Project House Update: State Love

It's Pinterest Challenge time, yet again! That time of year where you get off your butt and actually make something that you pinned. 

This time I was inspired by a couple of my pins of state art. One pin involved hammering nails into a piece of wood to form the state border and city location and weaving string in between. I don't have time for that and I have two cats that would never have allowed it to survive. The second pin was just a drawn out line of a state and a glitter heart over their hometown. I liked the idea, but come on, where's the challenge in that?

I kind of combined the ideas and came up with this:

A painted image of Arizona on a piece of wood with a heart over Tucson. More to it than just tracing the outline, yet not as tedious as nailing a million tiny little nails.

My supplies included a $10 board from Michaels, some left over house paint for the background, constrasting paint for the state (I was originally going to use turquoise, but I thought that might be too bright and limited my options on places to hang it), stencil brushes ($5 at Michaels), painters tape, a piece of cardboard, a box cutter or exacto knife, and a map of my state.

I placed my board on a magazine on a piece of newpaper. The magazine lets you get paint to completely cover the edges without worrying about it sticking (assuming your piece of wood is bigger than a magazine).

Give it one or two coats of your background shade. I used "Polar Bear", the color we use for all our ceilings.

Create your stencil. I taped the printed out map onto a thin piece of cardboard and traced the border with my box cutter. The lines aren't the smoothest, but if you want very clean lines, I would suggest painter's tape, thinner stencil material, and moving to either Wyoming or Colorado. Remember to do this on a cutting board!

Then, tape your homemade stencil in place., including a tape heart over your home.

Break out your stencil brush and have at it. I ended up using a small sample pot of paint from one of the grays we contemplated painting in the guest room. I just love gray on crisp, clean white.

Voila! Art! The edges are a little ragged, but I like it that way. It makes it more rustic.

Add your hanging hook and find it a home!

Here's where it ended up, in the guest bedroom. The theme of the room is slowly evolving into travel and geography, which I think is pretty kitsch given that the room's meant for our traveling friends and family.

Ignore how it looks off-center on the wall. I need to find another small piece to hang with it. Hopefully, one that will pick up some of the turquoise accent color in the room.