Cupcake in the Making: April 2011

I have always liked my dining room, but HATED the wall art thingy that was hanging behind it...Now with this little addition, I think I can officially say "Yay! I'm done!!!"

As you probably remember from my headboard project, I had my plywood cut down (for free, remember!) which left me with a few extra pieces. So the extra pieces sat in my living for what seemed like a year (really, it was about 3 weeks) until I finally decided what I wanted to do with them. I knew I wanted something that looked a little like subway art, and I definitely wanted to use the names of the local beach cities.....Sooooo, this is what I came up with.

I started out with one of the leftover plywood pieces from my headboard project (so far, this project is free!)

Next paint...Not wanting to spend hardly any money at all on this project, I stumbled across the oops! section in the Lowes paint department and found this perfect color for only a buck!!

After 2 coats and letting it dry, it was time for some lettering. Now I have had my Cricut Cake for about 6 months it has been sitting in the closest, in its box the whole time. After toying with the idea of returning it for a Cricut Expression, I decided to research the possibility of the Cricut Cake cutting paper, vinyl, etc....Turns out it can and all you need is a different mat and different blade! Yay!!! What did I use for the lettering?? At first I was going to use vinyl but it was a little to pricey for my budget...Then I stumbled across a $3.99 roll of contact paper at the grocery store and Woo-Hoo!! It worked perfectly!

I typed and peeled, typed and peeled, typed and peeled (this took 1 episode of Army Wives, Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters which were all recorded on the DVR) and of course also watched in amazement as my little machine was cutting away until I ended up with this:

Ahhhh...Isn't she pretty?? I was pretty happy with the way it looked before the coat of black! But it needed to be black to go on my brown wall....2 coats of black paint (leftover from all of the furniture projects) and then 45 minutes of peeling off all of my contact paper lettering and my wall art looked AMAZING!