What? Not impressed?
It’s not my style either, that’s for sure.
I would guess it’s been hanging on the wall at that thrift store for quite a while. But it was BIG (22″x28″) and CHEAP (99 cents), and I needed some kind of art to finish off the nursery. So I gave it a little makeover.
First I painted a solid greyish-tan base coat over the whole thing.
Then I came up with what I wanted to put on it. I decided to make a vintage poster-inspired flower shop ad. I made the graphics in Photoshop, then printed them out true-to-size and taped all the sheets of paper together. It looked like this:
Then I used a brilliant little trick for transferring images. I rubbed the back side of the paper with brown pastel chalk, like this:
Then I placed the paper back on the canvas with the pastel part touching the surface and the printed side up. I traced over every line with a pencil and when I removed the paper, it looked like this:
Perfectly detailed outlines! This technique worked out so well. Just make sure you choose a chalk color that you won’t mind if some parts of it show… cuz they will. 🙂
The last step was to use craft paint and fill in all the shapes. I added a little oomph by outlining everything in white pastel chalk, which really made things pop. Check out the finished product:
So much better than the original, don’t ya think?!?
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