4 x 4 Canvases

Being brilliant, I decided that I would make a gift for my students for the last day of school.  There are 12 of them, 6 boys and 6 girls.  I knew that I wanted to make girls and boys for them, but I didn't want to make full sized canvases. I found packs of 9-4x4" canvases at JoAnn's.

  I decided to use paint for the background as it would be easy and less time consuming. Since I was on a deadline and was already a couple of weeks behind, this would be the safest approach.  I always gesso a canvas when I am only using paint; even if it is already factory prepared.  Gesso is cool!  I knew that I had to be rather formulaic about the process or I would never get finished on time.  All the girls were done in pink and the boys in blue.  I dry brushed the main layer of paint making sure to leave some white canvas showing.  Stamps, rub-ons, more paint, etc and I was ready to do the people.  The only thing was that I hadn't really considered the fact that these were really small canvases so I would need to make really small patterns for the bodies, clothes, etc.  This entire project required the use of my super sharp embroidery sized scissors.  There were lots and lots of re dos on the patterns, I can tell you.  It was exhausting!!!

I finally got 12 heads cut (out of big lined Kindergarten writing paper, cool huh?) and then grabbed my 6 x 6 paper pads to figure out the clothes.  Thank goodness I had plenty of those pads to choose from.  I wound up using some odds and ends for the girls, but lots of Echo Park "Be Mine" papers.  I love that these are the same designs as the 12 x 12, just smaller prints.  For the boys, I used odds and ends of 6 x 6 papers.
After cutting out all of the pieces and getting them on, I realized that I might not have much in the way of small rub-ons.  Or, egads, boy themed rub-ons!  Eeek.  What to do, what to do?  Luckily, I wound up having plenty of the appropriated sized rub-ons.  I just happened to have purchased a bunch at my favorite scrapbook store's (Scrapaganza) garage sale and lo and behold, there were some Halloween rub-ons in the pack filled with spiders and bats.  Perfect!!!  I also happened to have some from KaiserCraft that looked like splotches, etc.  Saved!  Sometimes it's good to be a hoarder.  A few stick on jewels for the girls and some Tim Holtz gears and spinners for the boys and voila!  Project complete!

I love her hair!

Okay.  So I admit it!  I am still a little anal about my stamps and was super reluctant to use my texture stamps in paint.  After using an ink that wouldn't stay when I added the Mod Podge, I sucked it up and used paint.  What a cool texture it left.  I will admit to scrubbing the stamp a little after I rinsed it.  Just a little.  I am getting better at 'letting it go'.

Everyone at school knew right away who this was.  It was the hair.

I love my Unity stamps.

My first boy!!  You should have seen all of my doodles on my table covering as I tried to figure out how to do boy hair.  I had never done it before.  I also have to say that I about panicked when I realized I would have to paint on arms.  Sheesh. Why did I decide to do this again?

The kitty stamp in the corner is kind of an inside Preschool joke.  The kids all love to hear stories about my cats Skittles and Pluto and they call them the "Skittles Stories".  I put a kitty on all of the boys.

All scrapbookers know that a mistake is an opportunity.  I didn't use the correct pronoun when I printed these out, so I just wrote it in.  It works.

I couldn't believe that I had this spider on his thread.

I thought I had gotten something green on this guy's face.  I tried to rub it off, then I remembered it was part of the face paper.  Yeah, I'm getting old.