Thursday, March 8, 2012

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?
Photobucket

11 comments:

Christina said...

That's awesome, I love canvas art too!

Faith said...

omg, wow! that is so awesome! i want to do this! i have wanted to purchase a photo canvas but a while but they are so darn pricey. this is such a money saver!!!

Emily said...

These look great!!!

J and A said...

Wow these look great! I have everything at home to do this I just need to get one it! I was gonna try the actual picture with modgepodge one though :)

CeCe said...

Very cool and creative. I love that canvas look too.

Natalie said...

Ooooh! I saw this on Pinterest and I've been dying to try it but was a little scared to go for it. Now that you've done it, I think I might be a little braver! :) Looks great!

April Rowell said...

I've seen this but I've been too scared to do it. Yours look great! I may have to give this a try.

Jess at Just Rainbows and Butterflies said...

I would love if you could come over and teach me how to do this. Even though these steps are simple, I know I would somehow mess it up. haha! But you did such a great job!

Jessica and Stephan said...

You're SO crafty, I'm impressed! I think they turned out really well!

Whitney @ EHFAR said...

I love photo canvases! I had a 24x36 canvas made for my wedding, which I used as my guestbook. Since then, I have had several 8x10 canvases made (which all of them have been free that I have gotten from the company).

I never thought to DIY it. Yours turned out great!

Cari said...

this is great! I've done the tissue paper canvas thing before but did not have the tip of taping the tissue paper to a normal piece of paper. I only got one piece to come through the printer without tearing. I did use modpodge to adhere it but I also accidentally ended up with a small strip at the bottom of the canvas, but I used to "caption" the canvas. Thanks for the tips!