DIY: Cartoon Canvas!

Hello everyone!

Sorry things have been on hiatus for a while--all of my free time has been destroyed by school and my job. Can't they just let me spend all my time on the internet?

Today's DIY is a little strange. The pictures come from my cell phone, because I have misplaced my camera. Hopefully I'll find it in tine to post pictures of my Halloween costume (as I make it? I haven't decided yet...). The problem with taking pictures with your cell phone isn't so much the crappy quality (because an $84 camera isn't much better), but the fact that you keep misplacing it in-progress. In light of my featherbrained-ness, here is today's DIY!

First, decide what you want to paint on your canvas. I've been nursing an obsession over owls lately, so I decided to draw a simplistic cartoon owl. If you're using the technique I use here, you want your picture to be simplistic--otherwise, you could become seriously flabberghasted.

I drew the owl onto a piece of Con-Tact paper cut to the size of my canvas (roughly). Then I cut out the owl's body, his eyes, and his stomach feathers. Be careful to leave these pieces whole!

I then painted the background of the canvas. I went with a light yellow, because I thought it would look nice with the whole color scheme.

Then I peeled the back off the Con-Tact paper, and stuck the outline, eyes, and stomach of my owl to the canvas.

The next step was to paint in the owl's body! I was able to use the sponge-brush to color in his purple-ness. You need to be careful around the edges of the paper, though--if you're too vigorous in your brushing, you can peel back the edge of the paper and mess up your lines (which I did a couple times here, even though this is my second time using this technique).

Then I went in and painted in his features! Here, I've painted his wings, stomach feathers, feet, and eye-area brown, and his eyes black.

 Once you're done giving the creature features, you're finished as soon as the paint fries! Here's my owl (I've been calling him Peanut-Butter-Jelly-And-Banana-Sandwich, because that's what he reminds me of) on my bookshelf! The bookshelf was going to be a DIY, but then I seriously messed it up. It was just mod-podged paper on a bookshelf anyway--nothing too exciting.

You can also see the Halloween card my Grandma sent me! Hi Grandma! (Just kidding, my grandma can't work electronics so she's not on the internet.)

I hope you enjoy this DIY as much as I did (despite the pathetic pictures). I'm getting quite attached to Peanut-Butter-Jelly-And-Banana-Sandwich, and I'm sure you'll be just as fond of whichever friend you make yourself!