after weeks of cutting out letters and words, my kids and i made this the other night — an ‘i love you’ collage on a 20×20 canvas. and i love it so!
originally inspired by this ‘i love you’ collage
next, i’m going to make the ‘I WILL SURVIVE’ pot from this post.
ETA: i’ve been getting some questions regarding how i made my ‘i love you’ collage. so, here’s what i did…
i started with a 20×20 canvas purchased from michaels.
i didn’t want the background stark white so we painted it a light beige.
then the kids and i spent weeks cutting out letters from magazines, junk mail, etc. — all shapes and sizes.
to place the letters, i painted a layer of modge podge and then began sticking ‘i love you’ letters and words.
the hard part is making sure that a complete word goes all the way to the edge, so begin thinking about this when you get close.
once i had a few rows done, i modge podged on top of the letters.
once the entire collage was done, i did a final two layers of modge podge on the entire thing.
note: we were very low on Vs and Ys and had to do some more cutting of those letters.
it was quite a time consuming but worth every minute!!
it was super fun seeing how creative the kids got with the letter cutting — a dragon’s tail became a letter O, an eye became a letter I.
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i LOVE it!!! You’ve inspired me… who couldn’t use more “I love you” in their life???
This is all kinds of cool!!
What a beautiful project to do with your children!
This is such a great idea! Would you mind if I shard this on my blog? I would link back to your site and credit your photo.
Of, course! Thank you.
Deb
This is SO AMAZING!!! Love it!
Great energy!
May I please share this too, on my blog? It’s a cultural study of the words, “I love you.”
Funny, I have the second photo somewhere on my blog too! But I can’t remember where it came from.
Happy wishes!
I love it! May have to copy the idea! Thank you for sharing.
I LOVE IT,, gonna try this one myself.. Well done it is AWESOME : )
Hi!!! Love this and working on it right now to give my husband and my kids but I have no idea what modge podge is…where do you get it and also what type of paint did you use to paint the beige on the canvas? Thanks for sharing this awesome idea!
Love this…love you…happy st valentine’s day
xx
Got really inspired: https://pinterest.com/pin/92534967313538808/
I let the kids choose their own sayings and dd came up w “do what you love love what you do” and son is doing “Live to ski and ski for life” both look great when in collage
Found you through Pinterest. Love yours much better that the one that inspired you! Just shows what inspiration and creativity can do. Great that you could make it with your kids too!
I occasionally make word bottles for people. I will cut out words and short phrases of things about the person and glue them on a cool bottle and then poly it until it looks like glass. I never thought about just using one phrase. Now my mind is in overdrive. You did an awesome job on the canvas and such a good thing to do with kids. Thank you for sharing it with us.
Quick question: How do you keep the letters from wrinkling up? When we made something similar from magazine clippings they sort of wrinkled when they got damp from the Mod Podge. Any suggestions on how to keep the paper pieces flat??? I really want to try this project! What a GREAT idea!
Saw this on pinterest, I love it!
hi jenny,
yes, that was often challenging. i basically just did a very gentle first coat and sometimes would have to smooth the letters, after i applied the moddge-podge.
Thanks. LOVE IT. I totally copied this idea and made a card for my husband like this. He thought it was a little creepy like a ransom note, hehe, but he liked it.
I’ve never used modge podge before, when I looked it up online, there were several different kinds like glossy, matte, etc.. Which one did you use/recommend? Thanks!
hi erika,
i used matte.
I just finished two. I dus it in three different languages; english, dutch and the language of my boyfriend french. I sm very happy with the result!!
I found this on Pinterest almost a year ago, and FINALLY got around to making my own. You can see how mine turned out on my blog. Thank you so much for the inspiration!
Beautiful work! This has inspired me to make one for valentine’s day
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