining on one the side of the styrofoam that you'll be putting your image on. for me, this was the aluminum foil-looking side. i started to paint the outside edges and got three of them done before i stopped because i decided instead to buy some ribbon -5 yards of gray twill - to attach to them instead which, in my opinion, gave it a more finished look.

i really love the way it came out! and my husband loves it, too. he teared up. that's the kind of guy he is and it's why i'll love him for one thousand years. and then one thousand more...