Nursery DIY: Subway Art Canvases

I knew that I definitely wanted to create some custom artwork for the nursery, and I definitely wanted it to be on canvas.  I thought about doing one of those crayon canvases, ala this:

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…but I couldn’t think of an idea using the crayons that would marry it to our nursery “theme.”  So I shelved this idea and will save it for a future project!  Then I got to thinking about subway art.  I knew I wanted to include something that linked our nursery to the Milwaukee Brewers (hello, it is a baseball themed room, right?).  I again turned to Pinterest and remembered that I had pinned this image:

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Cool, right?  Obviously not the Brewers but you can order any team from that shop.  Pretty neat.  Except…I’m not really into wall decals and I wanted something a little smaller.  Some MORE Internet searching led me to tons of tutorials about making your own subway art, but most involved either owning a Cricut or having your design printed at Kinko’s and the like.  At that point, I decided that I wanted to just try to free-hand it, so our son will have some cool, totally custom artwork in his room that we can cherish for years to come. And here we are.

First up, I bought two 16×20 canvases at Joann’s on sale.  I taped them together using painter’s tape so I could do one large design across both canvases.

Next, I used a yardstick to make very light pencil lines across the canvases, to help make sure my writing would be straight.  I talked with B about what we wanted to include on the canvas, and then just started drawing/writing free-style with a pencil!  Here’s what it looked like when I had my pencil drawings done:

After that you can remove the tape and work with each canvas separately.  The next step was painting. I knew I would be using mostly navy paint, since that’s our nursery accent color.  This part actually took a really long time.  Here’s after ONE canvas’s first coat was done:

And after both canvases’ first coats were done:

I let them dry overnight and then worked on the second coats, filling in where the paint was thin and touching up spots as needed.  Then, I used Sharpies to add color and design.  I also used a gold leaf pen to embellish some of the lettering.  After that, it was just erasing my pencil lines (this is why you will want to draw them VERY lightly if you tackle this project—the canvas will hold on to those damn lines otherwise!) and ta da:

Custom Subway Artwork to hang in the nursery!  Stay tuned to see where we put them up.  The room is really coming along now and I should be able to do a final reveal in the next few weeks!