We had our monthly neighborhood moms craft night last week (more on what we made this round to come), and as I putting away paints the next day, I noticed a quartet of happy green paints grouped together randomly.

Oh, they needed to be together. Four shades of my favorite color? It was pretty much meant to be.

So I grabbed an old canvas and taped it off with blue tape, just eyeballed a few straight lines to block off every other of four sections. [You could use a ruler too, if you are doing this yourself and concerned about equal width stripes, but I was not.]

I painted each of the two untaped sections one of the green shades.

Then once that paint was dry–in all of ten minutes maybe–I peeled off the tape and used the same pieces to tape off the other two stripes.

Then: two more shades of green.

And that was that for the stripes. Easy peasy.

Next I sketched out a little quote to lay out the spacing. Mayhaps you saw it on my instagram? Join me there for many off-blog adventures! [Again, if you are doing this yourself, you could lay out your wording in Word, like I did for the fence plank scripture art.]

I chose navy blue to freehand the quote “It’s a good day to have a good day.” I used an acrylic paint pen.

Then of COURSE I sanded it a bit… Because I am addicted to sandpaper, thankyouverymuch.

And I not only worked the outer edges of the canvas, but also the inner edge of the wood canvas frame, causing a nice framing effect to the words in the middle.

Then, to make the blue paint a little less fresh and intense, I white washed the whole canvas with watered down antique white paint. I slathered the super watery acrylic craft paint on with a foam brush, then wiped it off with a paper towel.

One final light sanding with a course grit sandpaper, and I called this canvas done.

Between the color palette, the white wash, and the sanding, it turned out to be a perfectly faded, feminine, time-worn piece for me.

HUZZAH!

Now it is happily perched on Sis’s bedside table, amidst a collection of pinks, greens, and happy visual textures.

I particularly love that this project was free (because I had the canvas, paint, brush, and sandpaper) and took maybe all of half an hour!