The Vinyl That Almost Wasn't

Before we even painted the master bedroom, I knew I wanted to do a vinyl project for the room. I wanted to get rid of the brown first (see post here). So after we painted, I was itching to do this project. It was the one thing that I knew I could do sooner than all the other things I have planned for the room, including a new dresser, new TV stand, a chair for the room, and possibly a headboard.

I found what I wanted to do through Etsy when I was just browsing one day, and loved it. But I wasn't about to pay the crazy amount of money that was being asked for the canvas/wood project that was made there. I decided instead to do a vinyl project using my handy Silhouette. It is pretty nice that I can make my own canvas and vinyl project fairly easily.

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Pretty cool right? I thought so but I also knew that the chances of me making anything that cool was pretty slim. I'm just not that creatively inclined. But I could give it my best shot.

And give it my best shot, I did.

Here's an interesting fact about me. I am horrible with spacial reasoning. I'm also not that great with depth perspective sometimes too. So I was worried about how this project would turn out. So just as the same with my last vinyl project (read about it here), I put together the vinyl in the program and cut them out on a card stock first. Card stock is a heck of a lot cheaper than vinyl.

Yes, I know that's orange paper. I planned on using white vinyl on the walls but I didn't have any 12x12 white cardstock and I don't use orange all that often so it was the color of choice. What I wanted to check was the different fonts and size, and I could do that just fine with orange card stock.

The only problem was that after I had trouble getting the card stock off the clear sheet you put it on to send through the Silhouette, so I got the letters off and did this....

That was a major mistake. It took me a miserable amount of time to sort through the letters just so I could type them on the wall. I definitely wanted to cry. But finally after a countless amount of time (no seriously, countless - I spent a good long time sorting but I didn't exactly time myself), I started getting the lines typed to the wall.

It took almost as long to get the letters typed up as it did to sort through. Letter by letter was slow going, but it was the only way. Luckily I didn't need it to be perfect. I just needed to check size and fonts. The size was perfect, but the font didn't work on two of the lines. I'm guessing you can figure out which two. It would be the ones where there is only a few letters. The Silhouette didn't handle cutting those fonts out and I couldn't even get them typed on the wall. So I had to go back and fix them before cutting them out on vinyl. 

Initially I was extremely excited when I saw that I could get vinyl at Hobby Lobby and for cheap. What could be better? Before I could only ever find it on Amazon. I would then have to order and wait and it wasn't exactly the cheapest. So I was pumped when I found it at a great price in store.

Until this happened...

Yes that would be all the letters falling off the floor. I couldn't get the letters to really stuck in the first place. It just wasn't working. Luckily I didn't get very far along before I realized this wasn't going to work.

I guess there was a reason why it was so cheap. I was just glad I didn't spend a whole bunch of money on it only for it to fail. I honestly thought about throwing it the towel at that moment. But I decided that I really did like this project and I wanted to see it through until the end, so I ordered the good stuff off Amazon. Learned my lesson.

I was a little nervous that it would happen again, but my trusty old vinyl came through. Unfortunately the best and only way to really do this one letter a time.

It took me a couple hours but finally I got more than halfway before I needed to take a break. I used our laser pointer level to level out the bottom and a ruler and chalk in order to try to space it out evenly. As you can see it wasn't perfect, but I got better as I continued. So the top is more unevenly spaced and not quite as well done as the bottom half.

After another hour or so I finally finished the last bit. And I love how it turned out.

I will make a quick note that we plan to get a chair for our room that will go about where the laundry basket currently is as well. It will face the TV in our room but also the top bedroom that will eventually become the play room. 

It was a lot of work and patience, but finally I got it done. And I love it. I always like it when projects turn out exactly like they are supposed to even if there was some bumps in the road to get there.