I'm Hung Up On Yarn

So here I had this wonderful yarn storage going, but it needed more.  I wanted something to fill the empty space above it and also add to the overall style of my office/craft space.  I thought about what I wanted to say (with help from my family) and decided on "I'm hung up on yarn."  This was the first time I had ever worked with letters with the removable vinyl.  Using Microsoft Word, I chose font Maiandra G and dialed the font size all the way up to 500, printing two letters per page.

"500??" you say, "Mine only goes up to 72."  A great tip for font sizes:  Select the number in the font size box and enter your own with a letter highlighted, and you can see how it will look.  Some fonts only go up to certain sizes.  (This works backwards, too, if you need a tiny font somewhere.)  I decided on my font size by printing different sizes on draft and holding them up on the wall.  When I was sure of the size, I printed one of each letter and just reused them to trace.

The back of the vinyl has lines on it for easy measuring.  I only printed one of each letter I needed and just reused them.  After choosing my font size, I measured the letters against the vinyl and cut strips from the big roll the right height for the letters.  I flattened my removable black vinyl (see this blog for more about where it came from) by cutting out the strips I wanted and leaving it under books overnight.  My roll is 2 feet wide, and my letters were 5-1/2 inches tall, so I cut 3 strips, 6 inches tall.   I traced the letters onto the back of the vinyl and found that, especially with the larger ones, it was much easier to use masking tape to hold them down.  It comes off easily from the vinyl backing, but best to not try to remove it from the paper.  Trace to the tape, skip, then trace after it.  When you're done, remove and join the lines!

I was going along very well, tracing away, and suddenly I realized I was in trouble.  Take a look at this picture, can you see where I went wrong?




Since I was tracing on the backside of the vinyl, the part that sticks to the wall, it's like drawing a sign on a window.  It has to be backwards!  So back I went with a red pen and made my corrections.  This is not the first (and I'm sure not the last) time that I got myself turned around with the vinyl.


I ran a string where I wanted my letters to be, leveling them with the edge of the wall and ceiling.  I am not a perfectionist and don't need everything to be perfectly aligned, so this was sufficient for me.  When you are applying large things with the vinyl, though, it's best to actually tape the entire thing up with masking tape and make light marks where you want it to go, measuring against ceilings and floors if you want it perfectly squared.



There are different ways to cut vinyl:  Many people like to use Exacto blades when working with vinyl, but my only one is old and didn't work out when I was making the tree, so I cut out all my letters with some good sharp scissors, bending it a bit to nip out holes to cut shapes inside shapes.  There are some wonderful machines out there called "Silhouettes" that will cut any shape into your vinyl straight from your computer, but while they look like they are Easy, they don't fall into the category of Cheap.  Rolled masking tape stuck to the back of the letters put them up under the string where I wanted them to go.  Even though this stuff is so easy to move, it's always better to make sure you know where you want it before you peel the backing off and start applying, especially things like letters with long skinny pieces that are easy to tangle.  The rolled masked tape worked pretty well, but they did tend to fall off if left up too long.  Next time, I'm going to just use the masking tape across the front of the vinyl as I think that will hold it better.

 
It looked great, but I was really glad I had taped it up first because as I started to get to the end of the sentence, it became very clear that it was going to be too long for one line over the bags.  Luckily, it looked pretty awesome when broken into two lines.  My mother's voice came to me from the past, "Measure twice, cut once."  I should have taken the time to work out the WIDTH of my sentence as well as the HEIGHT of my letters!  Moving the string up the height of one the letters made a good level for both lines. 

After I had taped them all up, I was ready to apply.  This project was somewhat different from what I had done with the tree before because I was working with letters.  I had similar problems with leaves and small branches though.  It is not a thick material, so when you are working with long skinny pieces, they will twist and stick to each other.  It can be very difficult to get vinyl unstuck from itself, and I've had my share of just having to throw a shape or letter away and start over.  What I do to avoid this is to peel the edges at the top of the shape and stick them to the surface first, leaving the rest of the backing on, as with this "H."  This way you are in control of the shape and can peel the backing away slowly while sticking it down.  Get started with peeling the backing off can be tricky, but I just an the edge down a bit and pop it off that way.  The vinyl may get a little bent, but if you are gentle, it won't crease and will lie flat when placed on the surface.  You can buy "applicators" in many places for vinyl, but I made one with my old AAA card, a piece of vinyl covering the old number and making sure I didn't get it confused with the new one, and that works very well.  When you have your shape or letter where you want it on your surface and you've pressed it down with your fingers, run the edge of the applicator flat down the front of this.  If you have bumpy paint on your plaster (as you can see with the H), the vinyl will make some crackling and popping sounds while you're doing this.  The goal is to make sure there is as little air under the vinyl as possible.

So here it is, the finished project:

As far as the "cheap" part of this DIY, how much did it cost? The roll I bought was 10 yards by 2 feet, making it 720 sq ft.  The pieces I cut were 36 sq ft.  Total cost of roll with shipping $32, $0.4 per sq ft, so total cost of my letters:  $1.44.  The coolest thing about this, and I learned this with making the tree, you can save every little scrap of the vinyl from those letters and use them for other projects.  So that $1.44 is going to go into a lot more projects than just this one!

The Tree on My Wall

Detail of the Tree on the Wall

My neighbor invited me to a home decor party that her daughter was giving at her house.  "Kind of like Tupperware," she told me.  "You know, Pampered Chef-ish.  Games, prizes, she sells you stuff to decorate your house."  I was broke and certainly not very interested in buying stuff that other people might use to decorate their houses, but hey, games and prizes?!  I'm there.  Besides, it's the neighbor code thing.  You go to her daughter's decoration party, she buys your kids' cookies or candy or whatever Scouts or school or choir is selling. 

The party was not that wonderful, but it was such an inspiration to me design-wise.  Removable decals, oh my, the things I could do to my walls, even as a renter!  I went through the catalog and realized that not only could I not afford most of it, I wasn't very impressed with the designs they had to offer... except this one tree, a beautiful tree with its leaves blowing off down the wall.  It called out to my heart, and I wanted it really, really badly.  It was $119.00.  There was no way, absolutely and finally, no way I could have that.

I bought some little bugs, a couple of flowers, spent 20 bucks that I explained to my husband in our budget talks as "neighborhood goodwill money," and tried to forget that tree, its leaves floating down the living room wall.

Leaves blowing off down the wall

I saw other cheaper alternatives over the years at Dollar Tree and Michaels and Wal-Mart and tried them, but we found they dried up and fell off eventually, and besides, there was nothing like that tree.  Two moves and five years afterwards, the tree was still there, rooted in my heart.  A little less broke and with a lot more energy, I started researching how I could get what I wanted the way I wanted it:  Cheap and easy.

After spending some time on Pinterest and Etsy, it occurred to me that the crafters selling those beautiful removable decals had to be getting the materials from somewhere, and using the magic Google, I discovered H & H Sign Supply at http://www.hhsignsupply.com, the go-to guys for removable decal wall/craft vinyl in bulk!

I cannot say enough good things about this company.  You can buy their removable vinyl in small amounts to try it out, which I did at first.  They have it in all colors, though I am partial to the shadow stencil type black.  You can buy it in big rolls, which I most recently did.  One of the coolest features of this wonderful E-store is "$5 Dollar Fridays."  It doesn't happen every Friday or even on a schedule, but sometimes they have a sale where all UPS shipping is $5, no matter how much you are buying.  This is a huge honking savings when you are purchasing a 2-foot wide, 30-foot long roll of vinyl.  It's not a light thing to ship.

This is the type I chose after much researching into which ones work best for painted plaster walls:  Oracal 631 Removable Wall Vinyl.  I got a sample pack.  

The Tree on the Wall

The removable wall vinyl is a wonderful craft item.  My whole family enjoyed playing with it. I had to learn to think about the sticky side, to make sure my shapes would be going the right way.  I found it was best to cut it out and then tape it to the wall with masking tape to see if I liked it before actually sticking it on. 

I went ahead and ordered a 5-yard roll of 1-foot wide black, and I got to make my tree.  It took me most of a day to cut it out and put it together, but I had been planning it for a while in my head, where it was going to go, how it was going to look.  I made it happen, cheap and easy, and my heart was full of warm contentment.

Then, of course, we moved again a few months later and off it came.  I can testify to the fact that it comes off very easily and leaves no damage behind.  I do suggest, if you're a renter or unsure at all, that you try a little sample and leave it on for a week or so just to make sure that it comes off easily and neatly from your particular wall.  I found it was actually possible to take it back off and move it even after applying, especially with the leaves and other small things, but the big trunk and branch pieces were difficult to keep in one piece and flat when removed.  I believe it would be possible to take small shapes off and put them on the backing for storage, for holiday stuff and the like, but I have not tried it.  The only irritating part was taking apart a dandelion that I had made in many pieces.  In the future, I plan to not use little tiny pieces ever again.

The Pain to Remove Dandelion at lower right

The tree has come and gone, but now we are in a new place (where we are hopefully going to stay for a while), and I have 60 square feet of black vinyl ready to be made into new wonderful removable wall decals and a house full of mostly blank walls.  I got it on sale at 2.70 a yard for the 24-inch wide roll AND shipped on a $5 Friday, so I made out like a bandit.  Here I have only scratched the surface of the amazing materials they have to offer.  Go check out their site and prepare to be inspired!  Having the tree was awesome, but the potential for making something new is the best feeling ever as I am sure you know.

Look for more removable vinyl projects here in the future.  I hope you enjoyed my first blog and that there will be many more to come!