DIY: Bird Canvas Wall Art

Blue Cricket Design has a great blog on creating your own canvas well art that looks professional and vintage.  We love the way this looks - very coffee house feeling.

Supplies Needed:
Two Canvases
Permanent Marker
Printed Birds to trace
Scissors
Paint, Wallpaper or Vintage pages to create a canvases back ground
Glue or Mod Podge

It’s easy to find images of birds online by doing an image search. Print your images on card stock or mount them on card stock to create a firm template. Cut them out and your ready to go!
To create some fun texture and interest cover your canvas in Scrapbook paper, Paint or Vintage book pages! To adhere any sort of paper mix two parts water to one part school glue or Mod Podge. Paint your paper with your glue mixture and lay smoothly on your canvas. Once the entire canvas is covered let it dry over night before moving onto the next step.
When it’s dried completely lay your two canvases next to each other.
Use a pencil to free hand your tree branches. Be sure to continue your branch from one canvas to the next.
Outline your penciled sketch with your permanent marker.


Color in your branches completely.
Place your bird images on the branches and trace them with a pencil. Remember you can make a bird face the other way by flipping them over!
Color in your birds.
Now we’ll add our details! Draw on leaves and smaller branches and color them in. Lastly you’ll want to color it all in one last time to insure a deep dark silhouette and to cover up any uneven marker strokes.
Hang them side by side and enjoy!

DIY: Fall Canvas Art

In honor of the beginning and ushering in of the wonderful autumn / fall colors that we just LOVE, here is a second tutorial to help you decorate your home brought to you by My Blessed Life's blog.  Be sure to check her out for more DIY - her blog is excellent!

Beautimous!

Materials Needed:

• Canvas – I buy mine at Hobby Lobby 2 for $8!
• An old book that you don’t care about – I used a 0.25 yard sale book.
• Scraps of scrapbook paper
• ModPodge
• Foam brush
• Scissors
• Letter template – I have a set of cardboard letters from Hobby Lobby that I used for Ridley’s homemade birthday banner.  I just trace around the letters so they are wonderfully reusable!

Carefully tear out the book pages. {Librarians, you might want to look the other way!} Arrange pages and scrapbook paper pieces as desired.  Then begin “gluing” in one area on the canvas. Brush ModPodge both under and over each piece of paper until the entire canvas is covered and glued.

Note: To give your canvas even more interest, you can place some book pages horizontal.  I have all mine going vertically, but if I had to do it over again, I would mix it up.

1. The book pages will be uneven at the edge of the canvas.

2. Even up the edges with scissors, but be sure to leave enough of the pages to turn under!

3. Finish up the corners with a nice fold.

Brush ModPodge all over the edges and corners to make sure they are well secured.

Your canvas might look a bit wrinkled, but try not to go into cardiac arrest.  I promise that it will be okay when it dries.

I added the letters f.a.l.l. to my canvas, but you could do autumn, harvest, fall-ing, simple etc.  The possibilities are endless!  I’m planning on creating other seasonal canvases too! How fun is that!?!

Still in the wrinkly drying process…but quite loverly!