Last week I shared a few “corners of our home” and had a few inquiries about the artwork in the photo above, which I’ve been meaning to share for a while… I had torn out a page from the October 2007 issue of InStyle for a picture of Molly Sims’ living room because I loved the artwork hanging over her couch (“Homage to Music” by Matthew Heller). As a Christmas gift to my husband, I attempted to replicate the piece with the lyrics to one of our favorite songs – Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea”. This was the result!
mustard and sage 
This is one of my favorite songs too! I have a lot of memories with this song :) good ones.
hooray! thank you SO much for posting. it’s gorgeous. kudos to you for creating such a beautiful piece of artwork! i’ll have to make note and keep an eye out for good lyrics for a future project!
I don’t know what I’m in love with more– the artwork, or these photos of the artwork!
So funny! I tour out that same page and have loved it as well. I started doing something similar with Loudon Wainwright’s “Strange Weirdos”. I need to hang it.
Yours looks great, and good song pick.
I love this. What process did you use to make it?
PS I want a tutorial!
I just love this. It makes my heart hurt. You are very talented! I hope you don’t mind that I re-posted it on my blog, and linked to yours. I couldn’t resist sharing this with everyone I know! xo
You have a beautiful blog! I love the wall hanging as well… just beautiful! :)
http://itsheavenly.blogspot.com
This is wonderful. I’m so glad there are things like this in the world. Boy do I love that song.
meghan, amazing!! I may have to steal that idea in our new place! Did you use alphabet stencils or are you one of those wonders who can paint letters freehand?
I love that song, and your lyric board turned out beautifully!
This is gorgeous…I love this idea.
ditto above – tutorial please! its beautiful
I’m so jealous! How did you do that!?? Please tell your secrets!
I acccidentally commented on the wrong post. I love neutral milk hotel. awesome idea!!!!
I just posted on my blog yesterday the excerpt that my father read at my wedding and I would love to do this with that paragraph and give it to my husband for Christmas. Please like the other commenters said, how did you do this? Was it as easy as buying a canvas and just writing the lyrics on it?
how were you able to accomplish this?
Thank you all so much for your nice comments! I’ll do my best to explain the process I used to make it:
I started out by laying out the lyrics in Illustrator, purposefully bouncing the lines around so it looked a little wonky. Once I was pleased with the layout, I printed outlines of the words directly onto the non-glossy side of 8.5×11″ pieces of freezer paper (so it would go through my printer) and then began to cut out the letters with an exacto knife to create stencils. (This took foreverrrr.) Once the stencils were ready, I pieced them together and ironed them to medium-weight fabric. I mixed a few different shades of blue paint so the finished piece wouldn’t look flat as all the same color, then randomly painted in the letters. After it was completely dry, I streched the fabric over a frame I made from 1×2″ wood from Home Depot. It was a slow process, but I love how it turned out, and am floored by everyone’s response. I hope this made sense… if not, don’t hesitate with any questions! :)
i love this. i must admit being a bit daunted by cutting out every. single. letter. but it’s so lovely, it just might have to be done. thanks for your verbal tutorial!
So you painted in the letters, using the stencils, and then peeled the stencils off when you were done painting? Why did you iron the stencils onto the fabric?
I used freezer paper because it has this really cool ability to adhere to fabric when heated (ironed) and creates a nice crisp edge for painting. Once the paint is dry, you just peel the paper off. You could easily do this project with store-bought plastic stencils and save yourself a lot of time, but I chose to customize mine.
If you’re curious, there are really great instructions for making/using freezer paper stencils in Lena Corwin’s “Printing by Hand”.
Do you think that you could jus iron the freezer paper right onto a canvas that is already stretched???
this is amazing! I love turning words into pieces of art. thanks for sharing the how to!
Love this! What a wonderful idea (:
Hi there,
So glad that you enjoyed the Poppy tutorial. I wanted to email but couldn’t find where to do that :)
I wanted to let you know that you have a gorgeous blog! You were my inspiration for that project. Thank you so much!
So I’ve been meaning to do this myself, but I can’t seem to find a font that I can easily cut. Do you remember which one you used?
PS LOVE the blog!
Hi Lisa, I used Abadi MT Condensed Extra Bold. Some other ones that would work – Arial Black, Futura Md BT, Helvetica Bold, Impact, Tahoma Bold.