blackbird chevron canvas

My chevron canvas was feeling a little lonely up on my wall, so I decided to make some additional pieces that matched, but could stand on their own. The words are lyrics to the Beatles song, "Blackbird." I kind of felt it fit perfectly with the original chevron canvas considering there are 2 blackbirds on it... and I love the Beatles!!

Growing up, my sister was obsessed with the Beatles. And since ~~we were stuck sharing a room~~ every little sister wants to be like their older sister, I quickly learned every Beatles song. I did always love their music though, just not to the extent my sister did. :) So, Natalie, consider this part of an homage to you for teaching me to love great music.

What I used:
- two 8x10" canvases
- acrylic craft paint (I used the same Calypso Sky I used on the chevron canvas)
- painters tape
- sponge brush
- Sharpie marker, fine tip & regular tip
- chevron stencil

First, I painted my canvases with watered down acrylic paint. I mixed one part paint, 2 parts water (basically 1 teaspoon paint, 2 teaspoons water) because I wanted the same color as my other canvas, but I didn't want these to take too much away from it either. Just FYI, watered down paint shows the brush strokes more. Think of it more as doing a watercolor painting.

After the paint was dry, I marked off my chevron lines using the same stencil I used for my original chevron canvas. Since these all go together, I wanted the lines to be the same size. I like using the Frog Tape, it usually keeps the paint from leaking.

I used the same watered down paint and painted a couple coats on the open area. The plan was just to make the pattern a couple shades darker so the chevron was there, but a little less obvious. Let each coat dry in between. I painted two coats, just because one didn't look like much of a difference from the original coat.

Well, my Frog Tape obviously didn't work too well for keeping it from leaking. Obviously you can see in the photo how it looked. After running away from it for a little while and then coming back to it, I decided it might actually look cool once I was done. If not, I could always start over.

I put together some wording on the computer, and then cut it out using the Silhouette. I used the "negative" as my stencil and stuck it to the canvas by spraying some spray glue and letting it sit for around 5 minutes so it was tacky, but not extremely sticky. Then, I traced the letters with a Sharpie. I used the fine point tip for the outline of the bigger letters, and the regular tip to fill in the smaller letters.

This is how it looked after I took my stencil off. Don't worry if the edges aren't perfect, it won't matter too much after the next step. Just make sure the outlines are all connected and at least look like the stencil you made.

I wanted kind of a "grunge" look considering how the stripes turned out. I filled in the letters by some controlled scribbling using the regular tip Sharpie. Leaving some empty space in between scribbles gives it the look I was going for. I tried to keep the angle of the scribbles all going the same direction, mostly because I'm OCD like that. :)

Once it's dry, I hear you can cover it with Mod Podge, but I was too chicken to try. With my luck it would have smeared. I did some research and a lot of people say once the Sharpie is dry it shouldn't smear. Someday I will find out for sure, but for now I don't want to risk it...