I was going to paint that song for him, but the lyrics are very short. I needed more words, so I chose our second favorite song, Nature Boy, originally sung by Nat King Cole (see? also not a lullaby).
I’m a canvas recycler and decided I was done with the yellow drip painting (pictured above) that hung on our walls. The canvas is huge – probably the second largest one that Michael’s sells. I propped it up, popped a movie on, and started painting.
I quickly realized that I would use a whole tube of paint in order to cover the previous layer, so I called on the can of extra paint from when we painted our master bedroom white. I was worried it would have too much sheen once it dried, but it looked great. (A note: I like to give a rippled texture to my paintings by mod podging paper scraps and coffee filters to the canvas before I paint.)
I used a pencil and wrote the words in a whimsical, kind of sloppy cursive. I knew if I tried to paint it without tracing the words, it wouldn’t look right, and I knew it would look best if it was my own natural handwriting. To balance the shininess of the white paint, I wanted to use a more matte black, and luckily, I had extra chalkboard paint from when I made the chalkpaint cheese tray.
I had to go over the letters a couple times to get the depth I wanted. You can see that those bottom two rows (pictured above) are a little too light with just one coat. I hung the finished product over our dining room table, and it anchors it really well since the canvas is almost as big as the table. 
This is Project 1 in my 25 Projects challenge. I am attempting to complete 25 projects this year. Contact me if you are interested in sponsoring one of the projects or featuring an item on the blog.
