Life is Good

Since we moved in together, our fridge has started to look like we suddenly have 40 children trying to display their best moments.  By that I mean lists, tickets, Christmas cards, love notes, photos, invitations… we have enough for a household of 42.  So I had the idea for a project to make all of our love notes (from each other and from visitors) into wall art.  I have always loved the photo displays made of string and clothespins so I decided to modify it for our kitchen wall.

Why this saying?  When Walker and I started dating, the phrase “Life is Good” seemed to pop up everywhere and life certainly was good.  It became a sweet reminder of how lucky we are.  Now we see it every day, along with little love notes from friends and family.  Talk about a mood-booster!  Here’s a little tutorial in case you’d like to make one of these in your home (spoiler alert: it is super renter-friendly!).

I started by placing a piece of blue painters tape at the height where I wanted the base of the letters to sit and used my level to make sure it was straight (but a chalk line would have been perfect here too!).  Next, I did some math.  I measured each of the letters (purchased at Michael’s for $2 a piece), added .5″ of space between them, and added 2.5″ for space between words to get my total length.  I centered this length on the wall and marked it on the tape.  Then I went back and marked where each letter would go.  When that was finished, I had a (level) piece of tape with the exact positions where the letters would sit.

Before getting the letters on the wall, I placed a thumb tack on the bottom-left corner of the L and the bottom-right corner of the D for the string.  I measured out the string and tied it to the thumb tacks for our clothespin line.

Then I used Command picture hanging strips to stick the top of the letters to the wall.  This involved a lot pressing and waiting.  Once I had all of the strips in place, I removed the blue tape and did the same for the bottom of the letters.  However, I deviated from the picture hanging strip directions here a bit and just left the letters on the wall once they had both strips.  I found that removing the letter from the wall too much resulted in the strip coming off of the letter.  This is how I lost my first S.

Once I replaced the S and got all of the letters on the wall, I pressed some more for good measure.  I grabbed a bunch of love notes and some clothespins to complete our “Life is Good” wall art.  I even added a hanging basket (made from a curtain rod bracket, an S-hook, and wooden basket I had in the house) to hold additional clothespins.  Our wall is happy and so is our less-chaotic fridge!