As the end of soccer season wraps up and baseball season begins, I wanted to show how I created easy splatter paint art. I made the Sporting KC one as a Christmas gift for a family friend and the Royals one as a birthday gift for my step-dad. This gift is easy to make and a great idea when you completely forgot you need to gift someone something and only have 48 hours to put something together. Plus, I wanted my 13 year old step-sister to be involved, and this was something that she could help with without my controlling/perfectionist nature wanting to strangle her. This splatter art was my first experience with black canvases. It was $11 for two at Michael's; I had a 50% off coupon, which made it $5.50 before tax. The Michael's closest to my home is a smaller Michael's, and they did not have the black canvases. The Olathe, Kansas one had a good selection. The canvases come in a variety of sizes. It was nice not having to paint an entire canvas black and for the color to be consistent throughout. I used the cheapest paint I could find at Michael's (coverage doesn't need to be great because the splatter will be thick). I was at Home Depot for another art project, so I bought some very cheap chip brushes (disposable brush with rough bristles). However, I tried using a nicer brush from Artist Loft the second time and it worked about the same. The larger the brushes, the larger the splatter tends to be, but you can control the splatter size with how thick the paint is on the brush. The first step is to find the center of the canvas. I used a ruler to measure half the canvas size (the canvases I used were 16" x 20", so I made a mark in the center at 8" and 10"). This way I could center the design. I used my Cricut Explore to cut out the design in black vinyl (I found black vinyl on sale around Christmas, so I just use black for everything. I would recommend using a color that's not the same as the canvas nor any paint that's planned to be used). I've owned two Cricuts. The original Cricut only cuts from cartridges provided by the company. The newer Cricuts allow users to use designs from any image on the internet (which reminds me, both logos used in this tutorial are trademarked. I'm not sure about the legality of this post, but I'm not making any money, so it should be okay.) Before the Cricut, I would cut designs out with an X-acto knife. However, the Cricut is much easier, and I use it for so many types of crafts (cutting out vinyl for glass etching, writing my thank you cards with legible handwriting, ect.). I found that vinyl is much better at sticking to itself than any other surface. To make things worse, it seemed to have a staticy nature and wanted to cling back to itself once peeled off the backing. Since I was working with a fairly large piece of vinyl (12" x 16"), and both images had some curves that needed to be peeled in opposite directions, I set some rectangles over the image in order for the Cricut to cut the logo in to 4 parts. The smaller pieces were easier to work with. I had to carefully lay these parts very close to each other so that paint wouldn't creep underneath the design. When laying out the design I had to choose between making the the splatter area the shield or the background. I thought it would look better to not have the splatter confined to the logo, so I made the splatter the background. To achieve this, I placed the vinyl of the logo itself on the canvas, so the logo would remain black. The next step was gathering the paint. For the Royals painting I used white, gold, blue. I made a slightly darker blue from black and royal to try to make more of a navy. The Royals team color is a little darker than bright royal blue, but the brighter color stands out more on the black canvas. For Sporting KC, I used white, bright blue, and I mixed the blue and white to make a soft blue. My step-sister and I then went outside with our paints inside of disposable cups and let the splattering commence. Different amounts of paint on brushes is what gives you different looks. I went into this with a plan of trying to use small amounts of paint with lots of little splatters to have a more aesthetic appeal. But that plan took too long, so we ended up using lots of paint to create large splatters to be able to go back inside faster (it was freezing the December and the April days we did these because Kansas doesn't quite understand spring. The mid-April day actually had snow on the ground.) The Royals the logo is gold on the top and blue on the bottom, so I tried to control those colors some. I regret that and should have done gold all over the canvas, not just on the top. For Sporting KC one it was an all out splatter-fest. In the beginning we stood and slathered paint to cover as much as possible. At the end we squatted and tried to aim to make sure all the vinyl got covered (again, don't use black vinyl on a black canvas.) Somehow these catastrophe looking splatters made really cool art! I was torn on if it was better to wait for the paint to completely dry to peel off the vinyl, or keep it wet to prevent the paint from cracking. I learned both options have their downfalls. I took the Sporting KC one off when it was 80% dry. In the dry areas it did crack and chip some. But, in the wet areas, the paint couldn't decide if it wanted to go with the vinyl or stay with the canvas, so the lines we much less clean. The second time, with the Royals one, I decided to wait for it to get completely dry. We really slathered on the paint; 24 hours was not enough to let it dry. It took somewhere between 36 and 48 hours to dry completely.
When I finished taking off the vinyl, I painted the design black to cover up some areas where the paint got under the vinyl (the canvas wasn't smooth, so there was no way to make sure no paint was under the vinyl). The thick dry paint made a nice edge to paint against. This is overall a very simple project. The first time, the most time-consuming hands-on part was laying the vinyl. It took me two failed attempts before deciding to cut the design into parts. The second time around, for the Royals one, I was able to cut the vinyl out, lay the design down, and splatter it in less than the time it took the birthday cake to finish baking (25 minutes).
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AuthorHi! I'm Amber. I love spreadsheets and painting. This blog is where I post about my crafts and adventures. Archives
November 2018
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