From Start to Finish

Inhale... exhale... repeat. This is how I feel now that the holiday craft show frenzy has quieted down. While I certainly enjoyed the months of focus and creating my products for each show, it is nice to not have a deadline... or at least it was nice for the 1 week in between my last show and getting a number of wholesale orders. But, I digress...

During my time "in between" as I like to call it, I was able to paint a 4-piece wall art set that my friend commissioned from me back in September. She wanted a sports theme for her son - baseball, hockey, golf and football. Either in earth tones, or bright, bright, bright!! I went with the former. 

Oh, and I'm so proud of myself... I actually remembered to take photos of the process!! 

Part 1: I found 4 used canvases at the thrift store and covered them with gesso... or rather, had a willing helper to do the gesso part.

Part 2: Covered each canvas with scrapbook pages that I found at a garage sale using Mod Podge (which I bought secondhand off craigslist). Once it was dry, I sanded the paper off around the border to get the paper flush to the edge of the canvas and to also create a rough looking edge. 

Part 3: Added paint! I used a brayer to add some brown, blue and green hues... ya know... earthy-ish. 

Part 4: Trace the outline of the desired shapes (baseball and hockey puck seen here) and fill the inside with gesso.

Part 5: Paint, shade and add detail!!

I chose to go old-school with the baseball and football (seen below). 

Part 6: Paint the edges of the canvas (still working on this part). 

Here they are! The final 4 pieces!!!! Ooo la la... me likey!

I'm really happy with the way they turned out. Like just about every painting, I'm not quite sure or confident at what the end result will be, but it always comes out right in the end.

OHHH!!! I forgot to mention the best part! Each scrapbook page has letters on it that I mostly covered with paint, BUT... each picture has 1 letter that is clearly visible. When put in the correct order, it spells the boy's name - Jack. It's not overtly obvious... just one of those nice little details that I know is there. 

Yay! That was fun. Now I need to get back to those wholesale orders and sew, sew, sew!!