The Great Wedding Canvas Art Debacle

Pinterest is full of great wedding ideas. There is just about everything out there. Steampunk ideas. Retro ideas. Rustic ideas. Harry Potter wedding ideas. Zombie weddings. Even ideas for My Little Pony fanatics. What I especially love is seeing all the DIY wedding ideas. Everything from gorgeous paper bouquets, to creative boutonnieres, and elegant decorations. Today's Pinstrosity comes from a DIY wedding project that just wouldn't cooperate.

Amber wrote to us about her best friend's wedding: "My best friend was getting married and we took on a lot of craft projects. This one was the last, which we stupidly attempted about two days before the big day."

The Pinspirations

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Canvas art. Looks simple. Attach stencil. Paint. Remove stencil. Hang beautiful canvas art. Well, that's what Amber and her friends had in mind, but their project took a different turn. They had trouble with the very first step, attach the stencil. 

"I cut the stencil for the letters out of vinyl on my silhouette and everything seemed perfect. Until the vinyl wouldn't stick to the canvas. We tried everything- sticking the vinyl with spray adhesive, using regular contact paper, cutting it on cardstock and sticking it with mod podge- nothing worked."

The Pinstrosity

"No point in wasting a perfectly good canvas. You can see the only part of the paper we got to halfway stick- two intertwined rings at the top left. This now hangs in my living room."

The vinyl just wasn't cutting it. Nevertheless, Amber persevered. "The bride was ready to give up- but I already had a few projects like this in planning stages that I needed to find a way! I caved and bought plywood from Home Depot, painting it white and it finally worked. Now I have $40 in canvas for future projects that apparently won't work."

The Fix

Didn't that turn out lovely?! Hooray for perseverance! But now why didn't the canvas work? Can it work? I found this lovely dialogue with some crafty ladies who were more than happy to share their tips and tricks to making vinyl work on canvas:

(read all 24 comments with more ideas here)

So there you have it . Gesso. You can find gesso in with the oil and acrylic paints in your local craft store, or even Walmart. Who knew?! Well, apparently the ladies on the Craftaholics Facebook Page knew, and I'm so glad they did! There are times I get ready to give up Facebook (or more likely run away screaming. So much drama), but there really are some fabulous aspects to it too, like the fun craftaholics page I just discovered.

Go forth and gesso.