The Beatles Abbey Road Canvas

Hi there!  Today, I have a different type of craft than I usually do.  It's more artsy than crafty.  :)

Not bad, eh?

I had found this (below) on Pinterest and being a huge Beatles fan, thought it was way cool.

Via Always in Wonder blog

Of course, I immediately thought "oh I can do that myself".  I actually planned to make this as a gift for my brother, who is also a Beatles fan.  Months went by, his birthday went by and I never made it.  So, in November, I finally thought that I should make it as a Christmas gift for him and this would give me deadline to get it done.  I made sure to not wait until the last minute either .  Ya know - just in case it  didn't turn out so well.  :)

Here's how I did it...

Supplies:
*  Canvas
*  Paint
*  Image printed on paper
*  Craft scissors
*  Paint brush (or sponge brush)
*  Adhesive

1)  I Googled images of the Beatles' Abbey Road album.  I happened to find one that was just the silhouettes of them, instead of the original picture.  So I printed it out and using my craft scissors (they were easier to use than regular scissors), I cut the figures out.  I made sure to cut very carefully in case I needed to use the "reverse" stencil.

2)  Once cut, I laid out the stencils/figures, I placed them on the canvas until I got them in a spot that I liked.  I liked the placement of the original that I found on Pinterest, so I used that as my guide.

3)  I didn't have any repositional spray adhesive and I didn't want to use my permanent spray adhesive for fear that the stencils wouldn't come off when it was time to remove them.  So, I used double-sided tape.  This ended up not being a good idea, but I digress.

4)  I searched through my many sample pots of paint and decided on "Anonymous" by Behr.  It's a nice, dark gray color and I figured it would match with pretty much most color/decor schemes.  Using a sponge brush, I just splattered the paint in all different directions.  There was no rhyme or reason to it - I just splattered it until I thought it looked good.

5)  Since the paint was thick in some spots, it was sort of hard to see where the stencils were.  So, I decided to take the stencils off while it was still wet.

6)  If you look closely at the figures in the picture above, you can see that in several spots, the paint leaked.  There were jacked-up feet, hands, heads all over the place.  So, I racked my brain to try to think how to fix them or if I should just go buy some repositional spray adhesive and start over.  Since I wouldn't be able to go to the store for a few days, I decided to just try and fix it - if it didn't work, then I would just start from scratch.  I decided to use my reverse stencil that I had taken the time to very carefully cut out.

7)  I matched the figure on the canvas to the figure of the reverse stencil and taped it into place over the figure.  I also held it in place with my fingers to ensure that it stayed in place.  Using my off-the-shelf Pure White Behr paint, I painted within the stencil with an artist's brush.  It just so happened that this white paint matched the white of the canvas perfectly.  If I accidentally painted "outside of the lines", I just dipped some of the gray paint onto the tip of a wood skewer and touched it up.  It was actually very easy.

8)  Paul went from looking like this...

To this...

It actually looks a lot better in person - for some reason the camera picked up on the glare from the paint and made it look a bit more rough than it really is.  It's not perfect, but much better than how he started out.

George came out looking really good too.

And here is all 4 of them after I touched them all up.

9)  I wasn't sure if my brother would want to hang this or lean it up against a wall, so to give him the option, I added picture hanging hardware. I tend to save extra parts and had this in my stash.  It came with small nails, but they were too long for the canvas - they would go right through to the front.  So, I ended up super gluing it to the back of the canvas.  It worked like a charm - I even tested it out.

Here's the final product.  This is one where it's leaning against the wall...

And where it's hanging on the wall...

I hope he likes it!!  I was actually very, very thrilled with how it came out.  I'm going to make one for myself (eventually), but probably paint a nice chevron background.  But, I'll definitely need to go buy that repositional spray adhesive first!

I hope everyone has been enjoying the holiday and time with their families!  And as always, thanks for stopping by.

originally posted by http://adventuresindiy1759.blogspot.com/

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