From Toilet to Treasure!

So this past weekend I started on a new little project for a friend of mine. She wanted me to make her a canvas to go over her bed that said, "Always kiss me goodnight". The thing about it was that she wanted it to be a lot longer than it was wide and I wasn't sure if I could find a canvas like that in the area I live in. (We pretty much have Walmart to choose from and that's about it!) So, I started to think about it and decided to check out some other places to see what I could find.

Well I found this wooden sign at a Vendor's Mall nearby that was the perfect dimensions...but only one problem...

Haha, so my next step was to get some sanding equipment to remove the lovely paint that already existed on my board. I ended up getting a little sandpaper sponge from Walmart and it worked really well after I wet it. You can see the beginnings of what it looked like as I sanded on the right of the board where the "...USE" is.

This is what it looked like after I completely finished sanding off the paint. The brown paint around the edges didn't need to come all the way off because I was going to use a darker color brown to paint over it.

The next thing I did was paint it a chocolate brown color. I used 2 coats of paint to make sure I had good coverage.

 This is what the final product looked like after two coats of paint.

Once this was completely dry, I started painting the quote onto my board. The cool thing about this part was that I only had to paint the letters once and they looked great. Usually when I paint canvases I have to go over my letters 2 or 3 times in order for them to look nice and for the color to show up completely.

And this is a picture of the final product before I sealed it with clear acrylic sealer!

This project was so much fun to do! It's amazing what you can do with a little sandpaper and some paint!