DIY Sparkly Ampersand

As I have already confessed, I have a deep and abiding love for Pinterest. We get together every night to share ideas for home decorating, DIY crafts, and fashion. And by "share", I mean that I shamelessly steal other people's ideas. 

So. Very. True.

I recently came across an easy and cheap DIY art idea from Virginia at LiveLoveDIY. Easy and cheap?! My two favorite adjectives! I read through Virginia's tutorial for a giant ampersand made from thumb tacks(!), and the one that inspired her, by Angela at Life in Velvet. After a few hours and a lot of Netflix, this is what I came up with:

It was actually really fun, and I love the product! And the whole thing cost me... drumroll... eight bucks. I bought a two-pack of 12x12 inch canvases at Michaels for $7.99, so about $4 each. (I'm saving the other to make a piece of word art like this to add to a gallery wall.) And these packs of 300 silver thumb tacks were $1 a piece at Dollar Tree (I bought four packs and used about 1,000 tacks. Whew!)

I used Virginia and Angela's photos to free-hand the shape of an ampersand onto my canvas with pencil. Then I started filling in the outline with tacks. The ones on the edges needed to be hammered in, because I couldn't push them through the wood frame by hand.

Once I was ready to start filling it in, I worked from the outside in, overlapping tacks slightly. I was imagining dragon scales. :)

This is the finished product:

And this is what it looks like adorning the white hutch in my dining room.

I have about 200 silver thumb tacks left, and now I'm imagining all the things I could do with them. I'm fantasizing about thumb tack nail head trim. On everything.

Thank you to Virginia, whose blog is a favorite of mine, and to Angela, who inspired Virginia! Who inspires you to DIY greatness?

<3 Cara