My friend Becky is one of the most creative people I know. She can sew, knit, cook, decorate, garden, write. In short, she is what I want to be when I grow up. Recently, she took on the project of making a birthday gift for her daughter-in-law. She began with a little picture like the one below. It was drawn by her grandson, Andrew. Becky said, “It is to her from Andrew, since he is the actual artist.”
She bought a pre-stretched canvas, painted it and then cut petals from one of his drawings. Below is a picture of the canvas with the cut outs laid in place.
Next, she used Mod-Podge to stick down the petals and then seal the entire picture.
After she finished, Becky said, “I will say, if anyone does this, try to use art work that was made on sketch paper or heavier paper. My grandson used copy paper and Mod-Podge turned it into tissue paper. It was very hard to work with. Thus, my spacing changed…I had no wiggle room and once the petal hit the canvas, it had to stay. If I had used heavier paper for the petals, it would have gone quickly.”
Becky also made a card to go with the gift from another piece of Andrew’s art work. She knew that her daughter-in-law, Kristi, likes butterflies so she formed one from another piece of Andrew’s art work.
Any mother would be delighted to get a birthday gift made from her child’s drawings. Here are the finished pieces.
Andrew and Grandma hoped that Momma would like them and she did!
After I had finished putting together this post about Andrew’s art, my good friend Karen sent me a picture of a project she and her daughter, Anne, did in Anne’s powder room. I am going to add it to this post because you need to see how nice it is. Anne asked Karen to bring as many empty frames as she could find and the two of them painted those frames plus many more with navy blue chalk paint. The beauty of chalk paint is that you don’t have to prime the wood…just one coat and you are usually finished. Ann saved wonderful pictures that her three children had drawn and then they framed them in the new navy blue frames and arranged them on the wall. Here is that finished product.
Create and be happy!