Happy Anniversary, Part II

No, you didn't miss Part I to our Anniversary this year. I never wrote it. I'm so behind on postings, I never posted a follow up to our anniversary post from last year about the gift I made for Lawrence. It's already made it's appearance on the blog in background photos, but I thought you might still be interested in seeing it. Well, my friend Lacretia will be interested in seeing it. And I'm convinced she's the only one who reads this thing on a regular basis anyway, so here you go, L!

Last year was our fifth (!) wedding anniversary, but with a baby on the way and a basement in the middle of finishing, we decided we didn't want to spend a lot of money on gifts so I figured I would make something meaningful for Lawrence instead of buying something. After much deliberation, I decided to make some artwork for our livingroom with a quote from the lyrics of our first dance at our wedding reception (which incidently was Bon Jovi's "You Had Me From Hello").

I got some thin (1/4") wood vaneered plywood and had the friendly folks at Lowe's cut it down to 3'x4'. Then I took some 2" vinyl letters (note: I also bought 3" but they were way too big by the time I laid it all out) and spelled out the lyrics on the plywood once I had marked off the lines with painters tape. I did do a mock-up on the computer with a similar font so I could try to figure out the line breaks, but it ended up being trial and error as I decided to move around the break between two of the lines once the letters were all on.

After the letters were in place I took off the painters tape and took the whole thing outside to give it a coat of spray paint. Actually, I used two colors of spray paint, one darker blue and one lighter blue/aqua, to give it some variation. I could have given the whole thing a base coat first, but I wanted the wood grain to show through the letters.

Once it was dry, I pulled off the vinyl letters and TA DA.

I didn't give it a clear coat over it or finish off the edges with trim, but those are certainly some options if you're wanting to achieve a similar but different look.

It's found a home on the mantel and I love it. Better yet, Lawrence loves it, too. At least that's what he told me on our anniversary when I gave it to him.