- 1 Canvas (mine is 18x24 and purchased in a 2 pack for $6.99 on sale)
- 1 State map appropriately sized (instructions on how to print at the bottom)
- 1 Xacto knife/scissors/pencil (everyone has scissors and pencils)
- 2 colors of paint (1 minimum at $1-5 depending on type and size)
- 2-3 paint brushes (all mine came from a huge pack for $5 from the craft store)
Start by cutting out your image and assembling the pieces if need be and then outlining it in the center of the canvas:
Then take a small brush with a square tip and go over that pencil outline, pulling your brush strokes out and away (yes that's a lid that I'm using since I don't have a palette):
Once you have it appropriately outlined with 1-2 cm of paint, pull out a larger square tipped brush and begin pulling the paint out to the edges of the canvas:
Lastly, I took a tiny pointed brush and swiped on a small contrasting blue heart over my home:
Now I used matte black paint and the state is actually bare canvas, so I'll probably need to seal this with some clear gloss just to put a little shine and protection on it.
In total, this cost me under $10 to make and was finished in under 90 minutes. I had assistance, the man brought his Xacto knife over and fixed the outline for me while I made dinner. This picture was actually resized down and still was 3 sheets of regular sized paper once printed and is held together by a little leftover Christmas tape on the back side :)
You could also have painted the state alone by outlining it and pulling the strokes inwards before filling in the rest, anything goes really once that outline is traced!
For assistance in printing out:
- Search for your state's map using Google
- Turn on the size parameters and look for Larger than 2mb so that you get a large enough image to print
- And use this link from Adobe for printing tiled images:
http://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/print-posters-banners-acrobat-reader.html
Check back soon for more fun stuff!
