DIY Quote Painting With Ombre Effect

Ever since I saw this quote by Walt Whitman on Pinterest (or Instagram?) I fell in love with it and knew I wanted it on a canvas somewhere in my house. I’ve also been obsessed with my Cricut since I got it and thought it would be the perfect time to test out the stencil vinyl.

If you want to see how I did this in an hour keep reading 🙂

I used a 24″ by 24″ canvas at Michael’s. I started out by painting the bottom this dark khaki color. I wanted the quote to show up in this color (I did a reverse stencil method). So use whichever color you want your quote to be on this step. I only wanted by quote on the bottom half of the canvas, so if your quote takes up the whole canvas, paint the whole canvas your color anywhere the quote will be. You’ll see what I mean below…

Let this layer of paint fully dry. I then added on my stencil vinyl (if you don’t have a Cricut no worries – just used thick stickers to spell out your quote!) Just make sure they are stuck pretty good to the canvas/paint.

If you’re curious, I mixed these two colors below to get my dark khaki color. I also used the Suede color plus white for the ombre effect.

I then added three coats of white acrylic paint over the khaki. I let it fully dry between coats because it was looking streaky.

While waiting for my white to dry, I added in my “ombre effect”. I used the color Suede at the very top, then kept adding a little white to it as I went down. Toward the middle is where I went completely white until the bottom. I then added in some white brush strokes at the top just to give it a bit of a vintage feel. Just have fun with this part, it doesn’t need to be perfect which is the great part about it.

I let everything completely dry and then it was the fun part! Taking off the stencil! I used my Cricut weeding tool, but tweezers work too. As you can see, mine bled a little through the stencil. It’s totally fine, and I actually didn’t even touch it up at all, I loved how it looked. If you want it looking perfect and yours also bled, just take a small paint brush and touch it up with the color you used for the letters.

Here it is all done close up. I think the imperfections make it complete to be honest…

I decided to hang it above our fireplace and Charlie and I both LOVE it! It honestly looks store bought. My sister told me she loves it and when I said I made it she was like, “Really?! It’s awesome!” That’s always so cool when people think you bought something you made 🙂

Like this project and want to save it for later? Yay! Pin the image below!