October Canvas Painting

Every year I go home to East Texas for a little something called the Yamboree. My parents live out that way so try to take Friday off and have a three day weekend with them. There's a really cool little place I like to go to with my mom sometimes called Create Art! What I like about it is they let you do your own thing. They have different products for you to start out with like blank canvases, pottery-type dishes and figurines, glass pieces etc. The last time I was in, I painted this plate:

I fuh-reaking love this thing! I don't entertain that often so it's really cute even for display purposes. But you paint something like this there or go the glass work, and then they put the pottery-type stuff in the kiln or do whatever it is they do to the glass stuff, and you can come pick it up later. So you're paying probably about the same price you would if you bought it in the store but you get to make it your own design or whatever and they provide all the supplies. This past weekend was only my 2nd trip but I really like going there. My dad bought me a gift certificate so this weekend I wanted to use the rest of the money I had. It took me awhile to decide on a project, and then it took me a little bit longer to decide what kind of painting I was going to do. So this is what I finally ended up doing.

I painted the canvas a solid color. they didn't have the shade of aqua that I wanted so I had to make my own using blue, green, and brown. I didn't worry about making sure the colors were mixed perfectly. I think it looks better when it's more splotchy looking but you can't tell a huge difference. I used acrylic paints so they dried pretty fast. Then I took some painter's tape and marked off the lines.

 Now one thing that's not in the picture are the diagonal lines that you see in the next pictures. I forgot to snap a picture of those diagonals but I did tape those off before going to the next step. To get the thinner diagonal lines I cut the strip of painter's tape in half.

For the next layer (you can see the diagonal lines in this picture), I did a splotchy mix of brown and green. I didn't mix them as you can tell. Looks kind of funky now but when I took the tape off, it looks awesome!

 See? Looks cool right?? Wait for it to dry a little and then pull the tape off.

 It looked a little empty to me so I wanted to add some more detail. I wanted it to have my style to it :)

As you can see above and in the picture below, I also added some gold sparkle paint to the dots. It really gave the piece more dimension.

It took a couple of hours for that to dry. But when it was done....

I love it!!!!! But wait until you see what I did next!!! This canvas is about 16x20" which is kind of small once I put it above my bed. But I found this really cool frame with glass at the dumpster a couple of years ago that I knew I would use one day. I've been keeping it behind my couch (which I also got at the dumpster...) ever since, just waiting for the day I can make something with it.

So I mounted it on the wall above my bed, and then hung the canvas up in the middle. I want to say the frame is 22x28? Something like that...but it's a really cool focal point and I can't wait until a visitor comes and sees it for the first time :)

If anyone is a little color-OCD like me (is that a thing?? It has to be right??) they will notice the aqua shades are different between the bedspread and the painting. I don't know why but it doesn't bug me haha! I am going to get a new curtain (or make one...) but for right now I'm satisfied :) Everything is a work in progress in my home, and piece by piece it's all coming together.

Ok more pictures yaaaaay!!!!