Rainbows in Waterfalls

The youth group at church is having a Valentine’s Day banquet as a fundraiser and they will be auctioning off items.  I made this dry-erase frame for them to auction off.  I’ll let you know if anyone bids on it (I hope they do!).  I’m sure I saw this idea on the internet somewhere.  I looked and looked for it again but I couldn’t find it.  I am sorry it doesn’t have an attribution – If I find it again, I’ll post it.

Here is how I made it:

Supplies:

• 11 x 14 Floating frame (I got mine from Wal-Mart for about $10)
• Red Vinyl (I got a scrap from the local sign shop – it is Oracal 651.  It sticks to the glass much better than the Silhouette vinyl I’ve used.)
• Red Ribbon
• Glass Cleaner & Adhesive remover

Tools:

• Dental Hook (for weeding)
• Gridded cutting mat
• Metal Ruler
• Transfer paper
• Silhouette SD cutting machine
• Staple Gun

1. First, I drew everything out to figure out how I wanted everything placed and how tall and wide the letters needed to be.  Then I designed the letters on my Silhouette SD using Arial Black and hearts from a design in my library.  I used a narrow rectangle for the “blank” line.  In order to save vinyl and only have to feed it through the machine once, I reduced the space between the lines.
2. Because the vinyl had been rolled up for long time, I put it on the cutting mat to keep it flat while it was being cut.  I cut out the design.
3. Probably the hardest part of the project was cleaning the glass!  There was a big swath of something that looked like rubber cement holding the “fake” picture in the frame.  I used adhesive remover and an old plastic card to remove the goo.  Glass cleaner was used to remove the residual goo and fingerprints.
4. I lined up the edges of the glass with the grid on the cutting mat and carefully placed the using tacky transfer paper.  Since three of the lines were about the same width, they were pretty easy to get centered.  The word today was a little trickier.   I found the middle of the word, marked the transfer paper with a permanent maker and marked the middle of the glass by placing a sticky note on the mat.
5. Then the glass needed to be cleaned again.  It was difficult to clean fingerprints around the letters.
6. The front glass was placed in the frame, followed by the glass with the letters then the spacer and it was almost finished.
7. A piece of ribbon was tied to the cap of a dry-erase marker and it was stapled with another length of ribbon to the back of the frame.  Another piece of ribbon was added to the other side.

Yea!  It’s done.