Colorful Flower Messy Canvas Project

I love doing messy canvas.  This Flower Messy Canvas picture is a twist on the usual messy canvas.  I used graphics instead of words.  This makes the project a lot easier to weed and to stick.  

But what is a Messy Canvas?  A messy canvas is done the same way as a Subway sign in that you apply vinyl to canvas.  See that project here.  But instead of applying it to white canvas, the canvas is painted multiple colors before applying the vinyl.

Flower messy canvas
Flower Messy Canvas

Then the vinyl is used as a stencil, paint is applied over the canvas and the vinyl, then the vinyl is removed leaving the multicolored canvas below.  The effect is very dramatic.  I have lots of canvases to use up because Cordelia decided she doesn’t like to paint.  She discovered this AFTER I bought a 10 pack of canvases, of course.

What You will need:

Picking Colors for your Flower Messy Canvas

The colors you pick decide the tone of the messy canvas.  Since the theme is flowers I chose bright pastels.  Instead of fonts, I used different flower pictures or graphics.   The color of vinyl doesn’t matter because it is removed eventually anyway.  And messy canvas is a great way to use up vinyl that you aren’t sure if it is permanent or removeable without wasting it on the wrong type of project.

Prepping the canvas

With a foam brush paint the canvas several different colors.  Put small swatches of color all over the canvas randomly.  There is no pattern and you don’t even have to clean your brush in between colors.  Just make sure the whole canvas is covered.  Let the canvas dry overnight. 

Be careful that there are no ridges of paint.  If you take a dry brush and brush over the canvas after you are done painting it this will smooth out any ridges.  When dry it should look like this Halloween one.  I forgot to take a picture of the pastel one before I finished it.

Painted canvas
Painted Canvas
Applying the vinyl

Design and cut the vinyl as normal.  Then weed and apply the vinyl to the canvas.  If you need instruction on weeding,  there are instructions here.  After you apply the vinyl, lightly iron it with a warm regular iron, using a piece of paper between the iron and the vinyl.  This seals the edges and makes it so that the paint edges are cleaner.

Applying the Top Coat
Next apply a coat of acrylic paint over the vinyl and colorful background.  When you apply the top coat of paint, use a stencil brush and try not to push the paint around.  Just dab it on.  If you try to brush the paint on it will get underneath the vinyl and you will not get clean lines.  This was the a small problem with the 4th of July Messy Canvas I did, but it looks OK.  You can see that none of the lines are as crisp as they should be.
 
Once the whole canvas is covered let the paint dry overnight.  Make sure if the canvas has edges that you cover them too before the paint dries.
Finishing the Flower Messy Canvas
Once the paint is dry, remove the pieces of vinyl carefully.  Do not scratch the areas where there is no vinyl.  The vinyl will come up fairly easily.  You should have nice crisp lines and the mosaic colors below should show through nicely and even more randomly.  
 
Once you have removed all the vinyl, your Flower Messy Canvas is done!  There were some gaps in this messy canvas where the vinyl did not go on properly.  I thought it looked ok at first, but didn’t like the way the final project looked so I covered the holes with foam flowers that I made in the last tutorial.  See that tutorial here.  It makes a big difference in the look and I loved it.  What do you think?  I may add a couple more.
Flower Messy Canvas with a Foam Flower Filling in A Blank Spot

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