For quite a while now I've been pinning and admiring and fawning over hand lettered signs. You know those ones by House of Belonging and Lindsay Letters that always look so incredible? Yes, those. Recently, my amazingly talented friends Rachel and April even made their own versions, and I was so in awe of their talents! The DIY-loving side of me wanted to try hand lettering for myself, but the realistic side of me said, "Abby, you know you are not patient or detailed enough for that." It was like having a little angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, with one telling me to go for it and the other warning me that it would just turn out miserably. 😉

I really wanted a beautiful sign of my own, but realizing the whole hand lettering thing probably wasn't going to happen for me, I did what any sensible blogger would do: I cheated. 🙂 And by cheated I mean that I pulled out my Silhouette machine and had it do my "hand lettering" for me. Here's what I used to make this project:

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  • Silhouette Cameo
  • 12″ x 24″ Canvas
  • Gold Adhesive Vinyl
  • White Paint {I used Behr's Arcade White.} + Paint Brush
  • Transfer Paper
  • Hook Tool
  • Scraper Tool
  • Scissors
  • Spray Adhesive
  • Computer with Silhouette Design Studio Software

I began by giving my canvas a few coats of white paint. I think it ends up looking more polished when the canvas is painted white; some people would probably argue that it makes no difference. Feel free to choose your favorite method. 🙂

While the paint was drying, I created my design in the Silhouette Studio Software. I used a font called Sugarbush and just moved the words around until it looked right to me. If you would like to use my design for personal use, you can download the Studio file here.

Tip: If you're creating your own design in Silhouette Studio and using a cursive font, be sure to "weld" each word so that your machine cuts it as one word and not a bunch of individual letters. To do this, right click on the word and choose the "weld" option. Then I usually right click again and choose "group" so that I can still move my word around the page if I need to.

Next I had my machine cut my design for me, and I weeded away the excess vinyl. (I used the recommend Silhouette settings for vinyl of blade 1, speed 5, thickness 10. I also loaded my vinyl directly into the machine rather than using a cutting mat so that I could cut a longer length.)

My original plan was to cut this all as one piece, but I had a slight snafu with the machine in the middle of cutting and ended up with two pieces, which still worked out just fine. Now that I had my words ready to go, it was time to transfer them to the canvas.

I once learned the hard way that adhesive vinyl doesn't stick to canvas extremely well on its own, so I sprayed the canvas with a spray adhesive and let it dry for a few minutes before I started to add my wording.

Tip: Always be sure to have something underneath your canvas when you spray it. There will be overspray, and the spray adhesive sticks around and stays gummy for a *long* time. {Not that I know that from personal experience or anything… 😉 }

While the spray adhesive was getting nice and tacky for me, I cut a piece of transfer paper to fit my larger group of wording, aligned it carefully over the words, and used my scraper tool to press it down. If you've never used transfer paper before, it is sticky on the back, so when you press it down on your wording, the words stick to it, allowing you to move them to the canvas as a group, rather than you having to move one word or letter at a time and worry about placing them in a straight line.

I peeled the backing off the adhesive vinyl so that my letters looked backward on the transfer paper…

…and then carefully placed my wording where I wanted it on the canvas and used my scraper tool to press everything down firmly. {I am terrible and always just eyeball the placement rather than doing an official measurement… there's that lack of patience thing again. Oops!}

I then carefully peeled away the transfer paper {It sometimes wants to stick because of the spray adhesive. If you go slowly and press down the letters that want to stay stuck to the transfer paper, it will come up for you!} and then repeated the transfer process with my second group of wording.

Yippee! I had Donnie make me a quick frame out of a 1×2, glued it to the canvas, and had my very own cheater's version of "hand lettered" artwork! 🙂

It's the first piece of art in our newly renovated kitchen!

I know many of you are way more patient and talented than I am, so if you're looking to actually paint your canvas by hand, check out my friend Rachel's awesome tutorial over at Maison de Pax, and feel free to use the PDF version of my design! {These would also work as prints!}

Have you ever done your own hand lettered art? I'd love to hear your tips in the comments! Have a wonderful day!