Another project finished at last

A few months ago I started on a project to make Word Art frames for each of my boys. The idea was to make one for ourselves as a trial run, so I started with an old frame which I painted with white gesso and then several layers of Paper Artsy Fresco Finish paint, including a layer of their crackle paint. Family situations then meant that I was visiting UK earlier, and for longer than originally intended, so I needed to go ahead and make the boys frames, without a trial run, and ours was 'left hanging', well, the empty frame was anyway.

So this week I decided to have another go at it. I used photoshop to make the background, with a layer of mottled green digi scrapbook paper, and photos of Chris and I, and one of the whole family group. Because the frame was long and narrow, there was not room for the large individual photos I used for the boys, so I selected just a cameo of each, lightened them so they did not stand out too much, and clipped each one to a circular photo mask so that they had no sharp edges, but rather, they blended into the background.

Then I made the script in my silhouette software. I was using elements from other boards I have seen on the web, mix and matching them to suit me, and adding my own header. I sized it to fit on the 'empty' part of the background and cut it from black vinyl. Then comes the dreaded weeding. I had watched a video on how to add weeding lines, which are a set of horizontal lines that are cut along with the script, so that you can remove the waste background in strips, instead of one large piece. It made a huge difference, and the main weeding was soon done. All that was left to do, was to remove small elements such as the inner circles of closed letters.

Once that was done, all that was left was to use transfer tape to lift each couple of lines, and transfer them onto the background. I do have a roll of wide transfer paper that would have enabled me to do it in one go, but I was worried about placing it straight, and the transfer paper actually lifting the printed surface if I needed to reposition it, so the narrow tape was easier. I just had to be make sure that I didn't lose any tiny elements like the speech marks, and the dots over the 'i', and be careful to align them correctly, which I did by putting the background over the vinyl and holding them against the window as a light box, so I could put feint alignment marks on the paper!

Then I cleaned up the glass, and assembled it in its frame. Now it just needs a hook to hang it up, and as my other half actually said it looks quite smart, I may get it done for me later.