Home-Made Iron On Wall Art

I actually love words, and have from the time I was a very little girl.  If you visit my parents home and open up any of my old childhood books you will see where, from the time I was first learning to write, I scribbled words!  Imagine how excited I was many years ago when they came out with word art for walls!  And signs?  Oh my goodness do I love signs.  Eldon told me once many years ago that if I put up one more sign or decorative word on the walls he was pulling them down! 

So you can imagine my surprise (and excitement) when I was loudly pondering the slanted ceiling/walls in the Barn Room and WHAT does a person put there when you can't exactly hang anything and Eldon said, "How about some of those adhesive words you used to put on the walls in our old house"?  I tried to act like I would just think about it (smile!), but my heart was sort of racing as I began to do a very rapid internet search on ordering word art.  

What I came up with was not too exciting, sort of expensive, and not exactly what I was looking for.  I had the thought of using scrap book paper and my Cricut and cutting some letters and somehow adhering them to the walls without damaging the wall finish - and just like that I had a brainstorm.  

What if I tried the double sided heat bond, used fabric instead of paper and ironed it to the wall?  I was mainly worried about what would happen to the finish if I decided down the road that I no longer want the words on the walls.  So, I experimented in an area where it wouldn't matter if I had to do a little sheet rock repair and ironed a small bit of fabric onto the wall.  I let it sit for awhile til it was completely cool and then I took a blow dyer, heated it back up until it was warm and then gently removed it.  It slid right off and didn't leave even a tiny blemish.    So, thus began the journey into my home-made wall art.  

I promised last week that I would share how I did it.  So, here it is!

You will need to buy some of the Heat Bond - it is basically double sided interfacing - you can buy it anywhere fabric is sold.  (They used to call it Wonder Under!)  

Sort through your fabric scrap stash and choose some fabric that you want to use for your word.  You can use the same fabric, coordinating fabrics, or just a hodge podge.   Determine the size of your letters and roughly cut a square of fabric a bit larger than the size you want your letter.  Cut the same size square out of your heat bond.

Iron your heat bond to the back side of your fabric scrap.

Now, if you have a Cricut then this is the easy, peasy part.  If you do not have a Cricut, this part will be a little trickier.  I happen to have a Cricut so I chose my font, my letter size, placed my fabric (with heat bond on the back) on the adhesive matt, selected the deepest cut on the blade and hit "cut".    (If you do not have a Cricut.... go buy one! Or I guess just free hand your letters and cut around them.)

Thats one of my letters after I cut it on the Cricut and then pulled the extra fabric away.  

Now, determine where on the wall you want your letters to be.  Take a pencil and very lightly mark the height where you want the bottom of your word to sit.  Then measure the width of your area and lightly mark the center.  I started with the middle letters of my word and moved to the outside letters; that way it was perfectly centered.  

To get each letter to adhere, remove the heat bond backing from the letter and then place it on the wall adjusting it til you get it in the exact position you want.  Then with your other hand grab a piece of printer paper (I held it between my teeth while I got my letter situated!)  Take this piece of paper and put it over the letter, grab your iron (I was standing on a stool and had my iron all plugged in and ready on the iron board next to me) and iron over the paper, adhering the letter to the wall.  This way the iron doesn't actually touch the finish on your wall.    If any of your pencil marks show, you can gently erase them with a pencil eraser.  

And there you have it!  Home-made word art for your walls!!!  This is a very fun, fast, easy, and cheap do it yourself project!  Also a great idea if you are living in a rental house and can't paint!

A little side note:   I thought I was so very creative in coming up with this project.  Then, for fun I googled "ironing letters onto a wall" and found out that low and behold I didn't invent this - many people in blog land have done it before!  

The sun is shining here today and I'm excited to get back into my speed walking, after several days of bitter windy cold.  Its not too far to my daughter's house (about 2 miles) but its all uphill on the return - and I do mean UP HILL, so its a good work out in this winter weather! 

 Hope your week has been great!