Notre Ferme Urbaine: Engineer Print Art

My first attempt at the Pinterest Challenge! I went with something that everyone and their moms have done: the engineer print art. I needed to add a little somethin' somethin' to our bedroom. Here it is in all it's glory:

Nice, but not finished. So I started looking through photos and picked out my favorite picture of our lovely cat Gizmo. She's taken second fiddle since our puppy Leela came home five months ago, so I thought we should show her some love.

I turned it into black and white and ulploaded it onto Staples' website. I probably should have just gone into Staples and they would have been super helpful in getting it the way I wanted, but I like to limit my random trips across town. So I ordered it online and waited a day for the prints to be made. I had picked out four other photos just in case the one I wanted didn't work out.

When I went to pick up my prints, the kind folks at Staples had put together a special poster for me with one of my photos! I love it and need to find a good place for it.

Anywho, I picked this pin to use as my guide:

Source: bowerpowerblog.com via Jackie on Pinterest

Katie gives a pretty good tutorial on how to do it, so I basically just copied what she did. First step, picking out my insulation board and acrylic paint and adhesive. I purchased a 4'x8' insulation sheet at Lowe's. It was huge. I had a guy at Lowe's cut it in half for me and I still had trouble fitting it into the husband's Prius. When I got home, I measured the photo and cut the board down to size. Then I used some rough sandpaper to smooth out the edges.

I picked out black to paint the edges. It was a good call.

Adhering the photo to the board was super difficult. Katie used a glue stick and I should have too. I used spray adhesive. While it worked pretty well, it was so hard to get the photo straight on the board. Luckily, Mike saw me struggling and offered to help (I'm one of those stubborn people who will probably drown before asking the lifeguard to save me. Random Fact). With his help we were able to get it on the board semi-straight.

Once that was done, there were no more issues. I found some cotton string in my craft box and duct taped it to the sides of the board. Then I hung it!