Love Canvas...Just in time for Valentine's decorating

I love to decorate my front door for every season.  I actually love to decorate my entire front porch for each holiday or each season but if I'm being completely honest, my front porch decor is only changed about twice a year.  (My pumpkins from October JUST made it to the trash can.  Any one relate?) :)  But, I can usually make the door decorations without any delay.  Here's my door decor for Valentine's Day.

I started with chipboard letters that I found at Hobby Lobby for $1.99 each (plus 50% off!!).

Since I was going to glue paper on top of these letters, I painted the edges.  I didn't want the brown color to show from the side.

I traced the letters with this fun paper I found in the Christmas clearance at Michael's over the weekend.  Tip: be sure that you are tracing with the paper facing up and the letter facing up or you will have a backwards letter to glue on...not that I've ever done anything like that....three times in a row.  Then, I used a foam brush and Mod Podge to glue the paper to the letter.  This particular paper is thin and metallic so it went on incredibly smoothly.  Love that.

This is my canvas before I glued my letters on.  I initially painted the whole think hot pink.  Then, I attempted to crackle it with little luck.  I've got to keep practicing my crackling skills because I've only gotten it right once.  This was not one of those times.  I messed it up and it created a texture more than a crackle.  So, I painted over it with three more coats of white and used a one step crackly.  This is the end result.  Not too bad, eh?  I live in the school of "keep going until you get what you want or until your project is completely ruined." :)

Here is the final project.  I used E6000 to glue my letters to my canvas.  I have a couple of tips on doing that.  First, I put two 8x10 canvases under my 16x20 to make a hard surface.  Then, I put a couple of wood blocks on top of my letters so they would adhere nicely.  Worked great.  I also added a bow to the bottom of my canvas for an extra little embellishment.  (My darling husband got me the most precious blanket from Pottery Barn for Christmas and he had it wrapped in the store.  They used this ribbon on the package and I salvaged it out of the trash on Christmas morning because I just KNEW that I would be able to find a project to use it for.)  Enjoy!