I could call myself an “artiste” after creating this fine canvas creation, but that would be a big lie. A friend from college, Nichole, is having a little baby girl this December! For her shower, she registered for a bunch of cute owl-themed things for the baby’s room. I saw a canvas on the registry and thought – hey, I could totally make that! So, I basically stole the idea for this from some baby home decor company. Oh well! haha.
So I did. It started off with a regular cheapo canvas from Michaels that I painted pink. Then I really went at it with my Silhouette. I bought the owl image, which included the branch and its leaves, and then used some shapes I already had for the grass and flowers.
The Silhouette I have only cuts a regular letter-sized piece of paper, up to 8.5″ wide. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to effectively fill the large canvas (I don’t remember the size, but it was probably 16×20″ or maybe a little bigger). Didn’t turn out to be a problem at all – the big secret was to cut the branch using the slice tool into 3 separate pieces. Then, I positioned the owls on the strategically so the joints in the paper didn’t show.
I glued everything down with Claudine Helmuth multi-medium. I found this stuff pretty nice to work with. It has a matte finish. I glued all the pieces down first and let them dry. Even though it’s matte, I did find that you could see the adhesive if it was elsewhere on the canvas. I ended up doing a few layers of multi-medium over the whole thing, which alleviated this issue and sealed it all up. It works very similar to mod podge, but leaves a less sticky finished surface.
I don’t know if shows well in the picture, but the paper is all lightly patterned. It’s mostly from the Little Yellow Bicycle Fresh Print Clothesline collection. (Thanks to Belinda for this generous hook-up!). The color scheme was just perfect for this, and since at the moment I don’t use much pink or pastels, it was a great way to play with the paper. I think the orange and purple pieces came from an old K and Company collection pack that I had.
This was a ton of fun to make, and now my brain is contemplating how to make a more “adult” canvas for our living or dining room. You could definitely get creative with the paint layer, and even paint over the shapes as well, or use them as a mask. I think it could look pretty chic with some nice organic flower or leaf shapes. It’s all the fun parts of making art without having to do the difficult drawing part.
PS I’m in uber crunch mode at work now, so I can’t help but see about 900 “technical writer” style/error issues in this post. It’s quite annoying but I’m trying to ignore it. The word “this” without a noun after it? Vague pronouns? Sound the sirens, people… I have to remember, this is a BLOG not a warranted technical document.
OK, bye for now!
In the process of widening the wall between our kitchen and family room and re-drywalling half the kitchen, entryway and dining room, we ended up removing a lot of trim. Oak has a rather large assortment of pry bars that he uses to do this. I admittedly do not know much about how he went about removing the trim, but basically we ended up with a bunch of trim pieces with nails still stuck in them. Since the smooth end of the nail was what we needed to pull on, the basic process we started off with was using vice grips to grip the nail, and then wedging the pry bar under the vice grips to pull out the nail. Not too bad, but a little time-consuming.
When Oak wanted to purchase these extractor pliers, I kind of thought it was a stupid man-purchase. $28 for a fricking pair of PLIERS??? I almost rated it right there along with the biscuit joiner. Then, I discovered just how useful this little device was. You grip the nail, push down and the whole thing is out in one fell swoop! I could de-nail a long length of molding in just a few minutes.
Total life-savah.
Since even Oak complained about my lack of blog posts, I decided to motivate myself to some more frequent posting by sharing my favorite home improvement products. So, over the next few posts (until I run out of steam or ideas) you get to read about the things we have found that we have actually been super pleased with in this home improvement adventure. Like anything else, there are so many silly gadgets you don’t actually need. But then, there are silly gadgets that make life so much easier they are totally worth the investment.
Right now, we are working on getting our drywall and trim finished on the main floor. So, I’ve been working on fixing up all of the doors and woodwork. We have a lot of stained woodwork that just can’t stay that way unfortunately, since it’s so scratched/banged up from 30 years of abuse. So, I’m in the process of smoothin’ it all out and getting it ready for painting. My personal favorite for this is a nice fresh tub of Elmer’s Wood filler. Don’t make the same mistake we did and figure oh, we have like 9000 pieces of molding and 37 doors to putty, let’s buy the industrial size! Unless you plan on doing that task in 2 days (good luck with that), it will dry out. Even our clever idea of putting the putty in a sealed plastic bag – not so great. So buy the smaller container.
(SIDENOTE: This stuff is only for wood you’re planning to paint. It doesn’t accept stain all that well. In fact, what I have learned, for stained woodwork, and my stair-staining experience, is that you’re actually supposed to putty AFTER you stain. They sell tinted putty for this purpose. I’ve used the Minwax putty in a few different colors, and I’m generally not impressed… so stay tuned on that..)
Application technique is simple, but for the best results follows a similar train of thought to applying drywall mud – thinner is better to save your arm from falling off from sanding later on. (Oak will have to post his expertise on drywall at some point… in the meantime check out DIY Diva’s Drywall central.) Depending on how deep the gouge is, I alternate between using my fingers and a putty knife to apply the stuff. For the doggy-induced crosshatch patterns we seem to have on every door (seriously.. did these dogs ever want to stay in the room the were in?), the putty knife allows you to get a nice thin layer to fill in the thin lines. For deeper gouges, it’s easier to get in there with your fingers.
After that, let it dry and attack your putty with sandpaper. If you’re puttying flat surfaces like doors, definitely pull out your random orbital sander for this, as it saves a ton of time. Of course, you’ll make a dust cloud in the process but at this point I’m pretty sure our house is a perma dust bowl. I have completely given up on trying to clean it up until we’re ready to put the final coats of paint on everything (sorry, visitors). For door and window trim, you’ll have to pull out a sheet of sand paper and go at it by hand. Just think about the muscles you’re toning in the process!
Usually, this takes a few iterations of sanding, puttying, sanding again to find every little knick and get it all smooth. However, it’s definitely worth the effort because when you prime and paint, your door/trim/whatever will look brand new.
*Disclaimer: This post was NOT sponsored by Elmer’s. I did briefly consider buying stock in the company but discovered they are not a publicly traded company. Bugger.
