Knock off . . .

My brother moved into a new apartment yesterday and my mom and I helped. It is a cute apartment and made me long for being single again . . . not really hubs! *wink* He mentioned needing some art for the living room and I told him I would make something.
I love this canvas from World Market. I like the color and the vertical lines in it. I also love polka dots so this fill that bill too. With a price tag of $129 I figured it would be fairly simple to recreate for much, much cheaper. I like the progression in this one of the colors, but I decided to make mine consistent colors across the whole painting.

I started with 2 16x 20 canvases that I bought at the Mart of Wallls for only $7.97. I bought some acrylic paint because I wasn't quite sure what I had at home and I didn't want to make another trip to the store. The paints were $1.27 a piece. I also used some circular pouncers that cost $3.97. I already had a brown paint pen at home, but you could easily do them stems with brown paint and a brush.

Obviously the first thing I did was draw the stems. I simply drew them with the paint pen. When I was done I went back and added some bulk to the stems and added a bit of a triangle at the tips. You can see the original lines on the right and the finished stems on the left in the picture below.


I did not want the colors pristine. I wanted the colors to be combinations and have some depth, so I simply worked them together while I was working. You will see the original colors squirted out in the first picture below and then the mess after I was finished painting. I didn't even wash my pouncer out between colors, I just added and added and got a mixed effect for the spots.



Here is the finished project as it is drying. I am pretty sure I an going to add a bit of an antiquing effect to the canvas so it is not sao white, but that frightens me! I am afraid I am going to ruin it so who knows. It depends on how brave I feel later.


Okay, so I went for it and tried to tame it down a bit. I used a tan paint I had and dipped a paper towel in it. I ran the papertowel through the water and squeezed it out into a container then I just wiped the papertowel on the canvas. I then took a dry towel and wiped over it all adding a bit more paint on the corners and edges.



Here she is. I am not sure you can see the antiquing, but it helped a lot! Not bad for under $20!