DIY quote art

I love the Pottery Barn word art! I can't believe the prices on some of those canvases and wood pieces so I wanted to try it myself. But I can't take full credit for either of these projects I'm about to show you. My girlfriend Sara inspired me when I was at her house one day. She is a little artist:

She clearly chose a London theme, I went with San Francisco. Although these are a few of my favorite neighborhoods, with careful measuring I chose the ones that would fit best on the canvas:

First, I bought my canvas at Michaels (with a 40% off coupon of course, these babies are expensive!). I took a piece of paper and just sketched out a few neighborhoods to see which would fit best. Sara free handed hers with a pencil and did amazing. I tried, but it was sloppy so I decided to print out the letters and I traced them onto the canvas. This took a LONG TIME, about 2 months to finish entirely but then again, I wasn't working on it every day. I measured out the size of the letters and the space between them all with a tape measure and ruler. It wasn't precise but it worked. Then, with black paint, I went to town and carefully painted around each and every curve.

Ideally, I probably should have started from the middle and worked my way out. But since I did this over multiple days it didn't really matter since it was dry. Up close, there are definitely some flaws. I dropped my brush in the center of one of the letters and my cat walked on it when it was wet. But I think the imperfections make it kinda cool. 

The second one I did, I also copied from Sara. :) It took less than an hour! I bought a book from the thrift store for under $1 and ripped out the pages, laying them over another canvas. I didn't care which book it was, but I wanted it to be old and have that yellowish, stained page look. Then, I plopped mod podge all over the pages with a paint brush.

I used these to hang both canvases side by side:

....and BAM! Here they are.