Long have I admired this art piece I found on pinterest. Long have I wanted it in my home. But small is my budget, and large is the size of the canvas I would want.

So, of course, I just had to make it my own little self.

Here’s what you’d need to make your own:

• Canvas in whatever size you like. Mine are ginormous.
• Lots of acrylic paint in colors of your choice, and brushes. I mainly used foam brushes like these.
• Foam roller
• White acrylic paint
• FrogTape
• Excited preschooler who can’t stand to watch without “helping.”

It was a fun project, and I had lots of help from an eager pair of hands. I poured little blobs of various colored paints – mostly shades of gold, raspberry and navy – in a tray, and Weston and I just smeared it all over the canvas with foam brushes. It’s hard to mess this step up!

I played around with adding more water to the paint too, which is how I ended up with that drippy spot in the top left corner above. It’s no big deal: acrylics are very forgiving, and if you don’t love a certain spot it’s easy to change it. Plus, it’ll mostly be covered with white later anyway. No need to panic.

After both canvases were painted, I grabbed a can of gold metallic spray paint and added some shiny speckled parts. It’s hard to tell in the pics, but they’re there. (In retrospect, I wish I’d made it blingier.) Here’s how the canvases looked at that point. (You can see that I’d started adding the green Frog Tape squares before I realized I’d forgotten to take a picture.)

Next, I cut pieces of FrogTape into rectangles. I wanted the rectangles to be a little wider than the FrogTape that I had on hand – and wider than the rectangles in the inspiration art – so I put two pieces of tape side by side to make the rectangles almost double width. Then, I planted my sweet little bum right in front of the television and immersed myself in some brain-melting entertainment while I covered the canvas in those rectangular tape pieces in a herringbone pattern. Make sure the edges of the tape are sealed well! I ran a fingernail over the edges to make sure they were stuck tight.

(I didn’t do any measuring, just a lot of eye-balling, because I like it imperfect I have no patience for petty “measurements” and “numbers.”)

Once it was all taped off, I removed a couple of the squares so the canvas would have some white spots, like the original. Then I regretted removing them. Then I decided it would be better without them. Then I waffled back and forth a bunch and just decided to go forth and paint.

Using a foam roller, or whatever, cover the entire piece in white paint. NOW you can freak out.


Now slooooowly, carefully, peel off the FrogTape. I did this while the paint was still pretty wet, hence the white fingers.

Oh man are those crisp lines beautiful or what?!

Once you’ve pulled off all the little tape squares, pat yourself on the back: you are a real arTISTE! Bonafide. You are Van Gogh. (Or maybe that’s just your two-year-old.)

(I made this art to hang in the office, but I’m not quite sure if it’ll live there yet… more to come!)

What I love about this project is that you can customize it for your space. Use colors that will work in your room; make it as crazy or as calm as you’d like. Let your little imagination run wild with the acrylics before you add on the tape. Let your two-year-old play with acrylics!

(P.S.: Letting Weston play with acrylics was an awesome idea, until he accidentally set his entire hand in a gob of paint, then wiped it off on his shirt. Still.)

It’s a great, inexpensive way to make your own large-scale art, and bonus: it’s totally fun, promise. Especially if you shun measurements.

Have you played with paints recently? Ever been crazy enough to give a preschooler free reign with acrylics?

Don’t forget to pin this pic for later!

P.S.: Here’s another tutorial for simple, fun word art!

This post is sponsored by FrogTape and contains affiliate links.