diy framed, reusable paintings tutorial

I really had trouble with this title. How do I convey this project in a few short words when it could have been called estate sale find converted to rotating paintable canvas for you or your kids?

We're big into art and music here. Not that Hawk or I have talent (though he can play the piano, guitar, mandolin, banjo, and bouzouki). But we feel that artistic expression is pretty important at all ages in that it excites the imagination and one's sense of adventure, exploration, and creativity.

We also don't want clutter and artwork collecting over the years so that we can't enjoy it, so I came up with the idea of a reusable canvas. Something prominent to let the kids' work be center stage, but something reusable so that we weren't stuck with pounds of paper in ten years. So I'd been looking for a large canvas on which the kids could paint, and I knew I wanted to be able to display it as one would real art, but I didn't want fifty of these things around the house.

I found this for $9, talked down to $4, at a local estate sale back in August. I've placed the paintbrush so that you can get an idea of its size. The yellowish, weathered subjects are flying kites. Then, in October, we got to work.

Supplies Needed:

Old, framed artwork (or new ugly artwork)

Medium home paintbrush

Permanent paint (not washable, kids paint) for the background

Kids non-toxic paints

Small paintbrush

Paper plates for mixing paint

Tarp or painting area

I used leftover paint from our home tests.

I just poured the paint over the canvas and spread it as a pretty thin, but fully covering coat.

Then, we hung it up to dry in its place in our basement. Like that laundry? Keepin' it real folks, keepin' it real.

I let Ace choose the paint colors and mix them on paper plates.

Which actually looked quite pretty.

And then he went to town. I wasn't worried about getting dirty because we used this Melissa & Doug paint and we did our work in the unfinished part of the basement. You can see Poppy in the background playing on her own, sweet gal.

About 20 minutes later, we hung this puppy on the wall where it rests today. I took a photo of the artwork, along with his name and the date, because we aren't going to keep this as it is. When the weather is just too bad to be outside, we'll paint over it again. My hope is that we can use this canvas for a few years before there's just too much paint on it.

We enjoyed this so much that I plan on grabbing more when rummage sale season hits in spring!

Happy Thursday, friends.

icj,
`j

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