White on White Canvas

While I'm in the middle of redecorating/reaccessorizing my home, I decided to make a few meaningful canvases for my bookshelf.  I found this one intriguing.  This white-on-white thing is kinda trendy right now, and I wanted to see if I could do it.

First, you have to have a canvas board the size you'd like for the place you'll be putting it (I found mine at Joann's).  Then, you need to decide what to write on it.  In my case, I decided to write "I love you" in as many languages as I find interesting.  After the romance languages, I also included fun things, like all languages that make up the genetics of our family - and even wonderfully geeky things like elven, troll, and even pig latin. ;-)

I used Word to type out all of the different "I love yous," then decided that I wanted them all in different fonts, so I played with that for a while until I liked the fonts.  Then I played with the sizes of each different language phrase.  This is all a bit of trial and error and depends solely on your taste and preferences.  You could do the entire board in one font and one size and not go through any of that: it's totally up to you.  You could even just put one poem or phrase on the entire board.  Whatever makes you happy.

Below, you'll see that I printed out all of the phrases and cut them out.  I put a piece of cling wrap over my canvas and started laying out the placement of the phrases.  This is what I came up with.  I glued them down with a glue stick onto the cling wrap.  This is your layout.

Next, lay a piece of wax paper over your word layout and use white puff paint to trace them.  You will get some of the letters wrong - don't worry, just make more until you're happy with them.  You do not have to paint over them in the same order as the layout.  You are just making the letters here. If you don't like a letter, make another one right next to it.  Let everything dry overnight.  

I put a piece of black material underneath so you could see the letters better.  You can see how I messed up on a few letters and re-did them.  You can also see how they can be easily peeled off.

When the paint is dry, you can start carefully peeling them off and placing them directly onto the canvas in the order of your layout.  In this photo, I have the dry painted letters on the left and the mock-up layout on the right to use as a template as I place the letters.  Can you see where I've started placing the letters on the canvas?

The letters should peel off pretty easily.  If you have any problems, just remember that you can always make more.

Here, I have placed all of the letters according to my template (well, for the most part - you can see some are still crooked).  You can see they aren't perfect yet.  I pushed them around with a toothpick for a while until I had them exactly where I wanted them.

Then I carefully used Mod Podge to glue the letters down.  When they were all glued down, I put a couple more layers of Mod Podge over the top of them.

This is the finished product.  It's much easier to read in person.  LOL  My favorite part is that people tend to do a double take when realizing there are words on the canvas.  

If you don't like the white on white, you can always use different colored puff paint for the letters, or even use white puff paint, but paint the entire canvas at the end to make it red on red or green on green, etc.  Anything goes on this one.  Enjoy!