Patriotism Meets the Ombre Effect

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Hooray for summertime!!!!  I love these days when the sun shines, and our schedule gets to be a little bit more relaxed than usual.  One of my favorite things about summer is the opportunity it gives us to celebrate the founding of our country (for those of you living in the USA).  The Fourth of July has been a staple in my summer experiences all my life.  This year, I decided to add a little something to my Independence Day decor.  Read on to see what I did!

Stenciling is really pretty straightforward.  To make this project a little more interesting, I decided to add a little bit of an ombre effect.  Following, are some things to think about when working on this little piece of Independence Day decor:

The biggest frustration I have about working with stencils is the fact that it is almost impossible to keep the paint from leaking through to the space surrounding the stencil holes.  To mitigate this, tape the stencil down as securely as you can!

When working with a stretched canvas, the painting surface is raised from the table you are working on.  Because I was working with a stencil, I wanted my canvas to be as sturdy as possible.  So, I put a book underneath that fit inside the frame of the canvas.  

To create my ombre effect, I used two different colors of paint:  navy blue and white.  I started at the top of the lettering with the dark blue, and painted in rows.  At the beginning of each row, I mixed a little more white paint into the blue so that the letters would gradually get lighter.

I love this Glitterific Paint from Folk Art.  This picture was taken after the first coat.  In order to get a fully opaque covering with this paint, you need to apply one light coat at a time, letting the paint dry between coats.

This project was created for June 2019’s “Inspire My Creativity” link party.  This month’s theme? Stencils!  I’m lucky enough to co-host this link party with some pretty amazing ladies – make sure you check out their blogs (links below) for more fun projects!