How I did the State Canvases

I had a couple people ask how I did the state canvases, so I thought I would post a quick tutorial on how I made them since I was making another one anyways. I don't know if it's the best way to do it, but it works for me! (here is where I got the idea, and she did hers a little different)

My brother Jeff is getting home from his mission to Alaska in two weeks, so I thought it would be cool to make him a large (16x20) canvas with stars on all the places he had served. (Another way you could use these canvases is for the 'we met, we married, we live' theme that I've seen all over Pinterest.) 


So, first you assemble your supplies:

Canvas

Acrylic craft paint

Sponge brush

Freezer paper

Iron

Since I was making mine pretty big, I cut down two sheets of freezer paper to legal size (8.5x14) and googled 'Alaska Outline' then printed it straight onto the freezer paper. Sometimes the freezer paper curls and is hard to print on, but if I fed it through the printer with a stack of normal paper behind it, it did just fine. (be sure to print on the dull side, the waxy side is the one that becomes adhesive later)

If you have a hard time getting it to print to the freezer paper, print it on regular paper and then trace it to the freezer paper.

So now you have your outline, get it all cut out, and if like I did with Alaska you have tiny islands on it, I would recommend not cutting those out until you are ready to iron your stencil to your canvas(which is the next step), then you can use the paper you cut away as a guide to help you place them.

Make sure your iron is on a medium heat setting, and I would stack some newspapers or something else underneath to help keep the canvas flat while you iron (my canvas was drooping to the center without support from underneath, making it hard to press the stencil flat) Press your stencil on as well as you can, sometimes the edges refuse to stick to the canvas perfectly, and that's okay. Just make sure it's pretty well adhered to the canvas. This is where you cut out the smaller islands if you have any, and then just iron them right on.

I start painting by brushing paint around the outline of your stencil, since some parts don't stick all the way down, brushing it away from the stencil helps keep it from bleeding. (see how some sides are pukering and wrinkling up? I just try to push those down with my brush as I painted outward)

If you chose a dark color, you're going to be here for awhile. It takes a few coats and you need to wait for each coat to dry in between. This navy color took quite a few coats, so I used a blow drier to dry each coat to help it go faster. 


Once everything is covered, wait for it to dry and peel off your freezer paper! Ta-Da! Now, depending on how well your freezer paper stuck to the canvas, you could be done! My paint bled through on some parts, but since they were jagged edges anyway, I left them because I think it makes it look better to have a little bit more 'texture', but when I did Utah (all straight lines) I had to touch up quite a bit to make the edges straight. 

Hurray, you're all done! Since mine is for my brothers mission, I want to cut out some vinyl letters that say 'Alaska Anchorage' and the years he served on the bottom, then paint a little yellow star on all his areas. The ones I did for me, I just free handed a little heart on the city where we lived.


The finished product sans the lettering at the bottom and the stars:

Hope that's about as clear as mud!