Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Re-purposed Canvas Wall Art Inspired by The Lorax

I'm an educator to the core and love the outdoors. After reading the Lorax, I realized that its basic principles are my driving force to pursue my education and to teach children about the environment and its essential connections to humans. We wouldn't be if it weren't for the world around us. Believe that.

I decided that I wanted to create a piece of art that I could hang in my office to help me inspire me during the tough days.
My Final Creation. Read below for details.

I took a painted canvas that I bought from a thrift store and used its background to highlight certain words from a quote in the book. This is what I ended up with. Pretty darn cool. 
(1) Used the book for a guide so that my drawings were close to accurate. If you don't own this book, you should. Every kid & ADULT needs to read it!


 (3) I drew and cut out my designs for the tops of the truffula trees and then just cut out wiggly lines for the trunks. Leave the backing on the sticker until later. 

Again, mine are mirror image of what I initially wanted, but it worked out.


 (5)   I only had enough stickers to spell some of the words, so I went through and figured out which words I wanted to be colorful, while the rest of the canvas would be painted over in a creme color. Then, drew the outline of my little Lorax and cut him out.


 (6) Here's the fun part. You get to place your stickers on the canvas to preserve the parts of the image that you like and that you want to pop out after everything else has been painted. Place them as you wish and make sure they are stuck down and there are no gaps or air bubbles for paint to leak into.

I should have left most of the background because it would have fit so well with the style of the book and the landscape...but I wasn't even thinking about the bigger picture at the time. Next time...


 (7) I gave the canvas about two coats of paint using a neutral color so the background colors would really show up. I waited about an hour between coats, but do whatever it says on the can.


 (8) Peel off all of your stickers.
 If you stuck them on pretty snug to begin with, you should have crisp lines.

(9) Decorate it to your heart's content!

This is the part where I got a little too crazy with my paint. I'm pretty sure it's because I rarely get to use my craft supplies and figured I had to get it all out of my system. I realized that I should have left more background so it would look like trees were growing out of it.
Plan ahead, lesson learned.

(10) Done and Done. 

While it's not some priceless painting, it means a lot to me.  

What inspires you?

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...