Wall Art Fun

A while back I blogged about a chair makeover I had completed.   I really like the way it turned out but I loved the fabric I used.   I overestimated my fabric need for the chair and ended up with enough to cover a vanity seat and still had a wee bit left. 

I didn't have a need for curtains in the master bedroom (naturally, I had just put up new ones before I fell for this fabric).   I have glass doors on the shower so I don't need a shower curtain and although the fabric works in the room it doesn't work on the bed itself so accent pillows were out, but I just couldn't let this bit of fabric go.

I was trolling around Pinterest land recently and saw lots of idea using canvases and the light bulb went off.  I had recently pulled a picture that was above my tub and had been waiting for the right thing to replace it with.  After seeing all the canvases I headed off to Michael's to get one to try covering with fabric.  As luck would have it, they were on sale and I had a big fat coupon that made a 3 pack of 11 x 14's about $5.00! 

On the ride home I was trying to figure out how to use the other two canvases since I had planned to cover only one.  I toyed with the idea but ended up going to my old stand by, painting.  No, I don't paint lovely landscapes, remember this was my first time with a canvas!  I decided to paint some aspects of the fabric design on my canvases and hang them as a set of three. 

This is the fabric....I love the patterns and the colors.  With the help of The Nana we were able to use some spray glue and cover the fabric canvas pretty quickly.  I sealed it with two coats of Modge Podge.

Then it was on to the painted canvases.  First I made photocopies of parts of the fabric.

I painted each canvas a solid color, one chocolate brown (it looked just like a Hershey bar..yum) and one a creamy off white.  I wanted the design to "pop" so I decided making it dimensional.  I didn't have wood thin enough to work with so I improvised and used fun foam.

Hmmmm...how to do this?   The fun foam I had was primary colors so first I would have to paint it.  Will acrylic paint work?  The foam is, well, foamy so transferring the design could be a problem.  I figured I would never know if I didn't try. 

I traced the pattern from the photocopies onto paper and then onto the fun foam.  The be honest, I could not get the "pattern" to transfer so I just copied the shape and then cut the shape out of the foam.  My plan was to freehand the design.

The shape transferred well and the acrylic paint worked just fine.

At this point I planned to just try and duplicate the design detail from the fabric and apply a bit of stenciling in the corners.  But, as with all things I do...I needed to do just a bit more (plus I was trying to cheat and not paint all the tedious detail on the foam) so I attempted to use parts of the stencil design and stencil those onto the foam.  Ahem....bad idea.....very bad idea.  Patience is not my strong suit so I managed to overlap the stenciling and be very inconsistent with the paint coverage so I trashed the whole dimensional idea.  Now that I am looking at the photo, I may actually try this again!

In the end I went back to the original traced design and transferred it directly onto the paint canvas and then painted in the detail.  It is not dimensional but I do think they turned out nicely.

Here they are in their new home above my tub.

I enjoyed painting these so much!  Love the detail!

 

 I am really happy with the set of 3...I still love the fabric and I really love soaking in my big ole tub looking at them.  Thanks for stopping in, have a great day!

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