Big/Little Canvas

I'm finally going to continue posting about some of my big/little crafts! 

One of my favorite things to do is paint and I'm always searching for inspiration and new things to spice up my paintings. 

While browsing on Pinterest, I found this quote and I loved the current layout of it. 

Image via: Pinterest.com

The only problem with trying to recreate this particular quote was that I had no idea how to paint a background that resembled a galaxy print. 

However, as Pinterest usually does, I was able to find a tutorial!! The pin led me to this YouTube video: 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1RMqVdYMgBw

Here was how the process worked for me: 

Materials: 

Red paint

Blue paint

White paint 

Gold paint 

Black paint 

Paintbrushes 

Cup of water

Canvas 

 I started by painting my canvas black and letting it dry. Then I used the colors above to create the galaxy. My paint was at a limited supply by the time I got around to this canvas but the colors ended up working out fine. 

I followed the instructions on the video and placed both blue and red paint on the canvas. I applied the paint with a dry, flat, thick brush. 

For the next steps I forgot to take pictures but it was super simple! Once I achieved the above look, I dipped a new brush in water and then dipped it into the white paint. I then tapped the paintbrush above the canvas to spray flecks of white everywhere. 

I painted the quote in gold and I REALLY liked how the canvas turned out. I definitely think I had a lot more white "stars" on my canvas than the video did but it worked out because the quote covered a lot of it. 

I have one final Big/Lil post after this one, so be on the lookout for that! 

Oh, sheet.

One of the biggest parts of Big/Little reveal is our sheets that we have to paint. 

If you remember my blog post from the spring (http://lifeofacollegecrafter.blogspot.com/2014/04/iglittle-reveal.html?m=1) 

you'll remember these sheets! The theme for big/little reveal is always movies. Each Big picks a movie and paints a sheet to coordinate along with it. Throughout the official Big/Little week, the Bigs send clues to their littles about what movie they have. On reveal day, the littles stand in front of their sheet based on the movie they got. On the count of three all of the Bigs drop their sheets and the Big/Little pairs are revealed! 

For my movie, I picked Wizard of Oz and picked a fairly easy design for the sheet.

This ended up being my completed sheet and it took forever. It was exhausting but worth it. I was relatively happy with how it turned out. Mainly, I was ready to get rid of the thing. Just kidding. Sorta.

Here's the process though. 

Materials:

Flat sheet 

Paintbrushes (foam and detail ones)

Paint

Sharpie 

Chalk 

Lots and lots of time

Tarp (optional)

Iron

I attempted to find a blue/green sheet so I wouldn't have to paint both the sky and the grass, but life isn't always fair so I had to get an all white sheet.

The first step is to iron the sheet so there aren't any wrinkles when you start painting. This step didn't take as long as I thought.

Clearly, I'm really bad at ironing and I gave up. Not recommended because it made the sheet harder to paint. Regardless, I put a tarp on the floor to protect it from the paint that would seep through from the sheet. I sketched out my design with a sharpie. 

Here's just a close up shot of my sketch Emerald City. 

I first began by painting the grass. I had two different color greens and hoped that they could easily be blended to create a "realistic" look. 

I just did random brush strokes. I liked how spontaneous it looked. 

The next step in painting my sheet was the poppies. I attempted to look up how to paint poppies but I didn't find anything worth while. So instead, I kind of just guessed. 

I used a single color of a pink/red to draw the outline. I filled in the poppy with that color and then took a lighter pink and added some highlight. 

I then went back in and added some darker reds to the center and outer petals of the poppies for more dimension. I don't really have a method for this part. Mainly I just add color where I think it looks best. 

In typical Life of a College Crafter fashion, I stopped taking progress pictures. Whoops. Even though I don't have pictures here's a breakdown of each part of the sheet. 

Poppies:

After I finished painting all the poppies I went back in and added small yellow flowers for some color. I then lightly dipped my brush in light green paint to add stems to each flower. I think this step was really important in adding dimension and life to the painting!

Grass: 

I'm not even gonna lie, I ran out of green paint halfway through and did not have the time to go get more soooo I improvised. I ran out of the green paint that is visible on the right side of the sheet. Therefore I used the deep green paint and mixed it with white to create the color on the left. It looks a little weird, but when looking at the sheet as a whole it's not too bad! I intentionally made the grass that was touching Emerald City the deep, forest green in order to separate the colors and show depth. (I try to use really artsy weirds to make you think I know what I'm talking about). 

Sky:

It's just painted all the same shade of blue. Nothing special here. 

Emerald City: 

I started by painting the city all green. From there, I added green and white paint to the city to create some streaks. I didn't want the city to be one color. I also found light and dark green glitter paint. I used this kind of paint over the dried city to add some sparkle! 

I finished it off by writing  "Littles, crescents, & pearls OH MY!" on the top of the sheet. I used chalk to sketch the letters out on the sheet prior to painting the letters. 

(That's my twin's sheet...too cute!) 

Overall, I really liked my sheet! Definitely a labor of love..

That's it for this post but check out the rest of my Big/Little Reveal posts for more crafts!