Spontaneous Moment #47: Home Sweet Home Artwork

My fiance and I recently moved into a new place and wanted some new wall art to help spruce up our place.

I didn't want to just go out and buy an expensive painting or artwork, but rather have something that is more meaningful.

Here's where Pinterest comes into place. I turned to the website where I'm a loyal pinner and started searching for ideas. I kept seeing these pins for places that people have called home. The only problem is whenever you go to the actual link, the website says, "Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist."

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

I decided I wanted to create a canvas of every state that my fiance or I had lived in. 

I'm going to figure this out myself. So let the crafting begin.

Tools:
Canvas
Paint colors of your choice
Contact paper
Scissors
Paintbrush

I only bought four primary colors (red, blue, yellow and black) and then mixed them together to create other colors.  I find it cheaper that way.

Instructions:

I drew the state on contact paper and then cut it out and stuck it onto the canvas. Some of the paintings were going to be multi-colored so I went ahead and painted the canvas before placing the contact paper on top. Smooth out your contact paper on the edges to make sure there are no air bubbles.

I pressed a book on top of the contact paper for an hour. This will keep your paper pressed down during the painting process. You don't want any paint to be able to slip underneath the contact paper and ruin your masterpiece!

Now it's time to paint around the contact paper. Let it dry and repeat twice so that your final product has three coats of paint on it.

Painting Washington, DC

 I didn't paint the entire canvas. Just the area that would cover the contact paper. I then painted my border.

Painting West Virginia

Add your top coat. It's important that you add three coats of paint otherwise you might see the color underneath.

Let it sit for a day before peeling off your contact paper. I made the mistake of peeling off my contact paper and some wet paint got into my state outline. I had to repaint and fix my mistake.

 How they turned out after drying.

 Finally hanging up and bringing light to that white wall.

 

Our respective home states hang over our sides of the bed.