I wanted to create subway art for Brendan's bare, bare apartment walls. He actually liked the idea when I brought it up a few weeks ago. His love of SEPTA (ha, does anyone actually love SEPTA?), specifically the Market Frankford Line, led me to these. I set up the dimensions based on my two 12x24 basic canvases from Michaels. I mocked it up in Publisher and printed it in segments onto landscape legal paper (so I had Frankford/Margaret-Orthodox/Church on one, Erie-Torresdale/Tioga/Allegheny on the next, and so on). I trimmed the sheets so they'd overlap just enough, and modge-podged the heck out of them. It was all bubbly and wrinkly at first and I thought it was a big flop. But the next day, it looked lovely! And I didn't want it too perfect anyway, since it was meant to look old.
I did another coat of modge podge a few days later, and covered the edges of the canvases with electrical tape which happened to be the perfect thickness (thanks, Cag!). Finally, I wanted to dirty them up and distress them a bit. I rubbed them in spots with sandpaper, and tried to stain them with coffee grounds. The coffee didn't do much (but smelled lovely). So I mixed a bit of black paint and water, put my hand in a ziploc baggie, and with my fingers, applied it randomly to mark it up. I let it sit a bit, and then wiped off the excess. Voila! Hope he likes them...
Update: He liked them! A lot!
