Well this was one of those projects that worked on my patience. Something I learned is that vinyl does not stick to canvas very well. I made these for my sweet niece Nykesha to go in her bedroom. Her mom had just painted the walls purple with a pink overlay using a rag technique.
I had seen as similar project on Pinterest and thought it would look so cute in her room.
To start I took two 8 x 10 canvases and one 14 x 20.
I used a tutorial I found
here for the harlequin background. Since it was such a small project I just drew out the lines and painted instead of using painters tape. If doing a larger project, like a whole wall, I would recommend the painters tape method.
I wanted to add some dimension and depth to the background of the center canvas but keeping it subtle so it didn't overwhelm the monogram. This is where the fun began, I cut some swirly patterns out of vinyl and tried to place them on the canvas. It didn't stick, like at all. All those nice thin swirly pieces kept trying to peel up as I went over them with the lighter wash color.
This is where my patience and stubborness came in to good use. I just had to start in the middle of each applique and work my way out when going over with the wash. Since these wouldn't be staying I wasn't too concerned about it.
Then I placed the negative outline of the dahlia flowers and painted the inside pink.
Voila this is the finished product before adding the initials. Ok now what was I going to do get those initials to stick, I surely didn't want to try and paint white over the top of that dark purple. So I googled every which way I could think to try to see what other people did to get their vinyl to stick to canvas. I guess all those signs and silhouettes that I see are done on some kind of flat surface like wood or metal. WOW that would have been good to know before I started. I did however find one tip on a forum that I thought was worth a shot. I carefully placed the initials on the canvas, tediously peeling back the sticky placement paper. Once I had them in place I painted over them with Modge Podge. Some spots like the thinner pieces of the letter were still peeling up so I just peeled that section back and painted on some more Modge Podge and carefully stuck it back down. I was going to need a sealer anyway so that was great solution for a glue as well as sealer.
Have you had any projects that just didn't work out and it wasn't until you were too far into to change it up too much?
