Canvassing Photos!

I've been wanting to post about this for a while now, but had to wait until after Mother's Day to do so (one of the canvasses I did was a present for my Mom).  I found a few different methods of making a canvassed photograph and decided to try them!  They are both fun, and one is much more time consuming than the other but will make a more crisp looking end result. 

Method #1:
Supplies needed:
Mod Podge
A Paintbrush
Crafting Sponge
Paper towels
A towel
Scrapbook paper
Paper cutter or scissors
Photo print
Canvas

If you're wondering where to find canvasses, I went to Ollies and got 8x10 canvasses for less then $2.  11x14 were less than $3 and 13x19 were about $4.  You can get them at craft stores as well but they're a bit more expensive. 

Here's what my supplies look like, together.  Since this picture, I've used up the smaller container of mod podge and went to AC Moore with a 50% off coupon and got a huge thing of it for $9.  Worth it, trust me!

To prep your canvas, put a layer of mod podge on all the sides and top of your canvas.

Let this dry completely, about 20 minutes total.  When it finishes drying, cut the scrapbook paper so it's a bit smaller than the sides.  Also trim your photo at this point, so it's slightly smaller than the size of the canvas.

Apply another layer of mod podge to the sides of the canvas, one at a time, and put another layer of mod podge on the strip of scrapbook paper, then apply to the sides of the canvas. 

After this, apply a layer of mod podge to the back of your photo and carefully apply to the front of the canvas.  Allow this to dry completely, about 20 minutes.  After this, apply a layer of mod podge over the top of the photograph and let this dry completely.  It will appear milky white but will be clear when it dries!  I didn't take a photo of this for some reason.  After this stage, I put the canvas upside down on a towel (not a paper towel, it will stick to the photo) and put books on top of it to dry thoroughly overnight.  The next day, paint the empty spaces on the canvas with black paint for a pretty border.  This is the finished product!

Love this technique!  Now for the second!

Method #2:

This one I tried a few different ways.  I have several printers, one is a more expensive color inkjet printer and another is much less expensive and only prints in black and white.  I usually only print documents on that printer.  That being said.

Supplies needed:
Photographic print on regular paper
mod podge
canvas
artist sponge
spray bottle
paper towels

This one is a faster method, but is more "artsy". 

I didn't "finish" these yet.  You can do the border/edges with scrapbook paper on these, too.  I may do this.  Haven't decided yet. 

Step one: Apply a generous layer of mod podge to your canvas.  Place your paper image (remember to print the image in REVERSE!) face down on the canvas and allow it to dry for several hours or overnight.  I waited overnight with one, several hours for the other two. 

Step two: Put a later of paper towels down on the table/surface you are crafting.  Spray the surface of the canvas with water liberally and rub lightly until the paper starts to crumble away.  Continue doing this until all the paper has come off and the image underneath is visible.  Spray again and lightly brush away excess paper fragments.  Apply another layer of mod podge to the top of the image and let dry.

Here's where the printer problems became visible.  The first image I did turned out like this:

Looks kind of old-timey, which I like.  But the black and white was showing a lot of magenta.  Weird!

So I switched the print settings on my printer to greyscale, and came up with this:

 

Still kind of pink.  Weird!  So I decided to make a print on the cheap printer.  It actually turned out pretty well!  Even though I forgot to reverse the image.  

 

I need to finish the borders on these, as I said.  But I think it's cool to try these new methods and will continue to do so!  Happy crafting!

Glow!

I've seen these all over pinterest and decided to try one.  I've got another pinterest inspired post in a few days... but I have to wait on that.  For now, this takes less than 5 minutes and is super cute.

Night light in a snap!  I found some glow stick bracelets on the top of the fridge, left over from Halloween.  Grabbed a small jar and a bit of glitter and presto!  Instant nightlight. 

Beautiful, right?  Step one: CAREFULLY cut open a glow stick.  Empty it into a jar (tapping the sides to get it inside.)  Sprinkle in some glitter, close the lid, shake it up and there you have it!  Perfect for vacations/overnights/camping when kids are scared of the dark.  Or you just want to try something cool.

Another blog soon!

Modge Podge canvas photo and Mind Jars

So the last few days I've been trying out some ideas that I had found on Pinterest.  By the way, I absolutely LOVE that site... it has given me so many great ideas! 

The first craft I tackled was the mind jar.  For those of you who don't know, a mind jar is a little bottle filled with glitter that you shake like a snow globe... it's perfect if you're frustrated or for a grumpy child to watch... you are supposed to be calm by the time all the glitter has finished swirling around and settled on the ground.  The directions I found were as follows:

Ingredients needed:
1 tablespoon of glitter glue
1 tablespoon of glitter
food coloring
1 cup warm water
1 mason jar

So after work the other day I stopped at A.C. Moore and picked up a five pack of glitter glue, along with two little tubes of glitter in blue and purple.  I had some old mason jars in the basement and rinsed them out, then emptied most of one of the tubes of glitter glue into the bottom of the jar.  I headed up some water and mixed it with the water.  I realized that the glue didn't entirely dissolve, but thought that would be okay.  I filled the jar the rest of the way with cool water (because it was way too hot to handle with just the hot water in it) and dumped half of the container of glitter into the mason jar.  I then screwed the lid on, shook it up, and ended up splashing water all over myself.  Whoops!

No big deal, I'd just find some glue and glue it shut.  The first glue I found was hot glue... and that didn't work out so well.  But I took a picture anyway.

 Isn't it pretty?

I thought so.  But the lids didn't work, and if you look closely, you can see the awful hot glue.  Yeeck. 

So I did some quick thinking and realized that... duh!  We constantly have glass/plastic bottles and containers overflowing the recycling bin... so I grabbed a few.  Two were glass former salsa jars, one was a plastic former green tea bottle (which I do not have a photo of) and one was a plastic former juice bottle. 

I filled one of the salsa jars with the blue glitter mixture from one of the mason jars, but stopped on my way home the next day, this time at Walgreens, for more supplies.  I found that the glitter glue and glitter were WAY cheaper at Walgreens, and I bought a few egg coloring kits for the color tablets (couldn't find any food coloring, and I guess we were out at home.)








So I mixed a purple tablet in with one and an orange in with another. 
The bottle on the right is the purple mixture.  I don't really like the bottle... it doesn't show the glitter mixture well enough.  I'll find a different container for it sometime soon.

The one with the orange tablet... I think it's kind of gross looking, actually.  I used multi-colored glue and glitter and it just didn't turn out well.  It looks almost like... soup. 

The blue is my favorite by far.  I didn't add a color tablet to it, but it swirls beautifully and looks great.  I think I need to add a little more glue to my jars, though, so they swirl more slowly and it takes longer for the glitter to settle.  Overall, though, my son is in LOVE with these jars and insists upon taking one to bed with him to watch and "calm down" before he goes to sleep.  I think it's so cute.  I find myself shaking them up as I pass them in the house.  I like glitter.







So the other project I worked on today was one I've been meaning to try for ages, that I found on pinterest.  It's a do it yourself canvas photo tutorial, and you can find the original here ... anyhoo.  I thought this would be a really easy task, but decided to test it out on my less expensive color printer, when the ink had almost run out, on a small canvas that I purchased at Ollie's for $1.25. 

The ingredients needed for this project are:

1 canvas
Modge Podge (or elmer's glue)
a color printer
Tissue paper
Regular paper
tape
scizzors
PATIENCE

.... haha.   I had to add that last bit.  So as I said, my printer was running out of color ink, so I decided to try out one of my "old time" photos, one of my son and two of his friends from last Spring.  I taped the tissue paper to a regular piece of paper and tried to send it through the printer... to have it try to eat the tissue paper.  Tried again with it taped a bit better and it tried to eat the tissue paper again.  Ack!  I found a thicker piece of paper, more of a poster board type of thickness, but 8x10 size.  I taped the tissue paper to the thicker piece and ran it through... success!  I cut the tape from the paper, and here is what it looked like:

 The one above I found was too SMALL.  Darn.  Then I tried printing the right size, printed on the paper instead.  Whoops!  Didn't realize that the canvas was 8x10, not 5x7, and had to make the print size larger.  So I tried again... and didn't tape it down enough.

Oops!  Gotta tape it better.  Let's try that again.

There we go!  So now I had to wait for the tissue paper to dry, even though the print was clearly not saturated with ink as the earlier versions because I was running out... I wanted to make sure it worked before I decided to try to make more.

I gathered my other materials and painted a layer of modge podge onto the canvas.  I then lay the tissue paper photo on top and failed to follow a direction from the original tutorial, which said to slowly press the tissue paper to the canvas in a circular motion until it all adhered to the canvas, then that was that... but I didn't realize that, I was running from memory, and added an extra step.

Yep, I covered the not-pressed-properly tissue paper photograph with another layer of modge podge and let it dry.  It turned out sort of wrinkled and full of bubbles, but had a great old-newspaper quality that I liked.  So I painted the edges of the canvas and ended up with the following:

 

See?  It's kind of oddly colored, but it's vintage-y and I LOVE vintage.

I bought another ink cartridge tonight from Office Max, and will be buying more 8x10 canvases from Ollie's to make more of these.  Definitely a fun project... even if it didn't turn out exactly the way it was meant to.

So that's all for today!  More fun projects to come, I promise!

Good Afternoon!

So someone recently told me that my writing was too peppy... like a cheerleader going "rah! rah! rah!"... well, that's how I see things.  I see something new and exciting and feel pretty "rah! rah! rah!" about trying it.  Even if it doesn't work, which is usually doesn't at first.  Even if I have to try it several times to get any kind of positive results. 


...Even when I go  AaAaGH!  ... Which is most of the time, when I'm trying something out.  Especially DIY.


So a very good friend suggested that I create a blog for photography.  But this isn't going to stop at photography.  It will be ...some... about photography, but also about the do it yourself things I try to tackle, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  And the things I do everywhere else.  Like selling things on eBay... what I learn about the various stuff I'm selling and pass along the information.


I'll make a post soon about my most recent DIY attempts.  The first is the "mind jar", you know, those jars filled with sparkles that you're supposed to shake up and watch until the glitters settle, and be calm by the time everything is at the botoom.


The other is a do it yourself photo on canvas.  So far, that one has been interesting.  So I'll post that later, with photos, but for now I am going to enjoy the last few hours I have before my son get's out of school.  Ta ta!