Pop Art Canvases

As some of you know, I'm a nanny.  Two of the kids I watch are twins and their birthday is coming up at the end of September.  I knew I wanted to make them something so they will always have a reminder of me.  I thought about doing paintings of their names, but that's been done.  Then I had the brilliant idea to do Andy Warhol style art of both of them (and their sister too because I didn't want her to feel left out).  There are tons of Web sites that offer the service to turn your portrait into pop art, like mydavinci.com, for $64.85 for an 8 x 8 print.  I knew I could do it myself in Photoshop, mount the prints to canvas and BAM - expensive art for cheap!

I used the same 6 x 6 canvases from Michael's that I used for the seasons mosaics.  It's a lot cheaper to buy a pack of four 6 x 6 canvases than it is to buy one 12 x 12 canvas - whoda thunk it?

I painted the sides and about half an inch on the top with black acrylic and let them dry overnight.

I made the artwork 6 x 6 to fit on the canvases, then had them printed as 8 x 10s at Sam's Club.  I usually have prints made at CVS because there's one right around the corner, but the price for an 8 x 10 at CVS is $3.99, so for 12 prints, it would have been $48!  Absolutely ridiculous.  Walgreen's was only $2.99, but in the end, Sam's won with 8 x 10 prints for $1.46!  Sam's is definitely the best place to get prints done, for future reference.

I used my trusty Fiskars rotary paper cutter to trim the photos down to size.

I mounted the trimmed prints to the canvas using matte Mod Podge.  They looked pretty good just like this, but I felt they looked a little too much like plain ol' prints mounted to canvas.  They needed a little texture.

So I used the matte Mod Podge and a stencil brush to add some texture to the photo to make it look more like artwork.

I covered all the sides and the top with the Mod Podge to give a uniform look.

This is how the texture looked when it dried.  So much better than the glossy look, don't you think?  I think it makes it look more like the photo is printed on the canvas rather than glued to it.

And the finished product.  I am so extremely happy with them!  I debated on attaching them using 3 inches of ribbon in between, but in the end, I decided I liked the clean look better so I left them separate.  And what's even better... the grand total came out to less than $20 for each kid's one-of-a-kind pop art!

P.S. Isn't my subject adorable eating her watermelon?

Update: Go here to see the other two completed sets.

Update #2: These are now available in my shop.