Tutorial: Paper Petal Canvas

Hi everyone!

Today is Saturday so that can only mean one thing.... The Waste-Paper Bin Challenge! The challenge where I show you how to make something creative from what is essential junk.

Last week we made Scrap -Paper Bunting, I hope you all had fun making it. (you can see that tutorial here.)

This week we are upping the ante a little by making this fabulous, folk-style Paper Petal Canvas that will give any room a new lease of life!

Let's get started:

• Pick any sized blank canvas.  For the purpose of this tutorial I am using a small, square one but this project will work on any size or shape canvas with a little adjustment.

• Choose a paint colour for the background. I choose 'Coffee Bean' acrylic paint by Folk Art. Coat the canvas in your chosen colour, not forgetting the sides. It may need two coats to achieve a nice even looking colour.

• If you have a heat tool use that to dry the canvas after each coat of paint, if not, leave your canvas to dry completely before moving on to the next step (go and make yourself a cuppa)

• Now comes the real fun part! Fish through your waste paper bin and pick out scraps of paper that you want to create your petals from. You can choose coordinating colours or just go all  out and create a random colour scheme using whatever scraps of paper come to hand. I chose coordinating colours with a splash of a complimentary colour as an accent.

• Using your scissors, cut petal shapes from the scraps. You can cut them as big or small as you like or in any shape. I chose a traditional oval leaf shape but you can always cut love heart petal shapes, round or triangle petals, which ever you prefer. You can create a template from strong card if you want all your petals to be uniform but I cut mine freehand because I prefer each petal to be different.

• When you have gathered a healthy pile of petals together then it is time to position them and the old button on the canvas to get a feel for where you might glue them. You will probably need to play around with the positioning for a while, just have fun with it.

• Don't worry about any petals that may be sticking over the edge as you can wrap those around the sides of the canvas in the gluing process (excuse my messy hands)

• When you are happy with the arrangement, use your hot glue gun to adhere the old button down, creating the centre of the flower. You can then use the white glue (PVA, Mod Podge etc) to stick the petals in place. Make sure you put a coat of glue on the top of the petals as well as the bottom. This helps to better seal the paper to the canvas.

• Once you have all the petals glued down and the canvas is all dry you are essentially finished! You can leave it just like that and you will have a beautiful art piece ready to hang but I always like to add my own signature to any project I am working on, so I continued to add some doodling, puff paint and Glossy Accents. I also added a seal of gloss medium to the entire canvas.

So that's it my friends, your very own Paper Petal Canvas! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Leave a comment or email me and let me know if you give this one a try, I'd love to see what variations you come up with.

Check back next week for the third instalment of WPBC: Upcycled Jam Jars

Have a beautiful + creative day!

Ciara
xoxo