Wisconsin Tribute

As most of my followers know I'm a Wisconsin native. I was born and raised in south central Wisconsin on a small farm, in a small farming community. We had raised everything from chickens, ducks, and turkey's to beef steers, rabbits, and horses. While growing up I was active in 4-H and FFA, and even spent my sophomore year in high school serving as the Green County Dairy Princess. But with all that comes my love for my state, and you can't be a true Wisconsinite if you don't have love for the Milwaukee Brewers, the Green Bay Packers, and the Wisconsin Badgers. Well needless to say, I'm a die hard Wisconsin Badgers fan through and through!!! So, I found the perfect way to pay tribute to my favorite team that's 20 hours away.

While my husband, daughter, and I were shopping at Home Depot (of course right? Where else) we came across the a shelf of stone pavers that fit together for patios, or sidewalks, or what have you. Well, my husband noticed that one particular set of stones were in the shape of Wisconsin.

As you can see it looks just like Wisconsin, with the exception of the missing Door County thumb! So, I got the instant idea to take it home and paint it and use it as a decoration in my garden!

I kept things fairly easy and inexpensive as well. I went to Michael's and bought a small can of Krylon in black, a set of nice camel hair craft brushes by Artist's Loft, and some gloss enamel in white and red by Americana. 

I started things off as anyone would normally expect, I spray painted the entire paver black.

I sprayed it probably a total of 3x to get a nice black color.

I then free-handed the "W" onto the stone with the white enamel.

and filled it in with the white enamel also. (horrible picture. Sorry)

After waiting for the white to dry, I then free-handed the shadow look around the "W" with the red enamel. 

I think it turned out really nice and is a great tribute to my favorite team in my front flower garden. If I could change anything, I would have probably painted the whole paver Red, kept the "W" white, but did the shadow in black. All in all though it was a extremely easy and it was all under $20!