You Are My Sunshine Art Canvas

This is one of those classic songs that everyone remembers and cherishes from our childhood. We've all heard it...and we continue to sing it to our children.
                  

When Judy and I talked about customizing a piece of artwork for her guest bedroom/granchildren's room, she said she wanted to use the words to "You are my Sunshine" because it holds a special place in her heart! So...that's what we did!

And here's how!  

I used a 20x30 canvas, purchased at Hobby Lobby, craft paint, paint brush, sponge brush, spray sealer and since I don't own one of those glorious Silhouette or Cricut machines...an overhead projector!

 

I started by painted the canvas with white craft paint and while it was still wet, began brushing in different shades of turquoise and blue. Notice the scientific method of squirts and blobs.

For this step I used a 3" paint brush. I also used water from a spray bottle to keep the paint wet, adding more color as needed.

When I was happy with the background, I decided where I wanted the sun and began by painting the circle white to block out any of the background color. This took a couple of coats.

The sun is a combination of Kings Gold, Lemon Chiffon and white with a touch of Barn Red.  

The sun and it's rays were painted with a 1" sponge brush randomly dipped in a combination of the above three colors.  

Now we come to the old school, technical part of this project! First I called my sweet friend, Brec and borrowed her overhead projector. Judy had shown me a font she liked. So, I messed around on the computer and printed out the words.
Now, it wasn't until I had the words all printed out on computer paper that it dawned on me...I needed it on a transparency! Duh! Of course stopping and going to the store was not an option!
With necessity being the mother of invention, I crossed my fingers, said a quick prayer and ran a plastic sleeve protector through my printer. And it worked!!! The ink stayed wet for the longest time...but it worked!

The words you see here are from the "transparency" projected onto the canvas. I hung the canvas on the wall and painted the words with black craft paint.

Even though the font size was great, I had to adjust the spacing in order for all the words to fit the length of the canvas. Using a level was a necessity! I would make sure the canvas was vertically level on the wall, as well as making sure each line of the song was horizontally level.  Quite tedious. 

                 

When it was complete, I sprayed on several coats of sealer. I could have used a brush on sealer, but didn't want to take a chance of smearing the words.

It took approximately 5 hours, over several days, to complete this project.

               

But well worth it!
 Perfect for the space above the bed!
I never realized, until I was researching this song, just how strange the verses are! Very strange. And numerous!

If you'd like to see more of the song, check out this site.

Coming soon...lampshade projects from this room!
 
SHARING WITH:

Feathered Nest Friday at French Country Cottage