Melanie's Spooky Canvas

I love playing with canvas pieces, they come in so many sizes and shapes. Mine is 11x14. Blue Moon has some available in the store too. I know Lisa and the DT use them often for their projects.

I had an idea in my head and just went with it. This is something that you definitely have to work in layers and lots of them.

First I painted the entire canvas piece with yellow paint, after it dried I applied a nice shade of blue. I wiped it way to get the streaks of yellow to show through (which would later represent the yellow of the moon to show through the dark sky).

For the moon shape use a circle punch on white cardstock, distress it with yellow distress ink and a spritz of orange glimmer mist, to highlight the moon used some white ink. The clouds were handcut from white cardstock and distressed with the Tim Holtz distress ink called whethered wood and old paper. Add a touch of white for highlighting. I also used some black oil pastels around the edges and blending it all together.

The bats are from a Tim Holtz set I had and just randomly stamped them in the sky.


All the paper on the canvas is from the Crow's Nest kit. I handcut the house out and used scraps of paper for the shingles, chimney, windows and door. (a couple items not in the kit are the Tim Holtz mini grungeboard pieces and brads)

The fence was new, but I broke it up, distress it with a hammer and sandpaper and inked the edges with brown and black distress ink to make it look spooky and old.

Here's a close-up of the singles and the broken shutters. I used a pair of fabric scissors for the choppy edge on the roof line and bend the edges up with a pencil.

I wanted the steps to look worn and the best product for that is Crackle paint. I folded paper to look like a set of stairs and coated them with paint. The cute kitty, broom and pumpkins are from the Crafty Secrets Halloween Images. I know I said the other day these are a must have and truly they are so cute and easy to cut apart.

These are close-ups of the cute little trick-or-treater's (aka: my 3 children). I printed them out about 4 inches high, cute them out and attached them with pop-dots. That way I really get a cool profile to my canvas with all the layers.

Do you see the tombstones in the background? Those are actually from a picture at the pumpkin patch I took last year and just cut them out, used some oil pastels and made them blend into the background. Added some "grass" looking paper to really make them feel like they belong where they are.

The owl is also from the Crafty Secret Image book. All the tree images are from the Glimer Mist stamp set called Halloween Hauntings. I stamped each one on white cardstock with brown ink, used distress ink all over them, a spritz of glimmer mist and cut all the trees out.

Everything is tacked down with Matte Multi Medium which is excellent sealing glue-a glue with so many possibilities!

Mixing mixed media, collages, paper piecing and lots of layers is a fun alternative to layouts. Think of it as home decor.

Have a great day!

~Melanie