For this project you will need….
- A canvas (I bought a 2 pack and made 2 designs)
- Green paint (my shade was called foliage – choose whatever you like best)
- Thumbtacks (for my 2 pieces I used almost 300)
- Pencil
- Shamrock pattern
- Lucky pattern
- Paintbrush
- Painter’s tape
First you’ll need to decide how you want to paint your canvas. For my shamrock picture I chose to do stripes and for my lucky picture I went with a solid green background. A helpful tip for painting…start with your brush over the painter’s tape and pull the paint down into the area you’re painting. This will help keep the paint from going underneath your tape. I liked the look of my imperfect lines, but if that’s not your style use some white paint to clean up any imperfections.
Once your canvas is painted and dry (wait at least 30 minutes before pulling off the painter’s tape), you’ll take your shamrock pattern and your word lucky you printed out and place it where you like. I googled shamrock pattern and chose one I liked best. For lucky, I typed the word into a word processor and played until I found a font I liked which is Broadway. I made my font a little too large for my canvas so I had to cut down my letters and free hand parts of them. (That explains the lack of straight lines.)
Once you have your shamrock or word traced out follow your outline by gently pushing in the thumbtacks. It doesn’t take much to get them in and you’ll quickly get the feel for how much pressure you need to get through the canvas. If you place your outlines so that it overlaps the wood frame, you will need a hammer to help you get the tacks in.
I tried to overlap my tacks just a little, but not too much. I’ve seen some where people like to overlap the tack heads a lot and some where they have the heads barely touching. Once you’ve completely followed your outlines with tacks, you’re done! Now you can display them wherever you like. If you have small children in your house, you may want to consider using cardboard on the back of your canvas to help protect little fingers from the tacks that are poking through the back.
