DIY Nursery Art

A few weeks ago as I was planning Maggie's shower, I was thinking of what I would give her as a gift.  She had already received a ton of things from her registries, and I knew that she was wanting some personalized wall art for the nursery.  She had looked at some pieces on Etsy, so I did some browsing myself.  Some of the coolest things I found were prints that had animal silhouettes and the child's name.  Here was my main  inspiration from Etsy: 

I decided that they looked simple enough, and I could create some personalized art for Maggie in an afternoon.  Maggie's son will be named Thomas Campbell.  I knew he needed one canvas with a sheep since that's his nursery theme and one canvas with a deer since his daddy is a hunter.  Here's how I did it:

Materials:

• 2 stretched canvases (I used two square canvasses because I thought they looked modern)
• background color acrylic paint (I liked two shades of blue)
• white acrylic paint
• paintbrushes
• pencil
• adhesive letters (I found lots of varieties in the scrapbook aisle of Michael's)

Steps:

1. Search online for pictures of animal silhouettes.  I just searched google images for "sheep silhouette" and "deer silhouette" and looked for the best ones.
2. Draw an outline of the animal on the canvas.  I just looked at the picture and drew the animals freehand with pencil, but you could just as easily print out the images and use them as stencils to trace on the canvas.
3. Using white paint, paint the animals all white.
4. Using your darker background paint, paint the rest of the canvas, around the animal outlines.  Depending on the colors you choose, you may need more than one coat.  I did one coat of light blue and two coats of dark blue.
5. Go back with smaller brushes to make the animal outlines sharp - I did multiple touch ups with both the white and the color.
6. When it's completely dry, stick your adhesive letters on the canvas to spell out the name.

Here are the finished creations!

Blazer says, "Mama, where is the one with a doggie and it says 'Blazer'?"