Portrait Canvasses {DIY Art}

This is one of my favorite projects ever. I'm thrilled with how these canvasses turned out, and for super-cheap! It's not a new project and it's certainly not the only how-to out there, but I wanted to share it because I still puffy-heart love it. So here's my original post from a year and a half ago!

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I love the look of canvas portraits, don't you? 

Sometimes you can find pretty good deals, but even those good deals times three kids can really add up! I decided to find out a way to do it cheaper. 

$2.50 each, in fact! 

Here's how.

I started by taking a jump drive to Staples and asking for 8 1/2 x 11" color copies of my high resolution images on card stock for 98 cents each.

Then I went to Michael's and bought a 10-pack of 8 x 10 canvasses for $25 on sale for $20 plus my 20% off coupon which means I really paid $16. $1.60 each isn't bad!

Next I painted the canvasses with white paint to act as glue. Mod podge would be better, but I didn't have any. I knew the paint would work as glue because of this project. 

I had already trimmed the white edges off the pictures--don't bother! Just try to center the picture on the canvas because you'll have to trim it down and you don't want to cut off too much of your kiddo's head!

Press and smooth out the back side of the canvas.

I was worried about the card stock wrinkling, so I weighed it down with books in the middle and left it overnight. 

The next day I trimmed the edges off the card stock with a razor--I'm fancy like that! I'm sure an exacto knife would do the trick.

Then I went over the edges with a fine-grit sandpaper. You could paint the edges of your canvas if you want, but I like the white with the bright colors.

To really protect your canvasses, you could paint on another layer of mod podge over the top, or polycrylic. I haven't done that yet, but I plan to! 

Here you can see that it did wrinkle a little, but it's only noticeable from a certain angle.

I love my new canvas portraits, and coming in at $2.50 each, I made a copy for the grandparents too!

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Just in time for the holidays! Break out those cameras and get some shots of your kids in the pretty leaves, then make some portrait canvasses for the grandparents!

This is Day 17! Come back for another two weeks of awesome DIY art ideas!