the how to's on the black & white picture

so before we get into how the picture was done i would like to say a couple of things:

• this is a completely original idea put together by the partnership called bensey. and i am proud of that fact.

• there are several ways that you could make this even easier than i did and i will post those ideas in italics so that if you want to do it yourself but want to make it quicker, you can.

• this idea has a copyright and has patent pending. so try and steal it and you will be slapped with a lawsuit faster than you can say "i stole her idea." just kidding.

let's begin.

step 1) it all started with me wanting some inexpensive artwork in my home that wasn't a picture of me, ben or caleb. so i saw this fabric at the fabric store and an idea was formed. but as you can tell with my black & white bedspread as a background, the navy blue & white clashed.


(by far, the easiest way to do this is to find fabric that you like and hot glue/staple it to a blank canvas & hang it up. i considered doing it, but i really wanted mine to look like painted artwork...and again, the fabric didn't match so i had to come up with another idea.)



step 2) so instead, i put the material on our scanner & copied a small section and blew it up into black and white.

step 3) the blank canvas, bought it with a 40% off coupon at michael's crafts.





step 4) made 4 copies of the small sections of fabric so that they matched each other and lined up perfectly to cover the canvas. in this picture, these are just random parts and don't match up. i'm just showing an example so you can get an idea.

(an easier way to do this part...because it was tricky to make sure you copied the parts of material exactly so that it matched up perfectly...is to just make them not match. it sounds weird, but i thought it might be cool to just have 4 squares that don't match up and then line them all with painting a black border around each of them, so that those who see it know that you purposely didn't want it to match up. hope this is making sense??)


step 5) mod podge the paper onto the canvas. make sure if you do the paper idea to use the "paper mod podge" instead of just the regular kind so that the paper doesn't rip. also make sure to smooth it down well so there are no bubbles.




step 6) using acrylic paint & a teeny-tiny paintbrush, i painted over the pattern. this took a while...probably about 5 hours total...but i would just do it for an hour or so each night while watching t.v.

(this is a step you could entirely skip. you could just mod podge the paper on, paint a black border around the edges, then mod podge over the paper. i tried this because i knew that painting it would take a while & i am not the most patient person. but it looked really "flat" to me and i really loved the way that the paint made the print pop out & again...look like it was hand-painted art. which i guess it technically was.)


step 7) i painted a 1 inch border around the edges so that it would stand out against my white walls.


step 8) after the layer of paint is dry, do a thick layer of mod podge over the top, wait for it to dry and you're done! voile.

***sorry i gave the impression that this was all hand-painted by myself. (i'm sure it was subconsciously on purpose, i wanted the public to think i am absolutely amazing when i am really sub-par. :) i've never been an artist and seriously could never have done this pattern freehand. but even though all i did was paint over the pattern, i felt like a true artist. i even went mad for a minute & threatened to cut off one of my ears. sarcasm.

***any questions? is this confusing? leave me a comment & let me know if i need to make it more simple or if you need any more info. and if you do make one, post it & let me know because i would love to see it!