DIY Photo Canvas

I LOVE LOVE LOVE photo canvases...I do NOT love love love the prices! Nor do I enjoy waiting for them to be delivered. As I have discussed before - I am an instant gratification kinda girl.  So when we moved into our house I knew that I wanted to hang pictures from weddings we had been in or attended in the time we have been together. So far we are at 8 plus ours. I thought it would be really neat to figure out a way to do canvas prints for these photos. But like I said, those things are NOT cheap.

I have seen various tutorials and different variations of creating your own photo canvas. I decided to try out this one - tissue paper to canvas.

I have to admit - I was a little intimidated by this project. So I made my way to Hobby Lobby and I saw a 2 pack of 8X10 canvases for $3.99! AND I had a 40% off coupon. Ok that was totally going to be worth a go ESPECIALLY since tissue paper costs nothing! Seriously - 10 sheets cost me $0.99!! So at this point I had spent a total of $5 for 2 canvases and 10 sheets of tissue paper which will make at LEAST 20 canvases....assuming I can figure this out and I like the way it looks.

First I cut the tissue paper to be bigger than a normal size sheet of printer paper and taped the tissue paper to the printer paper.

Note: I used masking tape...it was all I had and it worked quite nicely =)

My first attempt, I loaded it into the back for the manual feeder - like I normally would when printing pictures. This is a BIG no-no! it crumpled up the tissue paper and I had to emergency stop the job! DEFINITELY use the normal feeder try -  but be sure you know which side it will print on so you have the tissue paper facing the right direction.

 

PRINT!

Please ignore that I needed to dust when this picture was taken...I'm pretty sure the printer itself hadn't been dusted since the old house! This has been remedied and NO JUDGING lol
On to making the canvas - remove the tissue paper from the printer paper...I trimmed the edges ever so slightly with my rotary cutter.

Now - I tried a couple different methods to this next step. I found that the BEST way to apply the tissue paper to the canvas without creating lines in the photo, is to mod podge the ENTIRE canvas before adhering the tissue paper to it. Make sure it isn't too wet when you place the tissue paper on it or the tissue paper will tear and you have to start all over and possibly lose a canvas =/ this is what happened on my first attempt.

I am really happy with the way they turned out!

I did three different styles -

Close-up of The Husband and I from our wedding

 

a photo of the 6 of us from my sister's wedding

 

a huge family picture from my cousin's wedding last May

 

Here is what I noticed - the close up is AWESOME! I love it!! The further out you are, the more detail you lose. I don't know if it is because the tissue paper is so thin and you lose some of the dimension? The closer shots, definitely show a lot of detail and you don't lose a whole lot of depth in the image.

Something else to note - they will probably turn out better in black and white or at least, with less saturation. The next one I try is going to be from our wedding and will be a black and white (or sepia) shot. I will let you know how that turns out next time I can get to Hobby Lobby for more canvases...I used the 4 I had =( and had a casualty learning this project lol!

Do you like the look of photo canvases?
Have you tried to DIY? If yes, what was your method?