We have this wide hallway downstairs that has one long wall. Across from the wall are the laundry room and half bath. I thought about adding floating shelves, but decided instead to go on the hunt for one really large piece of artwork for the wall. I already have a gallery on the dining room wall, which you can see at the same time as the hallway wall, when you’re standing in the family room looking through the kitchen.
At the thrift store I stumbled across this huge framed canvas print. Only it didn’t look like this when I found it…
It looked like this, below. Very flat, all shades of grey. Only a hint of color in some of the flowers. But I really liked the landscape and composition, and I knew I could paint over it, paint-by-numbers-style, and breathe some life into it.
And After:
I started by washing the whole thing. It had a few stains that came right off. Then I just painted over it like paint-by-numbers. For the layers of mountains in the background I kept the paints fairly wet, and blended them out. It’s something easy that anyone can do by following a few simple steps:
How to paint over thrift store art with acrylic craft paint:
- Make sure that the art you want to paint over is on canvas, not paper.
- It can be a landscape or a still life, anything you like, that has a nice composition.
- Start by cleaning the entire piece with mild soap and water.
- Always start painting whatever is the farthest away, the background. Above, I began by painting the sky, then the farthest mountains, then the next closest mountains, then the next closest, and finally the foreground.
- Begin with a hard line, like the top edge of each mountain range, then use a wet brush to blend the color out and away to create depth instead of flat color. Unless flat color is the look you prefer, in which case you can do that too.
- Keep the paint brush fairly damp for slightly translucent strokes of color.
- You don’t have to paint over everything, unless you want to. I didn’t really touch the cactus in the bottom left corner, and I only added some of the lighter greens to the other cactus.
- Have fun with it! It’s only thrift store art!
Here’s one more Before and After for Pinterest!
♥, Kelly
