Today’s post is fast becoming one of my favorite gift giving ideas. For anyone without a fancy vinyl machine – and not great at free hand painting – you can take a little extra time to do the work, and have a beautiful custom canvas piece of art in your home. It’s easy to make a picture you’ll love without breaking the bank. Total cost for the canvas below: $4.50. I got this canvas in a 4 pack on sale for $5, and I spent $1 per bottle of paint. The rest I had around the house already. Who’s cheap and happy? ME!
Equipment:
16″ x 20″ canvas {or canvas size of your choosing}
Pencil
Scotch Tape
Quote design broken into quarters and printed on 4 sheets of paper
Acrylic paints {in colors of your choosing}
Method:
Start by choosing a quote you REALLY like. Now, I’m going to show you how to make you’re own design using Pixlr and PicMonkey! (Now that PicMonkey lets you use your own fonts, you can do this first part in PicMonkey isntead of Pixlr.)
Step 1: Create a big blank white picture in Paint on your computer – at least 1500px by 1200px.. Then, head over to pixlr.com. Choose to Open pixlr Editor (Advanced). Upload the blank white photo you just made.
Step 2: Choose the “A” from the toolbox on the left of the screen. Click on your picture to bring up the text pop up box. The cool thing about pixlr is that it will let you use pretty much any font you have installed on your computer. {If you don’t already have a font you love, you can check out dafont.com. Download the font, open the file, click install, and you’re ready to use the font.} Type your quote into the text box. There is no option to center your text, but you can always re-space the words using paint later. Select your desired font from the drop down box, and make your text the maximum size possible. Save your picture.
*If you need to move your words around, now is the time to do it. Open Paint, use the selection tool to highlight the word you want to move, and drag & drop the words into place. When you’re done, save the picture.
Step 3: Go over to PicMonkey.com. If you have Royal features you can add the quote picture you just made using “your own” overlay – or use PicMonkey’s font selection to create your piece. If you don’t have a royal account, just upload the picture itself to edit it directly.
Step 4: Crop your photo to be a vertical rectangle, or to be whatever shape your canvas is. Apply the crop.
Step 5: Add cute embellishments to the top, bottom, corners, or side of your picture. I really liked these arrows from I Rock So What {The clip art from I Rock So What is for personal use only. You can find more great pieces on her site too.} Insert the embellishment as “your own” overlay, or you can use the ones PicMonkey provides. Resize your embellishment to fit the picture.
Step 6: Right click the overlay you just added. There is an option on the menu that will pop up to “duplicate overlay” – click this option. This way your embellishments are exactly the same. Position your overlays how you like them.
Step 7: Save your photo. You can do this in .png or .jpg format. It really doesn’t matter since we’re not using the picture for display.
Step 8: Open you picture in Paint. Determine how wide and tall your picture is. There are numbers at the bottom that will tell you the pixel dimensions. My picture ended up being 600px wide by 725px tall. Now you need to section the picture into quarters. Since my picture is 600 x 725, I need to make sections that are 300px wide by 363ox tall. Copy the quartered section into a new paint window and save the quarter as its own file. Repeat until sections are complete.
Step 9: Print off each quarter image onto an 8.5″x 11″ sheet of paper. Position the papers on top of your canvas and tape them together. Be sure not to place any tape over image or text lines, only tape in the blank spaces.
Step 10: Flip your big image over and using a pencil shade over all of the lines in your image. You want to shade so that the lines are completely covered, your creating a sort of pencil trace paper.
Step 11: Flip your image right side up and re-position over the canvas. Retract the lead on the mechanical pencil. Trace all of the lines of the image with the end of the pencil. be sure to press firmly. If your canvas feels a little flimsy, place a book under the canvas while you trace, and move the book as needed. When you lift the paper you should see a pencil outline of the image.
Step 12: We decided to go with a white background for your canvas. if you want to color the background, do this before tracing. Paint in the bottom portion of each letter. The “nothings” with grey and “love” with red. Paint the arrows red as well. You will need to apply two coats of the acrylic paint. Let paint dry completely after each coat.
Step 13: Using a black Sharpie Brush marker, outline all of the letters and trace all accents. Fill in the bottom portion of all the remaining letters in black.
Step 14: Hang up your canvas and enjoy your hard work.
We’ve rented forever. I always wanted to paint, but it wasn’t worth the hassle. To be honest, I don’t know why I’ve put off this project for so long, but now that I’m almost done I’m really happy with the results. I don’t think I ever would have taken the first step if it wasn’t for my lovely Easy Canvas Prints portrait. I really like the picture, it makes the living room feel so much more home-y, and knowing my mom took it makes it even better.
I went with white, black, grey, and red for the frames and pictures. Why not play off the quote canvas colors? I’ve had a few pieces like the tree ring family print that I’ve been wanting to put up somewhere since last year and I finally have. Winning!!
I have two more spots to fill in and a couple frames to fill, and I’m done!! This well makes me happy every time I come home. It’s us. It’s the boys. It’s me. It’s so much better than a blank white wall!! I even used Jenn’s tutorial from last Friday to make a family name and date collage. Check it.
Totally love it. This print is in the bottom left square frame now. Thanks for the hook up Jenn!!
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