It's the Little Things

A little over a week ago, my mother-in-law asked me to help her with a little project she had been working on... 

In the home that Mike grew up in, there is a room that is completely dedicated to the grandchildren. It has a crib and a sweet little toddler bed, both of which get lots of use on the weekends when the kiddos come to stay, as well as lots of toys and goodies to occupy them. Recently, she has been sprucing things up around their home and came up with this diy for the granchildren's room.

She had taken a plaque, painted it a nice shade of dark green, and tied a little country ribbon to the top. 

Then came my part...to paint a pretty little saying on it, so it could hang it in the room.

Here was the inspiration :

 countryworkshop.net

She obviously had more confidence in my abilities than I did, because I let the plaque sit for about a week, not sure where to begin, and not entirely convinced that I would be able to achieve the look she was going for...

a few nights ago I finally mustered up the guts to give it a try:)

I started by holding a ruler to the plaque so that I had a line to go off of, then I penciled in the letters, following my inspiration picture as a guide. It looked something like this...

(the lighting in my kitchen is not so good for late night photos...sorry!)

Then I used a white chalk pen to "paint" on the letters. I used this for two reason, one is that pens allow for so much more control when you are working on something small and precise, and two because it is what I had available:). In my experience with these pens, even though they say they are washable, if the surface is not a chalkboard and if it is not "seasoned"with lots of chalky layers, the chalk pen adheres to the surface like paint.

Although I had my pencil marks as a guide, I always find that it is easiest to just freehand over top of the pencil, using the old marks just for spacing purposes. So after going over the letters two times...here is the result!!

It turned out better than I expected and I really am excited to show it to my mother-in-law=)

Oh...and its hard to see it in the picture, but the "..." after the phrase is actually a row of little hearts like this ♥ ♥ ♥ =)

Here is the inspiration again, for comparison:

Hope she likes it!!

Happy Friday everyone!