I'm in love with
CTMH's 6 x 6 Canvas Displays. They can be used in endless projects and are priced right at only $4.95!!!! They can be painted on, glued on, scrapbooked on, and like what I'm going to show you today, made into Canvas photos.
Here is the canvas I made for my Mom. This is one of her favorite photos of my Dad and Brother. So you can get an idea of the quality, this photo was blown up to 6.25 x 6.25 from an old photo booth mini strip of pictures from my Dad's wallet. So let me tell you how I did it (and did it under an hour!).
On my home printer, I printed my photo onto plain tissue paper (nothing fancy mine is from the Dollar Tree). To do this I took a piece of copy paper and gift wrapped it so to speak using scotch tape on the back to hold it down. If there is a glossy side be sure to have that down. You want to print on the tissue-y side. I then put it into my printer, crossed my fingers, and then it printed!!!!!!! Let this dry for awhile. I just say it aside and came back a little later after prepping the next step.
What you'll need next is a pair of scissors, a foam brush, and modge podge glue (I used Mat, because I wanted it to look as if it was printed right on the canvas. I trimmed the tissue paper to about 6.5 x 6.5, it will be further trimmed later.. Printing/trimming the photo larger than necessary allowed margin of error if I didn't quite glue it straight. On this one I did, but on others I was glad it was there.
Here we go. I painted a good amount of Modge Podge directly onto the canvas! Make sure you have it completely covered and wet. Next put the tissue paper on it gently centered printing should be over the edge. We will worry about sides later!
Starting in the center and working towards edges, I used my finger working in a circular motion to work photo down into canvas smoothing all air bubbles as I went. It was really easy to do. After I smoothed it all out, I went back and pushed the photo into the canvas (one finger on top/one underneath) one more time so you can see the weaving of the canvas in the photo. That's the best part. I did not put a coat of modge podge on top for a sealant. If your canvas is in a high traffic-ed area or will be touched I recommend this.
When the top is finished its time to move onto the sides. I used an exacto razor to trim the sides leaving roughly a .25 inch all the way around. Dipping my finger into the modge podge, I carefully went around and tapped all the edges down on all four sides.
I love how this canvas turned out and have used this technique several more times. Color photos work great too. What do you think? Leave me a comment, I'd love your opinions and to be able to help with any questions.
