Large Address Subway Art for Gallery Photo Wall

Hey all!  I'm finally posting my address subway art project, from my Gallery Wall!

If you remember... things got off to a rocky start. lol

Sometimes that happens with projects... right!?

I think in this case, it was a blessing in disguise... because I LOVE the way this over sized subway art turned out, on just this simple piece of plywood!

Go figure!

Alright... so here's how it all went down...

I started out with a 24 inch by about 42 inch piece of regular plywood.

I had this left over from a project that I had done prior, but you can buy a large sheet of this at the hardware store, and they will cut it down to size for you, usually for free!

I gave it a good sanding, with my mouse sander, to get all the little splinters off, and rounded up the edges a bit.

Then I took some FLAT black spray paint,

and went over the whole thing, until it was completely covered.

Next, I took some of my leftover gray paint, that I used in my pantry, and brushed one good coat over the whole thing.

The color is called Flagstone from Olympic.

My paint was FLAT.

If you use flat paint, know that it will appear darker when you first apply it, but once it dries, it lightens up quite a bit.  In this picture, you can see how the gray paint is starting to dry over the first black coat, from before.

side note:  Plywood usually has imperfections, knots and sometimes gaps.

This actually worked out perfectly for the look I was going for, but if you want a cleaner looking piece of wood, they have those options at the hardware stores too.

After the coat of gray was totally dry, I applied my large piece of negative space address vinyl, that I designed, to the board like so.

Normally I would have just used the actual vinyl on the board, but I wanted this sign to look a lot more distressed and worn looking.  So I decided to use the vinyl as a stencil, instead.

A little bit of the edges of the board were exposed, so I just taped up the parts that were showing, so that I wouldn't get paint on them.

Then I took a foam brush, with some semi-gloss white paint, and pained over the whole vinyl decal.

It took about 4-5 coats, before I felt like I got really good coverage.

I then used a VERY technical tool, to speed the drying process along.

hee hee :)  works EVERY time!

After the paint was MOSTLY dry, I peeled off the vinyl.

You don't want to wait TOO long before doing this step, because if your white paint is thick (like mine was, after a bunch of coats) and then you try to peel your stencil off, it may peel up some of the paint with it.

Mine really only took about 10 minutes or so to dry, before I peeled off the vinyl.

But since the paint was still a bit tacky, I used small tweezers to take out the insides of the letters.

This saved oodles of time :)

Okay... so this is what you will end up with.

After that, I started the final sanding process.

I used my mouse sander again... but CAREFULLY this time.
Going only in up and down motions.

If you start going back and forth, OR in circles. EVERY sanding stroke WILL show up... because you have that black underneath. 

I haven't put anything over the entire board yet, but I'm thinking just a quick flat clear coat will suffice, to seal it all up well.

After everything is said and done...
This is what you'll end up with!!!

We love this piece SO much!  It really means a lot to us.  And it reminds me often when I look at it, of the first part of our journey that we've taken as a family, thus far, in our lives.

:)

A couple of quick Notes:

First...  I was originally inspired by the queen of Subway art, Jen :)

She was the first (that I know of) to jot down all her addresses and put them into Subway Art form!

Dang that girl is good.  Thanks for the idea, girly!

And yes, these are the places where we have lived, so far in our lives, as a family.  But I switched everything up.  So, the coordinateness are not matching, as you read down the list.  I liked it better this way, but you could totally design your own to have your addresses all read out correctly.  Also, I didn't include zip codes.  But if you haven't lived in lots of places, and you want to fill the board up more.  Those would be great space fillers!

Secondly... I already had a comment from someone saying:

 "I've lived in the same place my whole life, I love this idea, but would have nothing to put on my board!"

I was thinking about this, and I thought that if you still wanted a fun subway art board like this, you could maybe put down the places that your family has visited or vacationed!  Pretty much anything on the board would do.  But I like the idea of just listing things, and also the sentiment that it brings, when it's places that mean something to your family .

Third...I've already had a bunch of readers ask me if I am going to be creating address subway art decals for customers from my Design Shop... and unfortunately, I'm not.  So sorry!

I've taken a vow to cut way back on custom orders, due to all the time that it takes away from my little chicks and hard workin' hubby.  BUT, this project could TOTALLY be done with a Silhouette if you have one!

Just print out your addresses in strips, take out the negative vinyl, and lay them down, so they piece all together!  The font I used for my subway art was called Arial Unicode MS.

Another great resource, if your NOT a "do that craft on my own" kinda gal, is redletterwords.com.  They make the most amazingly beautiful signs, that look really similar to this same style :)

I'm not sure if Dee is taking custom orders right now, but if not... you'll still just LOVE all of her pre-made boards and canvases.  GORGEOUS!