The “They didn’t turn out like they were supposed to” Canvases

Prince Charming’s birthday was yesterday. Every birthday/Father’s Day/Christmas present requires a little bit of kid art, right?

So Friday, we killed two birds with one stone…making Daddy a special birthday gift and making something I’ve been wanting to make. The idea for the “Fun Means Getting Messy” sign came from Pinterest. The only problem is, I didn’t actually pin it. I saw it on someone else’s pinboard and forgot to pin it myself. I tried looking back to find who/where it first came from, but I was unsuccessful. So…tell me if you know who first came up with this idea. :)

Here’s what you’ll need:  a canvas (or two), acrylic paint, paintbrushes, vinyl stickers.


Here’s the deal with the vinyl stickers…I purchased the “repositionable” ones so that I could remove them easily after the paint dried. This would work out perfectly, if you had a dainty little painter. However, Little Brother just about completely obliterated all the vinyl letters (as you’ll see). I’m not sure if the permanent ones would peel off or not.

Okay now for the process…





1. Position the vinyl letters on your canvas.

 

2. Let your child start painting! As you can see, Little Brother was rubbing so hard with his paintbrush that it moved the letters.

Big Brother was slightly gentler.

3. Let the canvases dry. After they are dry, you can peel the letter stickers off!

As you can see, all that is left of the “We love our Daddy” was just “Daddy”. Oh well… 

I thought about taking some white paint to the “Fun Means Getting Messy” canvas repair some of the letters (the G’s and M specifically)…but then that kind of defeats the purpose, right? It’s supposed to look messy!

What’s your favorite homemade gift???

18 Comments

  1. I have seen these canvas’s done before in a hallway somewhere. There was a pic of the child painting it posted beside the canvas with the date. I thought that was the coolest thing! I might do this for christmas for grandparents! And I had a professor drill into my brain that it is the process not the product that counts! They r awesome just the way they turned out!

    1. I think we must have had the same professor! :) I’m still scarred from the whole “coloring book” debacle from the same professor that drilled “process not product!”

      1. Lol that is so funny except my prof was against work sheets. she was probably really against coloring books! haha!

  2. Awesome. My hubby’s birthday is this weekend and I have all the stuff for this. He loves some landscapes the kids did with handprints on canvas so this will just be for him! Thx!

  3. I love the way they turned out! I’m definitely going to try this one! I kind of like the way Daddy is at the bottom. If you wanted too, you could put a picture above the the word “Daddy,” and have it be a beautiful picture frame…Just a thought! Thanks for the great idea!

  4. Love that there is a faint heart shape in the getting messy one…too cute will have to try this one with Monkey some day…maybe for his birthday LOL

  5. We have 5 kiddos and I did each of there little hand prints on a canvas for Father’s Day last year and it turned out super cute. As each of the kids did their print in his/her favorite color. The Grandpas & Daddy loved it.

  6. I LOVE that the messy one is messy! I tweeted this, but I don’t see a tweet button on your site for individual posts, just for the whole site. Or maybe I am blind? I do have a habit of not seeing what’s right in front of me.

  7. Great idea. I love this. We will be doing this sometime in the near future! I’ve been thinking of doing some canvas painting with the girls. I love the idea of Christmas presents for the Grandparents that Melanie mentioned.

  8. When I did this with my son, I ended up using white letters, then scraping the paint off of the letters (it works surprisingly well). He just finger painted, but it bled something terrible and that was my solution. I mod-podged the canvas to make sure the stickers wouldn’t come off in the future.

  9. We did this same thing w/the “never stopping never giving up unbreaking always and forever love” quote from the Jesus Storybook Bible. (It’s on my blog somewhere!). I LOVE it! It was SO fun and SO messy. But you’re right, I love the messiness of it! The crooked M is the best!

    a

  10. I had a desire to begin my own business, however I didn’t earn enough of cash to do that. Thank heaven my close colleague advised to take the loans. So I received the collateral loan and made real my dream.

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