Home is Where the Heart Is: A Little Bit of Texas Love

To those of you who don't live in Texas or who may not know anyone who calls Texas home, I'm just letting you know that Texans tend to be very devoted to the Lone Star State. (Please forgive us if it ever gets just a teensy bit annoying.) That said, this particular post is pretty much all about, well, lovin' Texas.

I saw something similar to this and thought, "I should make one of those!" So I did, and this is how:

Orignally, I planned to paint my Texas on burlap and then frame it, but one day while I was in Michaels with Delys, she pointed out this pre-stretched burlap panel which also happened to be on clearance. (I just saw some at Walmart as well.) Perfect!

I googled Texas shapes until I found one the right size, carefully cut it out, and then used the outside as my stencil holding it in place with masking tape. Notice that the Texas shape is not centered up and down; I left extra space at the bottom so that there would be room for the caption. Using charcoal colored acrylic paint and a lightly loaded stencil brush, I gently tapped the shape onto the burlap:

I like the smokey, uneven pattern it created:

If you are a decent artist, which I am not, you can simply freehand a heart over your favorite Texas location. Because I have absolutely no confidence in my artistic abilities, I created a small heart stencil and painted it the same way I did Texas except that I loaded more paint onto the brush so that the heart stands out a bit:

Again, if you are a skilled penman, you can freehand the caption onto the burlap. I am not, so I chose a simple font that I liked and printed the phrase onto paper from the computer. I had hoped that I could transfer the words onto the burlap using tracing paper and then go over them with a fine tip Sharpie, but the transfer paper didn't work on the burlap. At all. So, taking a very deep breath, I taped the computer paper strip above where I wanted the words to be and simply used it as a reference as I wrote in the words:

Thankfully, no major flubs:

So, wherever you live, welcome home . . . to Texas!