You might remember a little while ago Anna from Angel in The North shared her fab modern china DIY with you all. Today she is back with a brilliant tutorial on how to create your own DIY destination print. It’s a thoughtful idea for a first anniversary or as a gift for friends who have moved house or are getting married, plus it’s budget friendly.
Over to you Anna!
I made this ‘destination print’ for my brother and his wife when they bought their first house recently.
Their travels together, whether for work or holidays, are a big part of their history. For example, they spent an incredible couple of months working together on a project in New Zealand, my brother proposed in Sardinia and they were married at Trinity Chapel, Dublin.
They’d also moved around a lot in London, all the time saving up to buy a place of their own. When they finally achieved that milestone, I wanted to give them a gift that was a fitting reminder of their journey, and to make it even more personal I decided I would make it myself.
And I was pretty pleased with the outcome – as were they, thankfully. In fact my sister-in-law said she’d been admiring similar things online and, before I told her otherwise, she thought I’d bought it. Result!
I used Microsoft Publisher but you can use any programme that allows you to create text of different sizes. Start with a blank document and set up your page as A3 size.
The background should be set as black and your text white. The font I used – the most like London transport typography I could find – was Gill Sans.
As you can see the font is of different sizes – the most important thing is that each line is full from left to right. Your text will vary in height, and you can make some lines bold, but you should try and keep the space between the lines even.
As you can see, my print has 11 lines of text.
I found the easiest and neatest way of adding the text was to create a text box going from one side of the page to the other, before writing your text inside. You can either play around, increasing and decreasing the size of your text and text box, or highlight the text and use ‘autofit’, which can be found in the format menu.
I chose to list special places and events between my brother and his wife, but I also added in the title of their first dance at their wedding, ‘Here Comes The Sun.’ It fitted in quite nicely just above their sun-soaked honeymoon destinations.
But the text can be anything at all that you want it to be.
When you’re happy with the design, print it off and then fit it in a black Ikea Ribba frame.
And there you have a handmade, personalised print which is a great gift to give for birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas. And the best thing, especially in these austere times, is that it only cost you a few quid and a bit of your time.
Thank you so much Anna! I love the strong typographical look to this print in black and white but you could also customise it with different fonts and a coloured background. Do let us know if you’ll be trying this DIY!
Love,
Rebecca
xo
PS! Find Anna on her blog Angel in The North and on Twitter @Angel_In_North
