Southern Belle in Training

Fashion, Travel & Lifestyle Blog || Est. 2012 || Virginia Beach, VA

November 17, 2014

DIY Tutorial: State Pride Sorority Craft


     I have a really fun DIY craft to share with y'all today! 



     A couple of weeks ago was initiation week for the new members in my chapter of Alpha Delta Pi! In my chapter, we save Big/Little crafts for the night before initiation (instead of at the time of Big/Little reveal). I have been waiting to do a blog post to share with all of you the things that I bought and made for Julie, my Little Diamond Sister!

      My favorite thing that I crafted for her was this canvas craft that featured that state of North Carolina, the name of our school, and our sorority name. It was inspired by something that I originally saw on Pinterest, shown below:



Etsy shop that sells these canvases (which was my inspiration) 


     There wasn't any tutorial attached to this picture on Pinterest since it linked to an Etsy shop, but I thought that I would try and free-hand it! Below is a picture of (almost all of) the craft supplies that I used for this project. Almost everything came from Hobby Lobby, and a couple things that I had to buy once I was already working on the project (more on that later in the post!) came from Michael's, since there's a Michael's five minutes away from my college. When I am away at school I generally prefer shopping for craft supplies at Hobby Lobby though. 



  • One 11x14 canvas (although you can use any size canvas that you want to!)
  • Stencils (unless you have great caligraphy skills and know that your penmanship will be even ;-))
  • Acrylic paint in a color of your choice for the base color of the canvas
  • Paint brushes- large brush to coat the canvas and small brush for going over the stenciling
  • Paint pen in color of your choice for stenciling
  • One sheet of scrapbook paper in color of your choice
  • All purpose super adhesive craft glue
     Not pictured:
  • Acrylic paint in the same color as the paint pen for touching up the stenciling
  • Sticker sheet of small hearts
  • Cut-out of state of your choice

 
     I began this craft project by finding a good map image of the state of North Carolina on Google Images, then saving it to my computer and blowing the size of it up in my computer's Preview feature (I have a MacBook). Then I e-mailed it to myself, printed it, and then cut it out!



     

     Next it's time to start getting the base coat of paint on the canvas! I wanted to go for a bright, medium pink color. I ended up originally mixing a custom pink color; combining a darker pink, light pink, and a little bit of white. (This later ended up being a bad idea and I should have just painted the canvas one color straight from the paint bottle, but more on that later!)




All painted! It wasn't quite that dark- the lighting is kind of weird here.


     After the base coat was done, I was ready the trace the state onto the pretty scrapbook paper. I didn't like Hobby Lobby's scrapbook paper selection as much so that was one of the items that I bought at Michael's. I picked out a really sparkly gold piece!




      Important thing to keep in mind: trace out your state THE RIGHT WAY. I ended up having to go back to Michael's the next day to buy a second piece of paper after making this mistake....





      In the mean time, I still wanted to work on getting the lettering started. I used the correct cut-out (from the map) and placed it approximately where I wanted the actual one with scrapbook paper to go, and then started the stenciling around that. I used a paint pen to do the intitial stenciling, and then later went to touch it up with acrylic paint and a fine tipped paint brush to make the letters look bolder.  




      Now here is where I accidently messed up (more than cutting out the state the wrong way!). I got a couple of tiny gold spots on other parts of the canvas, and tried to touch them up with the pink paint. But since the pink shade that I used wasn't directly from the a bottle of paint (it was mixed between three colors of paint), the color that I re-mixed to touch up the gold spots ended up being a little bit too dark... and it kind of looked like grease stains on my canvas. :-/



     You can kind of see the dark spots in these pictures, but they were a lot worse in person. Once the touch-up paint dried, the color was still much darker. So I knew that I had to re-paint the canvas a whole new color! But I didn't want to take off the state of North Carolina or the stenciling, so I decided to paint around that. This was a tedious process which took several hours, but it was worth it in the end! I used a tiny paint brush to paint around all of the stenciled letters and to trace around the state, and then used a larger brush to fill in the rest of the canvas. I had to do 2-3 coats of paint to cover all of the darker pink. Again- this was a step in the craft project that shouldn't have happened! 



       I think I forgot to mention that at this point I had glued on the (correct shaped) state of North Carolina, and also glued a small heart sticker onto the part of the state where Charlotte is since that's where my college is located!

      After a few coats of the new lighter shade of pink, everything turned out okay! Here is the finished product:



     
       Overall this wasn't a super difficult craft! Mine just had a lot of extra steps because I kept making stupid mistakes. :-) But everything still turned out okay in the end! 

   
      I will do another blog post later this week sharing the rest of the items that I purchased and crafted for Julie! 


     In the meantime, stay tuned tomorrow for pictures from a semi-formal event that was held here at my college this past weekend! This is the first time that I am featuring a non-blogging friend's outfit in my pictures as well, and I am really excited about that. :-) 


      xoxo Miss ALK







Share:

2 comments

  1. I am so so excited about this craft! I'm actually a rep for a company called Kiss My Southern Sass & each year when we add new reps to the company, we older reps take the new ones as "littles" & this is my first year to take, so I'm looking forward to crafting for my little one for Christmas, this is an excellent idea!

    xoxo, SS

    www.TheSouthernStylista.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is SO adorable! I love that the state has glitter and the heart on it! In the photo of you and your little it looks like you two are legitimate sisters - almost the same profile!!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks so much for reading Southern Belle in Training! Comments make my day- so feel free to share your thoughts on this post! I read each and every comment.
If you have a question in regards to one of my posts, or just want to say hi, the best way to get ahold of me is by e-mailing me directly at: rainbowflash94@yahoo.com. I am better about responding to e-mails than blog comments sometimes!
Xoxo

Blog Design Created by pipdig