diy artwork tutorial

Noel and I are currently in the process of simplifying two households worth of stuff into one, and as I'm sure many of you know, it can be quite the challenge at times.  We both have stuff that the other doesn't particularly care for - in my case ultra-girly pink or turquoise decor, and in Noel's case, all sorts of random nick-nacks and posters.

A prime of example of this could be found in our bedroom.  Since I'm not actually moving in until August, Noel decided it was perfectly acceptable to hang up all of his posters all over the room until the day I move in.  Well, being the proactive person I am, and knowing that there is no way I will be able to live with posters of Dave Matthews staring at me in my bedroom, I decided to make Noel a little artwork for his Christmas present. 

Since he is such an avid DMB fan, I knew I couldn't rid the house of everything Dave.  And, although I don't necessarily care for posters, I do like Dave Matthews.  So what was my solution to this problem?  I decided to make two paintings with lyrics from a DMB song.  Continue reading below for the full tutorial.

Materials:

Canvas

Paint - 2 colors (unless you want your letters to be white)

Stickers (I used 2" cardstock stickers from Michaels)

Paint brush (I used a 1.5" standard paint brush from Home Depot)

Straight edge

Measuring tape or ruler

Pencil

Optional:

Paint roller

Paint tray

Large book (I used a textbook to add support under the canvas)

Tutorial:

1. To start out, I bought two canvases from the local craft store.  The ones I bought were 12" x 24" but you can buy whatever size you like. 

2.  I then painted both canvases with standard wall paint (you can use acrylic paint too, I just happened to have left over paint from when we painted our walls).  I wanted the letters to be black, and I wanted black to peek through some of the white, so I painted the whole canvas with one coat of black paint.  You can use a brush or a roller - I used a roller, and if you do, I recommend placing a book or something under the canvas to give it a hard back (otherwise it dips in the middle since it isn't flush against anything).

3. Once the black paint dried, I measured the spacing I wanted the letters to be and drew guidelines on the canvas.  I also drew guidelines so there was an inch spacing on the left/right and 2 inches on the bottom and top.  To determine the spacing, I played around with different configurations using the letters.

 4. Once I figured out the spacing and configuration, I started sticking the first two lines down.  If you have enough letters for the whole image, I would stick all the letters on first.  I however, had to reuse a few letters, so I just did mine line by line.

5. Paint over the letters using your second color of paint.  I used a blotting technique because I wanted it to look kind of cloudy and I wanted some black to show through.  To do this, only use a small amount of paint on your brush.  The "drier" the brush is, the more that the under color will show through.

Another technique you could use is to use a small amount of paint on the brush and make straight brushstrokes horizontally across the canvas.  This would give a streaky look across the painting, which I think would also look neat. 

6. Once the paint has become tacky, you can begin peeling the letters off.  As I said earlier, I had to reuse some of my letters, which is why I started to peel some off a little early.

7.  Once all the paint starts drying and becomes tacky, peel all the letters off, and voila, you have a brand new piece of artwork!

As always, let me know if you have any questions!