Travel Far

Welcome to February's Artist Team Blog Hop brought to you by Club Scrap. Each month the team presents a themed challenge or technique. The  purpose of the blog hop is to demonstrate the beauty of paper crafts.

If you just happened on the blog hop today because you're a regular reader of my blog, and you'd like to view the entire hop, you can start back at Club Scrap.  If you're already hopping and linked to me from Donna's Blog, you're in the right spot.

Each member of the team is pulling inspiration from Alphabet Stencils. They're available in both lower case and upper case. I was first introduced to these stencils at the October Retreat.  We received the lower case set as a free goodie.

 

When my husband and I were traveling through Canada and down the East Coast we stopped in this little spice shop in Portland, Maine. We fell in love with their hand-made sign that read:  Travel Far. Eat Well. Live Long. That is totally our motto.  It just so happens that were on a Foodie Tour of Portland. Maine.  We love to travel and try the foods of the region.  I was unable to find one on-line that I like and decided to make my own with my stencils.

 

I painted this $7.00 thrift store find with Chalk Paint. It's a huge wooden tag by Danielson Designs.

 



After several layers of paint I marked off the top and bottom of the tag using 1" painter's tape.

This will be my guides for the top of the letters along the top and bottom of the letters along the bottom.



Being the "attention to detail" person that I am, I marked the center and stenciled my letters in pencil out from the center.
Thank goodness for the penciling first. I misspelled "Travel".

Once I had the top and bottom lines done I measured, centered and marked another 1" line for the bottom of the middle line.

I'm going to stop here and apologize for the terrible photos and for not photographing the key important step. 

I was so excited that I didn't screw up the stenciling that I forgot to take a photo :(

Next step would have shown you to take the stencil and retrace the letters using a Sharpie. 

Yep...a Sharpie. 

I suck at painting and there was no way this would have turned out otherwise.



 I added handmade no-sew burlap rosettes for added interest.

 

Thanks for joining us today. 

Please continue on to see what the very talented Tina has created for you.