DIY Canvas Nursery Animals

Hi everyone! I'm back as promised with a tutorial on how to make the adorable nursery art we did for Sarah & Shaun's nursery.  This is a really easy project, with a great impact, we were pretty proud of ourselves.  (Oh ya - by the way - they had their baby! Georgia Rae was born on September 25th, 2017.. Congrats guys, she's adorable!)


So when Danielle and I were planning different projects for the room, these cute animal wall decals kept coming back into our heads, but there were a few problems.  The colors and simplicity were great, they weren't overly cartoonish, and they had great reviews so the quality checked out.  But we both agreed we didn't want the animals just "floating"anywhere in the room (that would have worked with say, birds in flight... but standing animals?), and would rather make a focal point out of them, but how? Also - they are renting this house & not sure how long they plan to stay, so we wanted as little future tear-down duties as possible.  Then one night, while organizing my mountains of craft supplies, I saw a pile of canvases, and it hit me - why didn't I think of that before, it's so simple! Adhering these cuties to canvas not only makes them movable, but creates a larger overall piece of wall art instead of just the stickers themselves.


So we gathered up our supplies, cleared the table & popped a beer - it was craft time!



You'll need:

• 6 - 11 x 14 Stretched Canvases
• 3 - smaller stretched canvas, we used 1 - 9 x 12, and 2 - 8 x 10's.
• Acrylic Paints in coordinating colors (I personally love Ceramcoat)
• Foam Brushes - or any paint brushes..
• Forest Animals Fabric Wall Decal - Set of 9

First I chose & laid out 9 different sized canvases from my stash, even pulling a few fabric wrapped canvas leftovers from previous projects (for more about canvas wrapping click here, it's another super simple way to add wall art to a room).  

Here they are all cleaned up, I had to remove roughly 1-2 million staples from the backs of the 3 fabric wrapped canvases.... clearly my past self did not want that fabric going ANYWHERE.....

I always keep a huge roll of brown builders paper around the house.  Not only for impromptu projects like this one, but for when friends with little ones come over, brown paper becomes our color-able  table cloth.  Add a few jars full of washable markers & let them at it! All the adults end up drawing too, so it's fun all around.  You can find it near the paint at any hardware store, or online of course.

Then we just went for it! Both of us started most canvases with a solid base coat, and then built up from there.  The paints dry fairly quickly so you don't have to wait long.  Although, catching the paint before it dries makes for some fun blending!

We had no plan, just some good tunes & a Hawaiian beer..this was Lemongrass, which.. on first sip.. is pretty gross. Then a few sips later, is good! Island magic I guess...

Playing with the yellows.... I used a dry foam brush to fade between the yellow & orange. Just go for it, you can always paint over it if you don't like the results. (which I know I did at least once....)

We tried to mix up the patterns & colors to get a good variety, but all of them go along well with other colors in the room.  Orange & yellow weren't in our original plan, but the rug, a pillow & some sunshine plush toys were orange so we knew it would work just fine.

Don't forget to paint the edges if you don't want to frame your work.

That's where we quit for the night, and left them to completely dry.  Fast forward to the big day, and all we had to do was peel our stickers from the roll, and place them on the painted canvas. Unfortunately, we were moving along so quickly, I completely missed taking pictures of that step! But, really, all it would have been was a photo of one of our hands putting it in place... you know the drill.  The comforting thing about this step is these are completely removable & re-positionable, so that takes some pressure off.

Whoah, hello glare! For the record, the stickers ARE matte finish, I'm just not the most observant photographer - clearly! You know, side note - back when I started this blog, I was using a separate digital camera, then importing the photos, etc.  And now, I'm just using my phone you guys - truth be told.  But how can I not?! The resolution has gotten so great on phones that it long surpassed my old camera so.. what are ya gonna do? 

I really love the way they pop on that Healing Aloe wall!

So that's it! It's not a hard tutorial, doesn't really need step by steps... but it was fun to take pictures of our little painting party.  I love that it's so simple - There are thousands of these wall decals out there, so this same process can be used for any room, not just nurseries.  Would make a great gift, too!

If you missed the tour of the baby room, you can see that here - be sure to check out the video about halfway in the post, it puts the room into much better perspective. 

Well thanks for stopping by, hope you enjoyed this project - and if you make any canvas nursery animals, be sure to send them my way! I love seeing what you all are up to. Hit the links below, or you can tag me on Facebook & Instagram as @NineRed.

Have a good one!

-Jesse

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