Splat Painting Room Art

On our summer bucket list was to do splat paintings on canvas. I decided that this would add a nice touch to our son's room and there had been a Dr. Seuss quote that I'd been wanting to hang in his room anyway. This was like killing two birds with one stone (not that I would ever kill birds with stones...)

So, we headed onto the patio with our paints, a paper plate, a brush, a piece of cardboard, newspaper and a canvas from the dollarstore.

I put the newspaper under the canvas so we didn't get the stones covered in paint.

Then, we placed our chosen paint colours on a paper plate and I gave my toddler a brush while I held the piece of cardboard and showed his how to hit his brush against it to get it to splat on the canvas. We then tried just flicking the paint covered brush at the canvas for bigger blobs. Of course, if there is paint at the ready my toddler can't resist sticking his little fingers in it and doing some hands-on work. So, there was some finger painting involved, too.

That was set aside to dry and in the meantime I printed off the quote I wanted to use:

The more that you read,
The more things you'll know.
The more you learn,
The more places you'll go!

Then, I thought to myself, "How the heck am I going to get the words onto the canvas?" I didn't want to spend potential hours using an exacto knife to cut each one out; I didn't want to try to make a stencil and I didn't want to just glue the entire thing on.

Then, inspiration struck.

I taped the piece of paper with the quote onto the back of the canvas and used the flashlight app on my phone to shine the light through the canvas (from behind). By pressing down a little on the canvas the words came through clear and I was able to trace it in Sharpie and then in black paint.

Tip: If your smallest paint brush is still too big
 to cleanly paint your letters simple wrap some
 masking tape around the bristles to make it tighter/smaller.

The print is a little smaller than I had intended it to be, but that just means more of my son's artwork is visible!

I used a lazy simple way of hanging it by using two push-ins in the wall. It is now hanging by the reading chair in his bedroom with enough room underneath for another picture (undecided at the moment).

I love the way it turned out and I adore the quote!