Herringbone Canvas Art

More often than not, when I am hanging out with my good girl friends, we end up doing some sort of craft. When two of my childhood friends came to visit, we decided we would each do some sort of canvas painting. Naturally, we turned to Pinterest! I found this pin from Annie over at Coyote Thistle, and loved it right away!

I have really enjoyed the chevron craze happening these past few years, and I love that herringbone seems like a more sophisticated relative of the beloved zig-zag pattern. I had two 5" x 7" canvas to work with and decided I would create a pair of herringbone wall art pieces to go down in our basement. Since our bathroom is a light blue color (a tasteful pick by the previous owners since Ryan and I both love blue!), I decided to use five different colors of Craft Smart acrylic paint to create my background: Pale Blue, Ocean Breeze, Aqua, Island Blue, and Navy. I really didn't have a plan of attack for this, except that I wanted to make sure there was some contrast. Several of the colors were pretty close in shade, so I used the Navy and Pale Blue to break things up.

Just like Annie, I used painter's tape to create my design. Since my canvas were on the smaller side, I decided to cut 3 inch strips of tape to lay out the herringbone. You can use a regular ruler, but I found that using a quilting ruler allowed me to lay the tape right on the plastic to measure, and I could measure several pieces of tape at one time.

The key to laying out the tape pieces on the canvas is creating right angles between the different pieces of tape.

Once that's done, and the edges have all been gone over using your finger or a credit card to prevent the paint from bleeding, it's time to apply your contrast color. I decided to use the White with a touch of Pale Blue. I recommend using a stenciling brush in an up and down motion with a very little amount of paint to deter any bleeding from occurring.

Once the White paint dried to the touch, I added some Martha Stewart Multi-Surface Glitter Acrylic Craft Paint just to spice things up a bit. Immediately after applying the glitter, I removed the painter's tape, and Voilá!