day five: dated wall art

the finished product, ignore the frame!
our bedroom is currently green, can you tell

day five, only 360 projects to go and its sunny outside!  todays pinterest creation comes from my must have art board and was pinned from the gallery from andrea steed's website (so many great creations you should check it out!). she calls it dated design wall art, which is totally apt, given the dates are all relevant dates for your family.  i loved individualised art so this was right up my ally! she gives you a great link to a version you can fully customise and even have it sent away for printing ... how cool is that.

unfortunately, i live a long way from the states so the chances of me getting the print today were slim! so in the spirit of my p365 venture i decided to create one myself and print it out at home on photo paper!

the start of the process

i found a frame in the shed and, after blowing away the large amount of dust on it, decided it could work with a repaint.  my first job was a light sand followed by a quick paint with opotiki (dulux colours of new zealand), then a thick coat of tim holtz distress paint called peeled paint (green), that then followed another coat of opotiki because the green was too much ... are you still with me!  Yeah, the frame painting was an adventure all on its own ...

yet another layer

in between the layers of paint was drying time and during these times i played on my computer working on the art to put into the frame of layered paint ... really should have just purchased a nice cheap black frame, next time!

the finished file right before printing!

it should be noted here, i am not computer savvy to a point where i can walk up to the computer and know exactly what i need to do to achieve something.  i don't have photoshop and i don't know how to use publisher (yet :)) so this was done in powerpoint ... yes ... i know how to use powerpoint!

what you need to know:

• i used five 1 x 7 tables to make this wall art, which i then lined up vertically, this gave me the flexibility to have the size gap i wanted between each birthday
• i created a table for each birthday and put each number into a different cell ... why? all numbers are not created equal, just like my family some of us are wider that others! so every cell was set to be centred meaning when the tables were lined up vertically so were all the numbers regardless of their individual width (i feel your pain zero ;)
• i added some decorative vines and coloured each birthday to match our bedroom as that is where this art is destined to hang.
• printed out on glossy photo paper to get that nice polished look, add a frame (preferably one you didn't have to paint three times) and you are good to go :)

outcome: definitely going to do this again now i have a template! figuring out how to sort the number width issue took some time and drove me a little insane :)  however, this is probably to do with my lack of computer skill as opposed to anything else ... now i have the knowledge, there's no stopping me.  in fact, my sweet mum is next on my list! for her, i am going to do one with all the grandkids birthdays :)

thank you so much to andrea steed at a.steed's.life for wonderful wall worthy art that you can totally customise!  if i lived in the states, i would totally use andrea's option and use her customised version available at zazzle.com. 

and for tomorrow ... think carrots :)