DIY Football Field Wall

Yesterday I revealed my son’s football themed bedroom, and I have a few projects I want to share with you… like how I made this DIY football field wall.

I’m admitting right now that I was super nervous about taking this on. I had never used a vinyl cutting machine in my life, and I wasn’t sure I’d have it figured out in time to actually get this wall finished. Luckily, it was incredibly easy to use, and once I got the hang of it, I finished all the vinyl cutting and hanging in just a couple hours.

The very first thing we did was paint the wall green… that was about 3 years ago. I actually found the can of paint we used, so I can share the color (which I think is perfect for a football field). It’s Martha Stewart Bonsai. This is obviously a before picture!

Fast forward 3 years…

I started by taking measurements and sketching out how far apart my lines needed to be for even spacing. The wall was 11 feet, which meant the half-way point was at 5 1/2 feet. Actual even spacing would have been 10.8 inches, but we went with 10.75 so the end zones would be just a bit bigger.

I found some white faux wood strips at Home Depot… and when I say faux, I mean, these are like styrofoam. They were 8 feet long which was perfect for the room’s 8 foot ceiling. However, we did cut off a bit to account for the baseboards.

We thought a lot about how we wanted to hang these strips because nailing “styrofoam” probably wouldn’t turn out amazing. We figured we had two options: liquid nails or doubled-sided tape. Since liquid nails would probably do more damage to the walls with removal, we chose the double-sided tape option.

As a Mother’s Day gift, my husband hung these for me. Wasn’t that sweet?

Be sure to use a level as you go down, attaching pieces of tape as you go. If you just adhere it to the wall, it could end up crooked.

Now comes the fun part. I decided to purchase a Cricut machine for cutting the vinyl. I did a little research online and found that the blades on the Cricut last longer than those on the Silohoutte, and it’s more user-friendly (which I need!). Please note: I am a label-lover, so I have wanted one of these machines f-o-r-e-v-e-r, and when it was going to cost us $80-$100 to get football field wall decals, my husband was on board with doing it ourselves.

I purchased 7 rolls of Cricut vinyl in the color “Linen”, but I only ended up using 5 rolls, and honestly, I messed up a couple times, so you might be able to get by with just 4 rolls. I looked up which font was closest to the numbers and lettering on a football field. The answer: Clarendon Bold. Now, remember, I am not super tech-savvy, so I downloaded the font onto my computer, and when I typed into the Cricut design program, I was told the character wasn’t supported. Huh? I later found out that you have to tell the Cricut program to do the font bold. Unfortunately, I didn’t find this out until after I’d done all the numbers (in Century Schoolbook font, which was a close second to the Clarendon Bold). So, my numbers are one font and the letters in the end zones are another. (Don’t tell anyone 🙂 )

I basically set up my numbers in the design program and was able to get 6 numbers on a 12″ x 12″ sheet of vinyl. I made each number 5.7 inches in height, and allowed the program to adjust the width so the numbers would look balanced on the wall. I found that creating each number individually worked better than creating one text box with all the numbers.

After the sheet was cut, I simply removed the numbers and applied them to the wall. Okay, it’s not that simple. It takes a little trial and error to get everything even and spaced right. Remember: A level is your friend.

I started by trying to measure distance from the stripes, ceiling, and floor, but I was going crazy trying to be that precise, so I gave up and went the eyeballing-it approach. As long as the bottoms of the numbers were (close to) level, I called it good.

I let my son choose which teams he wanted in the end zones. The Vikings were an easy choice (with us living in Minnesota and all), but the other team went from the Panthers to the Broncos to (finally) the Patriots. At this point I figured out how to use the Clarendon Font, and I made the letters 7 inches tall. (Remember, you don’t have to cut the full 12 inches of vinyl to fit the cutting board, just cut off what you need… for me, I went with 8 inches to allow for error).

I found the letters MUCH easier to work with than the numbers. I, again, found the middle of the wall and marked it with a pencil. Because I had the width measurements from the Cricut program (which I wrote down), I found which letter needed to be in the middle (about 5 inches down on the R). Remember the width of the letters are going to be different depending on which letter you’re using.

In the end, we had a wonderful football field wall.

This project was so fun, and after 3 years in the waiting, I’m happy to say it’s done.

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