Garage Sale Find: Artwork

Hey everyone!  So I've been meaning to do this project for awhile now, I just didn't have a canvas/piece of art to paint it on.  Two weekends ago I found this piece of art at a garage sale for $1.  I liked the art on its own, but I wasn't sure if I LOVED it.  I decided to buy it anyway as I knew I could always make this project if I chose not to keep the original artwork.  After hanging the painting in various areas I figured out I would like to paint over it more than keep it.  To make this project you just need a few materials, and you can easily use any art that's lying around your house. Garage sales and thrift stores are great places to find cheap pictures or art as well. Just make sure you find something for cheap and something that you are not absolutely in love with (as you're going to be covering it with paint).

Here are the before and after shots of my little art project. Check out the steps listed below to make your own wall art!

First step is finding a piece of art.  Like I said, I found this at a garage sale for $1. 

Next, you need to gather your materials.  Here's what you need:

A piece of art (a picture, a paint by numbers, etc.)

Spray paint in the colour of your choice (I picked white)

Stick-on letters (make sure these can be removed and reattached easily).  I bought my stick-on letters from Michaels (a craft store) for $5.75 after a 40% off coupon.

Something to write on your picture (a quote, poem, single word, whatever you feel like).  I picked this poem from an online poet called Erin Hanson (e.h).  You can check out her work by googling "The Poetic Underground".  The poem I chose to use was this:

There is freedom waiting for you

On the breezes of the sky,

And you ask "What if I fall?"

Oh but my darling, 

What if you fly?

Obviously to write something this long you need a bigger canvas, which I had, so it worked out perfectly.  If you have a smaller canvas a single word or a short quote might be a better option.

Once you have all your materials ready, you can begin!

I started by cutting out the letters I wanted to use and lining them up on the canvas.  This way, you can make sure you have room to fit everything.  I put little dots with a marker to show where I planned on the sentences beginning and ending.  As you can see from the picture below, I didn't have enough letters to write the entire poem at one time.  Seeing as I was trying to make this on a budget, I didn't want to buy more than one pack of letters.  The easy way to do this would be to have more letters or to have a shorter quote.  I decided to spray paint the canvas in stages versus all in one go.  This was more time consuming but was my only solution without buying more letters.

Here's the first sentence down and ready to be painted.  I made sure to cover the rest of the canvas so it wouldn't get paint on it.  Remember, this is only necessary if you can't spray paint your canvas all at once.

A few coats of spray paint were needed to cover up the background.  You don't have to worry about the letters being completely covered as you're taking them off anyway.

Here's the second, third and fourth sentences down.  I had to cover the bottom and top of the canvas now.

Fifth and sixth sentences before painting.

Last two sentences ready to be painted.  Like I said before, this would be a lot easier and quicker to paint all in one go.  If you can do that, I would definitely recommend it. If not, painting it in stages turned out fine for me but it took more time.

After your canvas is dry, you can peel off the stick-on letters.  I wanted to save my letters for future projects so I peeled them off and stuck them on a piece of parchment paper.  I also kept the outlines of the already used letters as they might come in handy for another project as well.

Now your art is ready and you can hang it on the wall!

As you can see, I forgot to add one comma and a question mark when I wrote out my poem. Oops!  

Let's just ignore that...

I also didn't use any ruler or device to keep my sentences in line. It turned out alright but if I did this project again I would definitely recommend using something to keep the sentences all lined up and straight.  

All in all, this project took me 3 hours to make and cost $5.75.  I already had the spray paint, the art was $1 and the stickers cost $5.75 from Michaels after the 40% off coupon.  If you visit the Michaels website you can find printable coupons that you can use as well.  I found these letters worked perfectly as they are made with vinyl and it was very easy to peel and stick them again and again.

Thank you for checking out my blog and have a great day! :)