I am an absolute perfectionist so if I think that something I do won’t be just right, I won’t do it. This statement is ironic because most of the projects I do, I screw up. Making these canvas creations requires little to no talent.

Supplies:

• Paintbrush (rolling or wide hand-held brush) and a smaller brush for painting the utensils
• Acrylic paint. At Michaels, it’s the BASICS collection. You’ll want one color for the stripes and another color for the utensils
• Painters tape (in the size stripes you’ll want). Mine was 1 3/4″ wide
• Pencil (for tracing your utensils)
• Scissors for cutting your stencils
• Stencils found at the end of this post
• Command strips (the velcro kind)
• Canvases – Michaels usually has a great deal in the 2 packs

Be sure to place something beneath your canvases (paper, tablecloth, whatever) so you don’t get paint everywhere.

1. I chose my background color as white

2. To make “perfect” stripes. Line your first strip of tape with the top of the canvas. Then, put another strip just below it and repeat. At this point, you’ll have three strips of tape in a row with no spacing at all. Peel away the middle strip to reveal a blank “stripe” in your canvas as shown on the Step 2 image. Repeat on the whole canvas.

3. My paint color is a plain grey. It dries a bit darker, too.

4. I’m a rock star.

5. To create the right size “stencil”, I placed the stencils in a word document and printed off each one separately. As in, three different pieces of paper. Cut them out and place them where you want them. To keep them secure, place a small piece of the painters tape behind each stencil. Trace with a pencil.

STENCILS HERE (click for full image):

6. Paint within the lines. If you don’t- whatever. Call it art. I added a bit of grey which mixed with my navy blue to make it look like a reflection. It made no difference but I felt fancy.

7. Add the velcro strips to the wood part of the canvas (back -obviously).

8. If you have a laser level, use this to find the place where you want to hang the canvases. If you don’t, grab a spool of ribbon and run it all along the wall from one end to the other and mark where you want to put the velcro. You’ll do this twice. Once for the top of the canvas and once for the bottoms. It’s as if you have a hard edge on top and bottom and you fit the canvases in between them. Does this make any sense? The best part about using the velcro is that you can adjust the canvases to line up even after you’ve put them on the wall.

Step back and see if you like it!