Easy and Affordable Artwork

Recently I was organizing all of my crafting supplies by category, paints, papers, ribbon etc. and came across a few small square canvases. I remember buying the miniature canvases on sale, knowing I wanted to use them but nothing was inspiring me at the time. On a spring cleaning binge I tucked the canvases away and luckily I now have the perfect use and necessary supplies. Even if you claim not to be artistic, I think you will want to try this craft.

As a designer, it is the nature of my work to be constantly surrounded by samples, images and articles pertaining to color and color theory. While I am always interested in forecasting the next big trend I am equally excited to be playful with color combinations. I still break out my color wheel from time to time and recall every lesson I learned regarding primary, secondary and complimentary colors. I have utilized this whimsical approach to color with my mini canvas painting project.

This craft is a method of creating a painted series for wall art. I prefer to use square canvases for a uniform look but feel free to use rectangles or a combination of the two shapes. Since I personally sketch much better than I paint, I used a stencil on my canvas. To keep this affordable I opted for a sturdy metal cookie cutter to use as my icon. I placed the cookie cutter onto the canvas and traced it lightly with a pencil onto the center of each piece. Next I thought about what colors would contrast yet compliment each other. I wanted to keep a relationship within the series of paintings so I used the same colors on different canvases either as the 'icon' or 'background' and mixed up the combinations.

With nine canvases in total I have enough pieces to hang my artwork an interesting way. I opted to make a 3 x 3 square of paintings in place of one large piece on a blank wall in my bathroom. I also think this would be chic in a larger format for stairway artwork that staggers at eye level or mixing up small squares with large squares would be a nice form of controlled randomness.

The pricing for all the supplies is very inexpensive so this is an ideal craft for getting the kids involved and if you do not make too much of a mess you can probably re-use the cookie cutter.

Hope you enjoy this easy art project and I look forward to bringing you more ideas in the weeks to come.

Enjoy!

Sara

Materials List:

1. Blank white canvases (the total number is up to you)
2. Clean and dry paint brushes
3. One metal cookie cutter (look for a shape that is easy to trace & recognizable)
4. Tubes of acrylic craft paint

Helpful Hint: Buy an extra canvas so you can paint test spots of your color palette to see how the hues look together and absorb the canvas when dry.