A little over a year ago my husband and I moved from our small college town in southern Indiana in favor of city life in Indianapolis. Matt and I met at Indiana University, got married in Bloomington, and lived there for the first two years of our marriage. While Indy was just moving back home for my husband, it has been a completely new experience for me having grown up in a very small town in southern Indiana. I’m not a fan of living in the city (yet), but I do not doubt that this is where the Lord has us right now and I am very grateful to not only be close to my in-laws, but to also be a part of a wonderful church here.

Moving gave us double the square footage that we had in Bloomington and I needed to figure out how to fill the walls and make this new place our home. A song that I absolutely love by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros says “Home is wherever I’m with you” and I used this line to inspire the artwork that I made to hang above our couch in the living room.

Here is a little DIY project that I made. It didn’t take a whole lot of time to create this sign, but it did take a lot of effort because I do not own any power tools.

The first thing that I did was build the sign. Using reclaimed wood from an old pallet, I built my canvas by hand. This step can easily be skipped because wooden signs can be found in almost any craft store (my favorite is Hobby Lobby).

I chose a font online and printed out the words from the song in the size that I wanted. I did the same with the outline of Indiana.

As much as I dislike my own handwriting, I freehanded the H, M, and E because there is something beautiful about not having perfection in a work of art.

I colored the back side of the printouts with white chalk. I then arranged the print outs on the sign face up where I wanted them. Using a pen I traced the words and the outline of Indiana. Doing this will transfer a chalk line onto the wood.

Once the outline was there, I simply painted the sign using black acrylic paint.

Erasing the chalk outline was easy with just a wet paper towel. Then I called on my husband to drill holes and hang it on the wall. We had to use heavy duty hanging equipment because that thing is very heavy and we didn’t want it falling on to anyone’s head while they are sitting on our couch.