SpoonflowerHacks

Emma from the blog Hello Beautiful visits to share two simple wall art projects. She created unique art for her home with our linen-cotton canvas, inexpensive canvas stretcher bars, an inspirational phrase, and a collage of some of her favorite family vacation photos.  


photo and text fabric wall art

Printing photos and designs onto Spoonflower’s Linen Cotton Canvas is a great way to create an affordable piece of wall art… or two.Simply decide what size you want your finished canvas wall art to be and purchase a set of canvas stretcher bars in your desired dimensions. I bought mine on Amazon and they are extremely affordable– the bigger frame was about $8 and the smaller one about $6. They arrive as a bundle of planks that slot together easily.

For the smaller of my two canvases, I decided to keep the measurements under 27” x 18” so that my photo collage fitted onto one fat quarter of Spoonflower’s canvas.
Select your photo or design. I used a photo collage from a vacation for the smaller canvas and for the larger canvas, I used a design I created using tagxedo.com. I thought of a phrase I liked, typed it into the program on the website and played around with the different color and layout options until I found a design I liked. I then saved it to my computer as a regular .jpg file.
Now adjust the size of your photo or design so that is will fit the wooden frame. You can do this in a drawing application such as Microsoft Paint or in Preview on a Mac.


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Spoonflower prints high quality images at 150 dpi, so in order to adjust your photo to the correct size, multiply both the width and length by 150.
For example, the frame for my photo collage measures 18” x 14” and I wanted to make my photo collage the same size.
18 x 150 = 2700 (this is the width in pixels/inch)
14 x 150 = 2100 (this is the height in pixels/inch).

pressed fabric + canvas frame
When the fabric arrives, press it thoroughly to remove the fold lines.

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I am by no means an expert at stretching canvases across frames, and if you are a true professional, you may want to look away now! However, with a staple gun, a pair of scissors and zero professional tools I don’t know how to use, I managed to create a canvas I am happy with. I laid the fabric face down on my work surface and placed the frame on top. By working my way around the frame and pulling the fabric taut, I was able to use a heavy duty stapler to secure the fabric to the back of the frame.

corners

I trimmed the fabric once I had stapled the four sides down, and concentrated on getting neat corners.

finished canvas wall art

And the canvases are ready to hang!


About Our Guest Blogger

Emma Jeffery, Spoonflower guest bloggerHi! I’m Emma, and as well as working on the Fiskars Design Team, I blog over at hellobeautifulblog.blogspot.com/

I’m an obsessive sewer, often leaping into projects with more enthusiasm than talent, more bravado than skill and more good luck than anything else. This technique has worked well for me so far and more often than not, I make things I love, even if they’re not absolutely perfect. And though I’m no expert, I have a passion for fabric, color and design. I know what I like and what I like makes me smile.