DIY Step-by-Step Guide to Making Canvas Word Art

I have to tell my boys to go “Wash Your Butt” more than I would like to admit. I recently finished a small bathroom renovation project and I think this is the icing on the cake. I don’t have a fancy Cricut to cut my lettering or amazing hand lettering skills. So I put my beginner DIY skills to use.

Follow along for my very simple, done in one night, with no fancy equipment, super easy Canvas Wall Art.

My Materials List:

You more than likely have 90% of these items stashed away in you craft drawer, thus making this DIY project easy and inexpensive.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Canvas– In the size of your choosing. I wanted to make a big statement so I went for an 18×24.
• Acrylic Paint– Choose your own color. I love the pop of the black.
• Scissors– Any craft scissors will do or you can also use an Xacto Knife for more precise cuts.
• Brushes– I used a stiff, squared off, blunt tip brush (blue handle orange tip).
• Double Sided Tape (not pictured)
• Pencil (not pictured)
• Black Sharpie (not pictured)

Find a Font and Print!

I love fonts! I love whirly swirly ones, I love tall thin ones, and I love really bold ones. But, I am not confident in hand lettering so I turned to my trusty computer to find my favorite fonts and to print out my words.

I used a Tabloid size template on Microsoft PowerPoint (you could use Word or any simple word processor) to create my lettering. I chose a bold print and a fun script font. I already knew the saying I wanted so I started to mess around with the size.

I knew I wanted a bit of a border around my words so I increased my text size to fill the page. I printed a few version of my letters so that I had a lot of room to play around with.

Cut and Create a Layout

Now that you have your saying, choose the combination of fonts that you prefer. I love the combination of the two fonts but, trust me I tried 10 combos before finding one I liked. Play around with it!

Next, cut out your letters. This is a little tedious but you don’t have to be perfect.

Lay them out on your canvas and decide on their final placement. Again, play around with spacing and positioning.

Once you are happy with your layout use a tab of double sided tap to secure the letters to the canvas. This will help everything stay in place as you move on.

Ready…Set…Trace!

Now that your letters are nice and secure use a sharpened pencil to lightly trace each letter. Again, don’t worry about it being perfect and this is why we are using a stencil in the first place.

At this point in the project I started to get nervous about painting my letters. I was worried about getting nice crisp lines and about completely messing up. It then dawned on me that I could use a black sharpie to trace the letters to give me nice boarder so that I could “stay in side the lines” when I painted.

Paint Inside the Lines

I was so nervous about this part but I used a great stuff blunt tip brush that made all the difference in my success. Also, having the black boarder make me focus a bit more and stay inside the lines better.

That’s really it! This was so inexpensive and easy to do and I hope you will check out my DIY Floating Frame Tutorial to get this complete look!