Fort Painting: Valentine's Day Gift #1

Happy Valentine's Day!

I know I'm a little late, but I've been too lazy to take pictures off my camera of some crafts I made for my boyfriend. This post is dedicated to the first craft, that I've dubbed the Fort Painting.

I've been going a little crazy on the craft section on Pinterest, and I've been inspired by a lot of artwork to the point where I've decided my new apartment will generally only have art hung done by me.

I found a tutorial from someone who liked a photo and decided to pixelate the original and paint it herself. I loved the idea of pixelating a photo and going from there, but my boyfriend is not a big fan of modern art (or whatever this would be considered) and he vetoed the idea.

But when I saw ANOTHER idea that involved painting over an old/unwanted painting, I knew I could do both!

Oh. One last thing I was inspired by: this card on Etsy. My sister posted it on facebook, and I knew it was amazing. I hate cards though, and I didn't really care for the inside of the card either. I thought it was summed up nicely on the front. And it was pretty awesome since my boyfriend and I like to make forts in his room.

So I did a google search for forts, then adult forts since I thought it might be weird to pixelate a bunch of kids, though it probably didn't matter because you can't really make the picture out anyway... So after I picked a picture (that had a tv in it, since tvs are crucial to good forts!), I cropped it, played with the colors, and pixelated it in picnik.com. Then I set to work!

I grabbed a ruler and traced a grid onto the canvas. Somehow I found a ruler that wasn't straight. Seriously. But I suppose it added a little something, don't you think?

Here I am halfway thought it! As you can see, I had limited colors, but I adjusted them by adding drops of white or black paint. There's probably a way to adjust the colors in some photo editing software, but I wasn't sure how to do that nor did I care when I first started. But if I do it again, it would probably help because I got tired of doing exact matches about 5 minutes in. I looked at a couple tutorials, and they all said it was as easy as doing a paint by number, but if you choose not to adjust the colors, it's not that simple. That being said, I was happy with how it was turning out, so I didn't really care.

 Here it is finished! You can't really tell, but the tv is on the left, and the rest are curtains and some lights. Even though you can't really tell what it is, I thought it turned out quite nice! Well, nice enough considering that I didn't bother staying in the little squares or getting the colors right. My boyfriend was present for all of this (I decided it didn't matter for this stage because it was still preliminary- and I had already told him he was getting a homemade craft.) and he nodded and said, "I like it because you did it. I never understood what parents meant when they said that, but now I know." Haha, I appreciate the support.

So then I applied reusable vinyl letters exactly where I wanted them, and painted white over the entire canvas. Even though the paint seemed dry, it started to run, so I panicked and stopped, letting it dry overnight. When I picked it up again the next day, somehow the existing paint still ran when I painted over it with white, but I just decided to go with it.

And there it is! Not exactly high quality, but I'm happy and proud of it, and considering it's the first artwork I've ever done, I don't think it's that bad. Plus, like most things, it looks better in person. My boyfriend likes it better than the original - he LOVES the three sentences. I just thought it was fun and romantic, but not overly cheesy!