Altered Artist Canvas

Getting ready for Spring again, today.  I decided I wanted to do an altered canvas for the wall instead of a painting this time.

I started off with a blank white stretched artist canvas.

I went online and found a pretty floral picture for my altered canvas piece.  I sized the picture to fit a piece of printer paper.

original image

Then I cut out a piece of plain white tissue paper about an inch larger all around than the printer paper.  I centered the printer paper on the tissue, carefully folded all the edges to the backside and taped  it in place.  Next I ran this piece through my printer transferring the image to the tissue side of the paper.  Let the ink dry a bit and cut it off the printer paper along the edge.  Be sure if your image has any writing that you print it in reverse so it will read correctly when glued face down.  The reason I glued the image face down was to put the ink against the canvas to keep it from smearing when painting on the final heavy coat of Mod Podge.

I covered the entire canvas with an even coat of Mod Podge and carefully laid the tissue, ink side down, on the canvas, trying to avoid having any air bubbles.  I very gently dabbed the tissue with my fingers to adhere it to the canvas.  It is very fragile at this state.  So you need to use the very lightess pressure possible to avoid tearing the tissue.  I let that dry and then I painted the edges of the canvas with acrylic paints to blend with the picture and cover the white edges of the canvas.

Once the paint and Mod Podge where dry I coated the entire picture with a heavy layer of Mod Podge leaving brush strokes visible in the finish.

Here you can see the final coat of Mod Podge still drying. The image still has white areas that haven't dried completely,

These are the embellishments I am planning to add to the canvas when it is dry.  

In the final piece I also added a green butterfly to the top right corner.

Detail of added flowers and clear rhinestones.

More added flowers, rhinestones and copper colored flower stems.

And here is the finished piece with lace topped with the white cording to finish the lace's top edge , pearls and dragonflies hot glued to the bottom.

Happy Crafting!