Paint Chip Love Note DIY

Valentine's Day 2012...come and gone.  Here's a little peek at my diy cheapo-gift for hubby this year.

So for my sweet hubby, I thought I'd get a little creative this year and make a card/piece of artwork rather than look for the perfect Hallmark creation at the grocery store.  I found my inspiration from the Dating Divas (a really fun site for lover stuff, by the way), but as usual, went slightly overboard.

So here's my first shot at a very low-budget, low-talent project on the blog...

Paint Chip Love Note

First you will need a piece of cardboard the desired size of your finished product (or slightly bigger since you'll probably need to trim up the edges), mod podge and a foam brush, a pile of paint chips from your hardware store in shades of red and pink (I looked for all the ones that had fun names like Be My Valentine, Temptation, Luscious Lips, etc), and printed words (the cheesier the better, if you're husband is anything like mine).

Start laying out your paint chips in different directions and play around with overlapping the edges and blending the colors...my main goal was to keep the funnest and risque-est (is that a word?) names showing as I moved all the strips around.  I finally found an arrangement I liked and started mod podging.

Remember to mod podge a thin layer on the cardboard itself as well as the back of the paint chips and start glueing them all down.  Smooth out any air bubbles with the heel of your hand.  Give it 15 minutes or so to dry and get a good grip while you grab a cup of tea.  I'm pretty sure that's key to the process.  Then mod podge the back of your words and the paint chip area where you want to place them and glue these down as well.  Give this a few minutes as well and then mod podge the whole darn thing.  Be sure to keep your brush strokes all in the same direction and be generous.  It will dry clear...I PROMISE.  No seriously.

Mine took about 15-20 minutes to really dry at this point.  I trimmed up the weird edges and wrote a little love note on the back.  No, you can't see that part :)  SOME things are sacred, even in the blogging world.

Hubby LOVED the finished product.  He just laughs and laughs when I do things like this for him.  I try not to read too much into that and choose rather to think that he just REALLY enjoys little creative cheesy gestures, however strange they may be.  I think his favorite part was actually reading all the funny names, like "hot spice", "patty cake", "pretty in pink", and "secret rendezvous".  If I was super-creative and professional-like, I might even put this in a simple frame and slap 'er up on the mantle as some V-Day decor.

Have you seen the bajillion and 2 project ideas for paint chips on Pinterest?  Here's a few to get you started...  Anyone else love the rush of "stealing" free paint chips for a totally different purpose?