Fruit of the Spirits Not A.... Chiquita Banana!

I am a master of kids songs. My years of helping with children's church and VBS equipped me well with crazy songs with motions that inevitably get stuck in my head for days after singing them. "Baby shark" and "Jesus in the boat" are great songs, but I think my favorite song is the fruit of the spirit one. It goes something like "Fruit of the Spirit's not a (insert fruit here, i.e. Chiquita banana). If you wanna be a (insert fruit), might as well hear it - can't be a fruit of the spirit. Fruits are (reallllyyyy fast): love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Oooohhhh!" Repeat. This song gets really fun when you start going through fruits and doing the motions associated with each one. "Prune" is always entertaining.

You may be asking why on earth I'm posting about a VBS song on my blog. Well, friend, since you asked, I just made some new decor for my apartment, decor which displays all 9 fruits of the spirit. In order to make said decor, I had to sing the fruit of the spirit song to remember all the fruit of the spirits, in order, about 74 times. So it'll probably be stuck in my head for the next 6 days or so.

Enough about the song, here's how I made it.

First, I bought 9 of these 10" x 10" canvases. They're the canvases that are wrapped around a wooden frame, so they have some dimension to them. 

Then, I bought 9 different acrylic paints - one for each canvas. I really wanted to use watercolor paints, but holy cow - $11.99 for a 1 ounce watercolor paint bottle is too rich for my blood, so I kinda sorta turned my acrylic into watercolor. 

To make my paint "watercolor," I used about a scant tablespoon of my acrylic paint (I have no other measurement references outside of the kitchen)...

Added about 5 or 6 drops of water...

And stirred. It's definitely not as thin as watercolor, but it worked really well! If I were to do this project over again, I'd probably add more like 8 or 9 drops of water to really make it more like watercolor paint. Also, the paint gets bubbly after this process, but its okay - the bubbles don't show up on the canvas.

I really like the effect the "watercolor" gave. It almost seems grainy to me, which I love.

After I was done painting the canvases, I broke out this baby. If you've never heard of a cricut (pronounced "cricket"), do yourself a favor and check them out. They're phenomenal. They're not cheap, but they're totally worth it (granted, this coming from the girl who's allowed to use it anytime for free, since my mom is cool and has one). I've got more cricut projects to post later. Get excited.

For this project, I decided to use the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge. I just wanted simple, Times New Romanish, lower case letters. 

I tested out my letters with some black card stock to make sure the size and font were exactly what I was looking for.

Success! Just what I wanted.

Instead of having to glue a million, give or take, letters down to canvas, I (once again, I mean my mom) bought some white vinyl to use at the letters. It's basically a big sheet of sticker material, so when you cut out the design you want with the cricut, you can peel off the design and put it on your project. It's awesome.

Before I cut out all my letters, I wanted to get the placement of the canvases just right. I wasn't crazy about any of the more random placements.

I liked this placement the best because of the almost rainbow scheme, but I didn't really care for the grey canvas. So, I painted over it with white paint and mixed up my own turquoise color! That's the beauty of this project - it's really hard to go wrong or mess up. Even if you do mess up, you can easily paint over your mistake.

I finally nailed the rainbow color scheme down and made my first canvas with the white vinyl. I love it! (Punny.)

This is the final project. I couldn't be happier about how it turned out. Since I'll be in a somewhat eclectic apartment next year, I think it'll match everything. Not to mention its a great reminder of the fruits of the spirit! And the cursed song that'll be stuck in my head for the next year while these look adorable in my living room.