Subway Art-Sorta-Pantry Sign
On Saturday the US Open men’s tennis semi finals were on. All day. I couldn’t pull myself away from the exciting matches unfolding in front of me, especially when my crush Federer was playing. Yes, I could of DVR’d the matches but to me it is just so more exciting to watch it live. I was feeling kinda guilty that I was spending SO much time in front of my TV on such a gorgeous sunny southern California day, that I decided to at least be productive while I watched. I have been wanting to find a spot in my house for a piece of subway art that everyone is doing out in blogland. My favorite blogger, Jen from Tatertos & Jello, is the queen of Subway art.
I decided that my new organized pantry was a perfect spot for this new project. I read a lot of blogger’s tutorials on their version of subway art and many said they made a lot of mistakes on the size and layout of their piece and had to start all over. I was a little intimidated by all of this at first, but I got inspired when I found this cool web site Wordle . You type in words and then it rearranges them in different patterns, colors and font styles. I just thought of all the things that are in my pantry and started typing in the words. This is what I came up with as my template. 
So off I went. I took a canvas that I already had and laid it out on my fabric and cut it to size. Leaving enough fabric to wrap around the backsides.
Then I heavily Mod Podged the canvas because this fabric is really thick and has a texture to it so I wanted to make sure it glued really well.
I used tacks on the back side to help hold down the fabric.
I used my new Expressions machine {lovin this machine} to cut out the letters on vinyl. Took me a couple of tries before I got the letter size right. I just laid them out one by one, starting from the top and arranged them similar to the Wordle page I printed out. 
What was great about using vinyl on fabric, was that if the word just didn’t look right I could easily peel it off and place it in another spot. When I was done, I felt that there were too many empty spots. I had these vintage utensil that I had gotten from an estate sale a while back collecting dust so I added them into the empty spots. Then I made a fabric rosette to finish it off.
It is the perfect finishing touch to my pantry re-do. It hangs right above my fancy dog food bin. 
I love the way it turned out, it has the feel of a subway sign with a Stephanie twist to it. I think Jen would be proud. My crush lost his tennis match..but I got a cool sign done in the process. If you didn’t see my pantry re-do, you can see it here. Linking up to these parties
You Have My Whole Heart Sign Finished
I finally finished my sign! Whew, glad that is done. I like the way it turned out, but it was such a challenge for me to figure out how to do the lettering. It took a couple of different tries before I found a system that worked.
I bought 3 pieces of wood fencing that were 6 feet long and had the wonderful guys at Home Depot cut them in half for me {I love this service}.
I found these 5″ stencils at Home Depot while browsing for the wood. As it turned out, they were the same letters my inspiration picture used!
I then bought pine 1 x 2′s and had them cut to size for the back to make a frame. {I kinda guessed the sizes of the lengths while I was in the store, and in the end I had to trim an inch or two off in order for them to fit} But this is how I put the frame together.
I pre-drilled wholes on the 1 x 2′s on each board and across the top and bottom { tip, this helps from the pine from splitting when you screw in your screws}. Then I screwed in 1 1/4″ screws to secure the boards to the frame. At this time I also screwed in heavy duty picture frame hooks and wire. {sorry I forgot to take a picture of the screws and wire on the frame}
