Have you ever tried out the Engineering Prints at Staples? Grant posted about a print he did, but he knew all about engineering prints long before I did because he is an engineer. He uses them all the time. I heard a lot about them on different blogs and pins, so I finally tried them out. I decided to decorate our bedroom with some enlarged love notes that we wrote to each other while we were dating. I actually did this while Grant was out of town on a business trip. I hadn’t planned on doing it, but thought of it the day he was coming back, so I had to move fast (wanted it to be a surprise).
First I had to find the perfect love notes :) Which actually took a while because I had to sift through the thousands that Grant wrote me until I found the perfect one, and I had to search and search for any that I wrote him (he doesn’t keep things, I do). I found these two letters (pictured) then I scanned them and decided on the layout & crop that I wanted. I’m not a fan of straight on, boring stuff, and I had to get a good angle of all the cute-sie, lovey words we used.
I changed them into PDFs and took my flashdrive to Staples. It was done in a matter of minutes and although they didn’t turn out awesome (something was wrong with their machine, go figure), they turned out great for my project. I was going for a worn, old look, and the darker print of these engineering prints worked great.
I wanted to make the mushy stuff stand out, so I grabbed some of my kiddos paint and tried to highlight those particular words – “beautiful”, “eternity”, “best friend”, etc. – by painted a small outline around each letter.
Ok, now this is the part that I should have taken my time and used the little patience I have, but instead I just wanted to get it done because Grant was coming home later that night. Grant has lots of random pieces of scrap wood (I guess he does keep some things), so I grabbed a large piece of very thin MDF. I cut it on the table saw to the dimensions I wanted – about 24” by 30”.
Actually, this is the part that I should have used more patience. The gluing phase. I started with some spray glue and sprayed half of one board then layed the print down on it. So far so good. But then I went to spray some more glue and I got nothin. Either it was too cold, clogged, or it was empty or all of the above. Soooo, rather than pack both boys in the car and make a 15 minute trip into town just for some spray glue, I went with the next best alternative, Elmers.
Didn’t work out so well, but it kept the paper down and I got it finished. Let me just advise you to take your time, use the right glue and find a flat straight edge to scoot along the paper as you glue it down. Mine ended up being REALLY bumpy because of how the glue pulled at the print (it had nothing to do with my lack of patience and horrible application techniques).
And ta-da! I drilled some holes in the corners and used small nails to hang them up. Grant would have been proud of me because I actually used a level and tape measure to make sure they were straight and hung at the same level. Usually I just eyeball it!
Now our room has a little bit more of our “young love” in it again!
*This wall art was inspired by THIS
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