Bathroom art

One of my favorite things in life is to decorate, so when I realized that my bathroom was sadly missing some artwork I decided to remedy that situation. Off I went to Hobby Lobby to buys some canvases because who can beat the two pack for $8! I than bought some paint in bright colors (at least bright colors that I didn't have) and a couple of paint pens. At this point I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to make only that I wanted it to be on canvas and it needed to be bright colors to match my bright paisleyish shower curtain. 

I knew that I did not want to do anything with pictures of people. Not that pictures aren't great but I had so many put up in my actual room already that I was worried that it might look slightly narcissistic if I also had my face plastered all over my bathroom as well. After a little deliberation I decided that I wanted to do some inspirational quotes, so that whenever I am getting ready I feel a little more inspired. I also figured that since it was located in my bathroom I wanted them geared towards makeup and making oneself look pretty.

After a quick Google/Pinterest search I settled on two quotes:

Happy Girls are the Prettiest - Audrey Hepburn

Make is not a tool meant to make an ugly thing beautiful, it is meant only to magnify the beauty that already exists.

With my quotes decided I now needed to really narrow down my design idea. I quickly decided to stick with my makeup theme and wanted black and white outlines of specific makeup pieces (a lipstick and a compact) with a bright color surrounding them with the quote written overlapping the image. Originally I wanted the lettering in a bright color as well, however after doing a rough draft of the design with color on my computer I realized that the lettering did not stand out as much when done in a color and it looked a little cluttered for my taste. I really wanted these to be simple so that when I inevitable moved I could easily transfer these to another space. I also decided to forgo sealing the canvas after it was painted because if for some reason after I moved I no longer like the paintings I could easily paint over them reusing the canvas instead of throwing these away and purchasing more.

I planned it out on my computer first, making sure all the spacing was correct. I then measured the canvas and adjusted the zoom on my document so I could trace the image. This sounds complicated but really all I did was cut a piece of tissue paper slightly smaller than my canvas, since I did not want the design to go all the way to the border and did a rough estimate of how much I needed to zoom in by placing the tissue paper on the screen and making small marks to show where the lettering would match up at. Once I had it to the size that I wanted, I simply traced the image directly from the screen onto my tissue paper using a pencil. I found this method the easiest because I could adjust the zoom to change the size of everything rather than worrying about printing and spacing and margins and of course wasting paper.

Once I had traced the image from the screen, onto my tissue paper I placed it onto the canvas. I only traced the background image (so the lipstick on one and the compact on the other) first since I wanted to do different colors. I used a black sharpie to trace the image onto the canvas. 

Just the background images traced on using tissue paper and a sharpie.

Once that was done I painted the surrounding areas a solid color. I choose coral and yellow due to them matching the colors on my shower curtain as well as thinking them to be really pretty. After a few layers of paint I used a black paint pen to trace the outline of the makeup image. With that complete I than placed my tissue paper back on the canvas and traced the lettering using a black sharpie. The thinner lines I just slightly darkened with a thin sharpie. The thicker letters I used a combination of paint pen and sharpie to get the desired effect.

I used a thin paintbrush to clean up my edges and after everything was dry I hung them up in my bathroom. The bright colors help the small space to look more cheery and bright I like not looking at blank, white walls while in there. If you are making these as more permanent fixtures I would recommend applying a few layers of Modge Podge or other sealant on top of the paint and sharpie to help make the image last. Since mine may not stay permanently this way I skipped this step.