DIY Kids Wall Art

Hello!

Our sweet baby girl is growing like a weed. We were working on the nursery right up to her arrival. We still have a couple of things to finish before I can do a post about the nursery, but there's one special art project I thought I would share separately. 

Right before our son was born, my daughter and I did a similar project (Click here for the post). The concept is pretty simple. You cut out some vinyl. You can do this either with a machine (i.e. a Cricut or a Silhouette), with contact paper and an Exacto knife, or purchase precut letters or a phrase. You put the vinyl either on top of a white canvas or an existing painting. Then you paint on top of the entire surface. When you remove the vinyl letters, you have a burnt out image where the vinyl was. I've done this one other time for a piece of artwork for my daughter's room as well. (Click here for the post) So, this concept certainly isn't new for my blog, but I'm particularly happy with how this version turned out.

This project is perfect for kids because they can be as messy as they like, and you still get something coherent in the end. 

For this project, I used a canvas left over from artwork I used to have in my office. (click here for that post). Before I applied the vinyl, I added some aqua and pink to the painting over the purple sections so the colors showing through would match the room better. 

I cut out the vinyl words using my Silhouette. I applied them to the canvas and then gave my son and daughter paint colors that contrasted well. I told them they could do whatever so long as they covered the entire surface. They used paint brushes, paper towels, and their hands to get the entire thing covered. In my 3 year old son's case, he also painted the entire drop cloth under the painting. 

With the paint still wet, I look the vinyl off with tweezers. If you let the paint dry, there's a chance that vinyl will be stuck to the painting. I did a bit of clean up with a small paintbrush where ever the paint bled under the vinyl.That was an interesting endeavor to find the matching paint colors for such a colorful painting.

The final step was to hand paint some flowers on the canvas. The art was ready for our wildflower inspired nursery.