Hey there!  Looking for ideas for a DIY painting? Here's one.  I bought this canvas online a while back to make a large canvas I'd been wanting to paint for my dining room.  There was extra, so I made a frame and stretched the canvas onto it myself for another painting for the livingroom. 

 

Using a premade canvas would be nice but expensive, so you could find or make one.  The frame I made for the canvas to be stretched onto was out of brick moulding that you can find at Lowes.  I decided the size I wanted (roughly 3' by 5' ) and cut the lengths (and 45 degree corners).  Then I clamped the corners, and put it together using a pinner and screws (with one cross brace across the middle using a slightly thinner board as to not stick out, and the canvas only touches the outer most edge of the brick mould (sort of like with canvas stretchers).  

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Stretching the canvas (tight enough) was pretty difficult without canvas pliers, but luckily, wetting the back of the canvas shrinks it nicely.  (Shrinking the canvas apparently poses no problems, the canvases I've made have not loosened up on their frames.)

 

Anyways, I first started painting a big crosshatch pattern with silver and gold, let that dry and started measuring out for the pattern I'd be making with frogtape.  I had drawn out the design on graph paper.  Here's a tip, instead of figuring out where both outer edges of the tape needed to fall in the pattern, I decided to mark out a single center line (just a tiny dash in pencil really) where I needed to place the tape.  This definitely simplified the process. I just had to eyeball where I was placing the tape on the marks and try to hit the marks right down the center of the width of the tape. Oh, and it is a must, whenever using painters tape, to press the edges of the tape down (at least a couple times to be sure you've made good contact with your surface to be painted.

 

Once all the taping was finished, I could start painting again.  I had never painted on such a a large canvas before (that was fun and not that scary considering the pattern would dominate and I couldn't mess this up too badly).  I love rich blues with aqua and green mixed in so I went with it (adding black, gold and white dabs in there too), knowing it would pop against the subtle, stormy blue of my living room walls.  I kept my paint pretty wet for blending and had some running under the edges but it's amazing how little, considering how rough I was brushing crossways against the edges of the tape.  

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I'm pretty picky about art, for me it's always easier to just pick a mirror for a room because picking a print/painting that you won't get tired of, seems next to impossible.  Somehow this pattern, in these colors, seems to boldly blend into the space.  It's rythmic pattern is a little perplexing and soothing at the same time.  It's easy on the eyes.  I'm pretty happy with it :)

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Thanks for hanging with me!

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