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!
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