A Tale of Two Bauers: DIY Song-Lyric Canvas

Valentine's day shopping for guys is hard. As it goes, it tends to be a "girl's holiday." Therefore there are tons of ideas for girls, but not the other way around. I know that Zach doesn't expect anything, but I like to do something for him anyway. A lot of the time I just get him something off of his Amazon wishlist. Not super romantic, but at least it's something he wants. Etsy's top recommendations were cuff links, bow ties, and personalized flasks. If you know my husband, none of these would be on the top of his list. So to Pinterest I went. Is Pinterest anyone else's answer to almost anything??

There were lots of cheesy ideas, but I finally found something I thought I could adapt. This was my inspiration.

Source

She wrote the lyrics to the song that was playing when her husband proposed. I loved the idea of using song lyrics to a meaningful song. I decided to use the lyrics to the song, "Better Together" by Jack Johnson. We walked back down the ailse after we were pronounced husband and wife to this song. And it was one that Zach picked, and helped me learn to love, as I am not a Jack Johnson fan most of the time. Her directions seemed a little complicated, so I'll show you what I did.

Materials:
-Canvas
-Sharpie
-Packing tape
-Ruler

Start with a blank canvas. I chose a burlap canvas, because then I could get away with not having to paint my background.

12x24 canvas from Hobby Lobby

I copied the song lyrics into Word, and divided the song into 24 even-ish lines.

I traced the canvas onto a piece of fabric so I could practice how small I needed to write. I had decided to just use one of the verses if the entire song was too long to fit.

I used a piece of packing tape, and laid it across the width of the canvas, one inch from the top. The tape served as a straight guide without making any marks on the canvas. Once I came to the end of a line, I just moved the tape down another inch. Also, when I had letters that hung below the line, I just peeled the tape back, drew the letter, then put the tape back.

Every once in awhile, I had to adjust my words and move one up or down a line if I ran out, but typing it out first gave me a pretty good guide. I guess you could write the whole thing out on your practice fabric, but I am not that patient! And I also didn't have that much "Zach out the house" time. I actually ended up finishing this project at my office over my lunch hour. On Valentine's Day. Don't judge.

The other thing I did was make some of the words bigger. I think it breaks it up, and makes it look a little more interesting. I started writing with a paint pen in the beginning and because I was writing on burlap, it ran out about 4 lines in. There are no stores within 40 miles of us that sell paint pens. After that I just used a sharpie, and it worked great! You can tell where I switched, but I'm not a perfectionist, so it didn't bother me that much.

Here is the final product. Happy Valentine's Day!