Harmony in Paris

My Granddaughter and all her little friends are totally into PARIS, PARIS, PARIS.

So, with that theme in mind, this is what I made this for her birthday.

Once you have the picture you want to mod podge onto your canvas, follow these easy instructions:

1. Iron tissue paper

2. Measure and cut tissue paper

3. Run double sided adhesive along edge of 8 1/2 X 11 inch sheet of White printer paper

4. Be sure to put the rough side of the tissue paper up.  It's more pores then the smooth side.

5.  Flip the photo to be printed, if you use PSE (Photo Shop Element), when you go to print it gives you an option to flip the picture.

6.  Trim the picture (I've used exacto knife and it tends to tear the tissue paper)

7. Place your photo paper on the canvas, and hold it in place with a ruler.

8. Lightly apply a layer of mod podge to upper canvas (I don't like to split a face, you don't want too many wrinkles on that part of the picture).

9. Gently lay the picture on the mod podge and quickly move on  to the bottom half, and repeat.

10. Gently DAB mod podge to photo.  NOTE:  Be very careful, the colors start to bleed through the tissue paper, regularly check your sponge, once you have color in the mod podge, switch to a new sponge and avoid areas already saturated.  Set to dry for at least 2 hours (to be sure).11.  Second coat, again watch for the color to bleed,  after this coat dries, you are relatively safe from the bleeding.

12. Now, my picture basically only covers the top of the canvas, around the edge I printed and mod podge this:

14. Let it dry again for 2 hours, and add your final coat of mod podge.  After that's completely dry I spray the entire canvas with a clear coat enamel spray, if you don't do this, here's what could happen, if the picture ever gets wet, it will leave water spots on your photo.

 FYI:  It's easy, but there have been times when I mess up and I have to paint over a picture to start over;  if this happens to you, paint over with white acrylic paint.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Here's some more mod podged art I done.

I've been doing the PSE mod podge for years now.  I love homemade personal gifts.  It's seems that every Christmas the funds are tight.  Here's one gift I made and gave my daughter Deby with pictures of her and her best friend taken on a trip they did together.

I bought the canvas at the dollar store, there was a picture of a bird on them, I painted them white, then mod podged.

Here's the MONA DEBY, I love this one.

Blog Header

I swear that is it, I am done messing with my header.

I have been obsessed with the artwork for my blog header.  Maybe it is worth paying someone to do it for you, because then you are stuck with what you paid for.  In my case, I did contact the local caricature artist first; he wanted $170 for strictly a head drawing.  Is that what they charge on the street?  Well I'm too cheap or too broke to pay that kind of money.  I had a vision .  After 4 weeks, and many late nights, I am finally happy with this last posted header.  

Poster Edge Effect

I started with the photo, pulled the photo into Photo Shop Element -PSE, took out the background, went into the artistic effects, and use the poster edge effect on the photo so that it was easy to trace over a light table.  I printed the photo, put tracing paper over it, colored it with pastel pencils (chalk), scanned it, pulled it back into PSE; using the smudge tool, I smudge the colors around.  

Two layers

PSE has some very cool features where you can somewhat fade one picture and lay it on top of the other picture, then merge the layers; as you can see, after smudging the colors I would take all the lines out of the face.  So I would back to the tracing photo and start again with the coloring making sure I would emphasis the lines on my face.

I also drew all the other elements; then colored the drawings, and repeated the same process.  I've made it so that every element, even parts of my face, are layered.

Eyes

Lips

Glasses

Shirt

Sweat

Tape Measure

Sewing Machine (I designed the fabric in the machine in Publisher)

Fan

Crafting supplies

Background (I designed background in Publisher)

Text

  Yes, it is strange that my face elements are layered, the reason:  Well I took the eyes off the original photo, they shined brighter; I could merge the eyes but then I can't un-merge once I save the file, and the lips came from a more recent photo, I thought it would be cool to be able to change my expressions.

  My biggest problem was that I wanted the artwork to resemble me now, you know with wrinkles, and the photo was taken in 2008, after 3 years, well I've changed.  That's what took so long to get it right.  I started over, 4 times. At last, I took a picture of myself and faded it behind the smudge face and they the wrinkles showed through.  Wa La!

Thank you for reading about my obsessive  project.  Hooray, it's done!  Now I have to do my button............

Personal Art

I decided to do something personal for each grandchild for their birthday.  I started with my grandson, with his birthday coming up in a few months; I had plenty of time, ha......

The Christmas before, I had given him Uncle Milton - Moon in my Room, he loved it.  I also made curtains for his room with planets and stars in the fabric.  When I was considering what to put on the canvas, I decided to stick with that theme.

Here's what I did.

1.  Using acrylics I painted the whole 12x16 canvas gray and blue. I put some random colors, the E for his name with his birthday on the bottom.  I added the moon using a White Texture Effect.

I painted the moon orange;

With all these big ideas from the book to start with, I was stuck.

Tick Tock, October is getting closer.

I gave some thought to the personal side of the project and came up with this.

Original Photo

  2.  I took a recent picture of him that was taken at "Kites In The Park Festival".  That was something to see; hundreds of kites all flying at the same time.

3.  With pse (Photo Shop Element), I edited the photo, by cutting the grass and pasting it around the edge to have just him in the picture.

I extracted him from the photo, (leaving the blue around the kite and the tails of the kite), sized it, flipped it, and printed it on white tissue paper. On the canvas, I painted over the gray with white paint to be sure all the colors from the printed photo showed through when it is attached.  Using a sponge brush, I put a light coat of mod podge over the white paint then ever so carefully, place the printed side down onto the canvas, (otherwise the Mod Podge will make your colors bleed).  DAB the tissue paper photo lightly so it does rip and so it doesn't bleed through the top side; let it dry completely, dab on a little heaver coat the second time, and watch for bubbles, after that dries, mod podged over it a few more times. Painting over the mod podge around the photo is a little sticky, just let it completely dry. I mod podged a piece of white thread for the kite string.

At this point, I had the moon and my grandson flying his kite.  Tick Tock..... it was September....I wanted more on it and I was fast running out of time; so I bought him more cool planet stuff for his room, again, sticking with the theme, I got him Uncle Milton's Solar System in my Room, with a poster of the solar system.  He loved it.

With the pressure off, I forgot about the project for a month.  Then started thinking about Christmas.

4.  I pulled it back out, and added a pale yellow over the moon and a gloss to make it stand out.  For the stars, I dipped a pen in the same paint color and tapped it onto the canvas around the moon.

While Blog Stalking, I had seen artwork where the artist had done some distress writing on a picture, I thought it looked cool, (I should have read how it was done).  I came up with the poem idea. Back to the artist,  who composes as well.  I asked my daughter to come up with something about flying a kite by moon light. 

She wrote this.

Swallowed by the night

I try to fly my kite

No worries

No fright

I'm saved by the moon light!

  (Written by Deborah Gammeter)

Kind of catchy.

5.  That's when I painted over the E and his birth date. 

 

For the poem

I used rubber letter art stamps, with an x-Acto knife and I sliced them off of the wood stamps and taped each one to a piece of heavy duty card board, then split the card board into three large stamps.

Practice first on a sheet of paper. 

Most of the letters turned out but some did not.  Back to the artist.  She fixed it!

For Christmas, along with the painting, I gave my grandson a 4x6 copy of the photo framed, so that he could see that it was really him on the large canvas.  The gift was a big hit and looks awesome in his room.

 

 Thanks for Stopping By!!