Inside: A cool project for a blank canvas! Using basic craft supplies, you can create this ombre, faded paint look with geometric cut outs. Great for kids’ rooms.
Another mid-week art project! You know that in order for me to do an art project, it has to be simple and I have to be able to do it in 15-20 minute chunks. This one totally fits the bill. Here’s how to create Colourful & Inspired Cut-out Ombre Canvas Art!
Here’s what you to make cut-out canvas art:
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- A canvas – I used 16×20
- Craft paper large enough to fit over/on your canvas
- Pencil
- a ruler
- scissors
- Exacto knife
- cutting board
- Cast-off cardboard (I used a box from our recycling bin)
- Acrylic paint in white and a colour of your choice
- a couple of brushes
- Staples, thumb tacks or glue
The Quick Tutorial! For more in-depth steps, keep reading.
DIY Ombre Canvas Art
A cool project for a blank canvas! Using basic craft supplies, you can create this ombre, faded paint look with geometric cut outs. Great for kids’ rooms.
Materials
- 16x20 canvas
- Craft paper
- Pencil
- Utility Blade
- ruler
- scissors
- cutting board
- acrylic paint
- paint brushes
- stapler or thumb tacks
Instructions
- Cut your paper to size. Using your colour, start at one end of the craft paper and do a thick stripe of solid colour. Hang it up to dry to keep it nice and straight.
- Give your canvas a light coat of white paint all over.
- Using your ruler and pencil, trace your cut-out shapes.
- Now measure and trace your shapes onto the BACK of the canvas and carefully cut them out using your Exacto knife and cutting board.
- Affix your ombre painting to the back of your canvas using tacks, staples or glue.
Step One: Cut your paper to size. Using your colour, start at one end of the craft paper and do a thick stripe of solid colour. Then add a touch of white to your colour and blend in another stripe. My canvas is much bigger than the inspiration piece, so my stripes are quite wide.
Step Two: Ummm… basically keep doing that 🙂 Eventually you’ll get to the point where you are adding colour to the white paint instead of vice versa. Just like your first stripe was solid colour, your last stripe will be all white. I’d switch to a totally clean brush to do this one, just to avoid any streaking. (I still had a few small streaks, but oh well.) Then I advise hanging your painting to dry to try and lessen the ‘curling corners’ effect.
Step Three: Give your canvas a light coat of white paint all over (or really a colour might be nice too!) Because mine was from the thrift store, there were grubby finger prints on it (GEEER-OOOSSE), so the white paint cleaned it up nicely.
Step Four: Using your ruler and pencil, trace your cut-out shapes onto your cereal box cast-off cardboard. You could do different sized circles, triangles, zig zags, whatever you want.
Step Five: Now measure and trace your shapes onto the BACK of the canvas and carefully cut them out using your Exacto knife and cutting board. If it’s absolutely necessary, you could use some light sand paper to smooth out the edges – either way, make sure your blade is good and sharp.
Step Six: Affix your ombre painting to the back of your canvas using tacks, staples or glue – whatever combination works for you. I ended up using staples. I pinned it to the back with thumbtacks and then pulled the top tight and stapled, then the bottom and the sides. That seemed to prevent the majority of the wrinkles or gaps that were forming because of the wavy painted paper. The whole idea is that the painting is an inch (or the width of your canvas wood) away from the cut-out, so it looks 3D.
Step Seven: Do it all again! This time with green paint 😛 Add picture hangers on the back … And voila! 🙂 (Obviously, you don’t have to do it again haha. I had two canvases I needed to use to fill the wall space.)
How cute are these? Perfect for a quick art project on a weekend and you really can customize this any way you want.
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