Making Artwork

I’m excited to tell you about my favorite Christmas gift! It was from my daughter, who saw a project on Pinterest and perfected it to make it easy. Taking digital images of each cover of my books, she made lovely artwork of them. Here’s the finished look now hanging in my office, and just below that I’ll tell you how she did it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Material Needed:

Digital image of your choice

A color printer

Copy Paper, 8 1/2 x 11 – doesn’t matter what kind or even if it’s scratch paper. You’re only using it to allow the tissue paper to feed through the printer, and will then cut it away.

Craft foam brush

Plaid (brand) Mod Podge (This is a water-based sealer, glue and finish all in one and available at any craft store like Hobby Lobby). There are some choices here, whether you choose a flat/matte, slight sparkle or glossy finish. My daughter used the slightly sparkled, but the sparkle isn’t really noticeable unless the light is aimed right at it.

Tissue paper, the kind you use to line gift boxes with. She used white for mine, but used an off-white or light beige color for a black and white picture that also turned out well.

Scotch tape

Art canvas stretched to an 8×8 size. Available at any craft or art store.

Craft paint and small paint brush to cover the white edges, where desired or necessary.

Procedure:

Cut large pieces of tissue paper in half (a half sheet is shown on the ironing board) then iron any wrinkles away. As you can see, the center fold leaves a line from the way the tissue paper is folded upon purchase. That’s what she ironed out. Ironing seemed dangerous to me at first, since tissue paper is surely flammable. But with the iron set on low it wasn’t a problem at all. The tissue paper ironed perfectly! The main thing is not to have any wrinkles.

Tape the tissue paper around a regular sized piece of copy paper. As I mentioned, the paper could have printing on it already (scratch paper). Make sure the tissue paper is secure by pressing the crease at the top end where it will feed into the printer, and that there is no excess to gum up the works, then use scotch tape to secure.

Place the paper into your printer (face down on my printer – just make sure it’s correctly positioned for the image to print right on to the tissue).

Important: Since this is an image, your printer should give you the option to SCALE. You’ll want to check the box to FILL ENTIRE PAPER so you’ll have a minimum of white space and the image will cover the 8 x 8 size of your canvas.

After it comes out of the printer, trim along the edges where there will be a small section of white, unprinted area and slip the paper out, leaving you with only the tissue paper. Set aside while you prepare the canvas.

Using a foam brush, put a thin and even layer of Mod Podge over your 8 x 8 canvas (no lumps, streaks or lines).

Position the printed tissue paper carefully over the prepared canvas, smoothing out any wrinkles. The tissue paper is pretty easy to work with, though you have to be careful not to tear it so be gentle. It might bubble a little but will flatten completely as it dries. This wasn’t a problem for me when I helped on one.

 

Once you’ve positioned your tissue onto the canvas, add another thin, even layer of Mod Podge over this.

 

Then let dry for 24 hours.

 

 

 

 

To keep the individual canvases straight and for easy hanging, my husband staple-gunned a mesh wiring to connect them at the back.

If you choose the canvases that are stretched over wood frames, as my daughter did shown here, very likely your top and bottom edges will be covered with the image you’ve selected, but the side edges will still be white (showing the canvas). I painted the edges a complimentary color to hide the white, but the way I have them hung you can only see the ones on the outside of the montage anyway, if at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can choose to Mod Podge your image to any surface, even thinner canvases or notebooks or sturdy cardboard. Wherever you imagine your covers or your digital image, you can paste it on! The size is limited by the size your printer can handle to print, but the possibilities are many.

 

As you can tell, I was thrilled with the result. My daughter also made images of favorite album covers for her husband, and is planning to create cover art of favorite children’s books for my special-needs child who loves Clifford and Peter Pan. If you’d like to create artwork at a very reasonable price, this is the project for you! The ones shown above cost less than $5.00 each. You can use whatever artwork you have from your camera or any digital images you create and can print.

 

This project was not only fun, it created memorable artwork for me that I’ll enjoy for years to come.