Hello! I pray that everyone had a wonderful break. Ours was filled with family time, baking, cooking at home and getting outside. Here in AZ the summer months are so hot and the winter months are beautiful, so even if it feels chilly we love being outside as much as possible! The kids got a lot of fun things for Christmas and our family had a lovely time slowing down to make memories. We accomplished everything I shared in my blog post about the three ways I wanted to be intentional with time this holiday season.
I even got some time to sew which felt so nice. I hadn’t done much since making our homemade stocking and always miss it when I haven’t been at the machine for a while. My mother-in-law asked if I could make a gift set for a newborn baby boy. She requested construction cars as the theme and wanted a minky blanket with two burp cloths. As I have been paying closer attention to creating an online presence and not just sharing the blankets I make (which has always been fun), I decided that there are some things I can do to up my photography game. It’s not just about sharing the blanket that I have made but painting a picture of what the blanket would look like in your nursery. I would love to get to a point where I am helping a mom create more for the nursery than just the bedding.
And why would I not put time and focus into creating some of these items for fun? Besides the fact that I have fun making things, they would be great for taking photos of the blankets that I make. I decided that the next time I was at Goodwill I would search for a low cost wall hanging that I could paint over. I found the perfect one for $0.99! What a steal :) I then took it home and created a super cute and minimal construction truck wall hanging!
Here are the materials I used:
- low cost wall hanging from a thrift shop
- Paint brushes
- Craft paint
- Cricut maker
- Stencil vinyl and light grip mat
- Weeding tools and transfer tape
- Painters tape
*you could easily do this project without a Cricut machine, in that case you would either hand draw your picture or purchase a reusable stencil from your local craft store
Making Your Wall Hanging
Step One: paint over the original design and let dry. This may take more than one coat
Step Two: Find your stencil or image in design space (I used #M4BC45B8C and #M8AEB9BA) you will then want to adjust the image to be the size you’d like for your wall hanging. This will vary on what size your hanging is and how large you’d like the pictures. My having is 8X10 so I believe I selected for each truck to be about 3 inches tall and 5 inches wide
Step Three: Place your stencil vinyl on your light grip mat and load it into your Cricut machine. Then you want to print and weed your design. Now it is important that you are removing the negative space, it will feel backwards from your typical weeding of a project you are ironing on or when using permanent or temporary vinyl.
Step Four: This step is important if you have floating parts of your picture (such as the middle of my tire or the middle of a letter) You want to put your transfer tape over the stencil vinyl then pull it off the back of your stencil vinyl sheet and center it in your wall hanging.
Step Five: Remove your transfer tape and you should still have the stencil vinyl on your wall hanging.
Step Six: Paint your stencil, go slow on the edges and corners to prevent paint from seeping through. It is always best to start with less paint and add more, if it gets laid on too think it can seep through the vinyl.
Step Seven: Let the paint dry and then remove the stencil vinyl from your wall hanging! Sometimes the stencil vinyl can pull back slivers of paint but I feel like it gives a distressed look when that happens. And it’s totally up to you if you’d like to touch up any spots where paint seeped through vinyl. I leave them be because I have found that trying to touch them up makes the mistake more obvious, and whenever things are handmade the imperfections make them more special!
Happy Crafting and please let me know in the comments if you used this tutorial to make a cute wall hanging!
Blessings, Ellen
