Custom Family Subway Art - {Tutorial}

Hi everyone, I am so excited to be guest posting (my very first) here at Between U & Me.  A big Thank You to the lovely Courtney for allowing me to crash here today.

I am Kristel, from the Velvet Door, and I have been blogging for just a few months. I started this blog mainly for a way for my family and friends back home to see my house and what I have been up to in trying to decorate it.  I have also realized that it will be a good archive for me to look back and see all the changes I have made to our home.  

Today I will be showing you this subway art that I was able to make.

I have been playing around with this empty wall in my family room, trying to figure out what I can fill it up with.  For a few weeks now, I have been wanting to create a subway art picture, they are everywhere lately, and I love seeing all those city names on them.  I happened to have on hand some leftover MDF from a previous project, just lying in the garage. I had to do some very minor cuttings, to fit all the pieces to make the frame.  Once those where cut, all I used was wood glue to glue them all together.

The back part was really curved, so I had to put paint cans on top to lay it flat, once the wood glue dried, it couldn't curve anymore.

I then used wood putty to cover all the exposed edges.  Once that dried, I painted the inside with two coats of Annie Sloan old white chalk paint.  Then, the fun part begun:

I used my Silhouette to cut out vinyl letters and then drew a line into the board, and placed the vinyl there.

After that was done, I painted the whole thing, even the frame, in black satin paint, with two coats.  Once dried, I removed the vinyl, and was left over with a black frame, and white words, which I sanded to make it look a little aged.  I applied a clear wax at the end to protect it from sticky dirty fingers which I'm sure will be touching this.  And here is the final product:

Now, what makes this subway art personal is that I decided to put the names of the city that have meaning to us as a family, since moving to Texas from Florida, I thought it would be good to have my kids remember the city in which they were born, and lived, and went to school, as well where my husband and I were raised and met.

I think it will also make for an interesting piece for when visitors come.

Hope you have enjoyed our very personal subway art.

Kristel