DIY Large Canvas and Arrow Art

Hi all! It's Friday! I love short weeks :) Wish we had more exciting plans for the weekend, but alas we do not. Well, I guess we kind of have something. We'll be doing our gender reveal party! I'm super excited. I'm almost 22 weeks along now, so I've been keeping my little secret far too long...I'm surprise I haven't slipped up yet :)

I've been getting my house ready for the party and realized that I needed a large piece of art for my front room. I've been doing collages of photos and art in there lately, but it just seemed too cluttered since there was already a gallery wall in there also. So, I figured that it would be best to just use one large piece of artwork.

So, I decided to make one ...of course :) Most large canvases this size start around $20 or so...but I made this one for free! If you need to buy the supplies, it'll run your around $5. Here's what you need:

• 1x2 (2 pieces cut to a smaller size of your liking, and 2 cut larger)
• 4 corner brackets
• Drapery Lining (use your coupons to get this super cheap!)

The size of my canvas is 48"x30". The best thing about the drapery lining is that it doesn't seep through the back and it's super thick.

The first step is putting your frame together. Just line up your smaller and larger 1x2 pieces and screw in the brackets. Make sure the frame is square or else you'll be in a world of hurt later :)

 Now get your drapery lining. Place it on the ground top side down. Place the frame on top of it and cut the fabric about 2"-3" around the outside of the frame. Then get your staple gun, and start folding the fabric over and stapling it to the backside of the frame.

On the last two sides, make sure you pulling the fabric pretty taut when you staple it down.

Now, draw out your design! I did the a two arrow design..meeting together. I'm not sure what else to call it. The meeting arrows? Maybe it looks more like an X. Anyway. To get this look, I measured the middle point first, which was 24 inches wide and 15 inches high. Then measured down 12 inches on both sides and marked that point. Next I measured 12 inches up from each corner and marked it there. You can see in the below diagram how the lines meet, etc.

 When you have your designed marked on both sides. Place some tape meeting each mark on one side of the design. Or if you drew the lines, along each line. I used painters tape at first, but it was super windy outside so it kept coming up...as you can see from the below picture, it wreaked havoc on it :) Then I resulted to some packing tape which worked really well. I didn't want to use packing tape on the whole thing, so on the pieces that I could, I taped down some freezer paper to prevent spray over.

Then I spray painted it using Krylon's Metallic Gold. Since it is on fabric, you may get an uneven looking sheen to it, so keep at it until you get your desired look. I was fine with a little splotchiness since it gave it a little more aged look.

Now tape up the other side and do the same thing!

If you notice that you did get some spray over, you can just tape up the gold part and spray paint or paint the white part now too :) I had to do that...ugh. Dang wind! lol

And there you have it!

 Oh, and why yes, I did in fact paint that teal table back to white. I couldn't help myself! It was like 2 days later too lol. It just looked like an eyesore and I couldn't find any place to put it. But now that it's white, it looks perfect everywhere :)

Have a great weekend!