DIY Wall-Art: Fruity Embroidered Canvas!

by Mia M.

Hello gorgeous humans and welcome back to me having a slow mental breakdown. Is this the DIY we were planning today? Absolutely not. Do I want to talk about the stress-inducing attempt at using air dry clay? Absolutely not. What are we making instead?

This bad boy! I love how this canvas turned out and it the easiest, most relaxing DIY I could have imagined.

Today’s craft has redeemed my faith in – well, not quite humanity, but maybe in Pinterest. I saw a handy tutorial pop up on my feed for something similar and instantly was like “I must try!”. Embroidery and painting? Big yes from me.

Plus it’s just so . . . straightforward. And after spending literal hours battling with air dry clay, I needed easy. I needed relaxed. I needed to paint some block colours on a canvas with minimal risk of shit going wrong.

So we enjoyed the process – but what about the finished product? Well, I love it. It’s very Pinterest-minimal-chic. I drew inspiration from this board here and it’s a lot of block colours, minimall colour palettes and geometric designs. (All things that are easy for even a beginner DIY-er to recreate!) I chose this colour palette because it fits my office perfectly. but the beauty of it this is that you can completely switch out the colours for something you prefer!

The addition of the embroidery looks far fancier than it is – and I’ll show you a few tips and tricks for how to do that with minimal effort too! All in all, this is a super cheap and super cute room decoration.

WHAT YOU NEED:

A canvas
Acrylic paints in your chosen colours
Embroidery thread + sewing needles

And that’s it! Like I said, this is a super cheap DIY – if you’re an avid crafter, you might have all these things already.

(BTW: if you like easy wall art ideas, why not check out these DIYs too?)

STEP-BY-STEP:

1. Cover your canvas in a background colour. (I used a light pink-ish colour) Use a thin coat and leave to dry for 10-15 minutes.

2. Paint a variety of circles in different sizes and colours on the canvas. I recommend using a mix of warm tones because then it looks vaguely fruity. The good thing about acrylic paint is that it’s opaque, so you can paint on top of it without it mixing. I always paint full circles, then just paint another one on top and it works fine! Leave to dry for 20 minutes.

3. Once dry, choose some embroidery thread in complementing colours.

4. Using simple stitches, add detailing to your circles. I kept this incredibly simple – just straight running stitches. The benefit of this is that, if anything goes wrong, you can just pull the thread straight out and start again.

5. Finally, embroider some black stalks onto the top of your circles. And that’s it!

I’m honestly so pleased with how this turned out.

It was actually really weird – as I was painting I felt this sagging sense of almost relief. During isolation, I’ve been desperately searching for off-screen hobbies. You guys have seen my attempt at sewing, I’ve been playing with clay – pre puppy, my boyfriend and I even got into puzzling. Something about painting just felt . . . right. Relaxing. Fun, rather than mental breakdown inducing.

(Guys, I’m seriously not okay after my attempts with air dry clay. It’s been days – and even the thought of it drives me to anger.)

This craft has given me so many ideas for more canvases in this style. I have some more detailed ones in the works that I’m super excited to share, so let me know if you like this kind of DIY! Here’s another canvas I was working on if you’d like some more inspo for the day.

As always, because it wouldn’t be a Mia DIY post without one, here’s a shameless plug of my DIY Pinterest boards. If you love to craft, I share ridiculous amounts of craft projects & ideas on there, so hop on over!

Alright, my loves, that’s all I’ve got for you today! I hope you enjoyed this little craft project – would you recreate it yourself? Let me know your thoughts down below!

Peace,