Upcycled Art - Take Outdated and Abdondoned Art & Give It a Fresh Coat
3 Materials
$10
15 Minutes
Easy
What to do with old art? Maybe you painted it in your youth, or your kids did or you purchased a still life and it is now dated. Spray painting old art is super fun and transformative. All items came from various thrift stores.
Before - choose real canvas if possible.
Pick a picture with vibrant colors. Don't worry about the design. If you still want the basic picture in tact select a picture with good lines and colors that go with your décor. Otherwise it will turn out as a wonderful abstract.
Thrift store Picassio
If you don't have some old art work "hanging" around (ouch - painful pun alert) then you can go to your local thrift store. I got this classic still life flowers in a vase for $3.99.
Next pick a stencil. This "stencil" is actually a paper doily. It cost just a few dollars from a thrift store. There is your answer to expensive Mylar stencils. Your welcome. I have used this stencil so many times that the spray paint's plastic qualities has only made the stencil more reusable. Oh how I wish I would have saved the packaging to see if the company had other doily selections. 
This color does a great job being casual gold
What is better than rejected art? Rejected spray paint from a Habitat for Humanity restore. It is called Ivy leaf but does all the hard work of gold with none of the pretense. Never did I think this color would be so versatile. $3.00!
Lift stencil off quickly & wait 5 minutes
Put on a face mask. Lay your piece of artwork flat. Place the stencil on the picture and align it with the corner. Spray about 6 inches away in short easy blasts. You can always practice first on cardboard. 
You can use stencil fixative if you have it
Move the stencil to the next quadrant. Line up any pattern in the stencil with some overlap. Again do not paint too close or long or you will end up with a pool of spray paint. You will see what I mean.
Greens are too close in color
After spraying this lower right section of the painting I noticed two issues one the green colors were too close in shade and two there was a bit of over spray. So I picked a blue color from the picture and mimicked it with spray paint.
Improvement Already
I stepped back and looked at the picture and then selected a few more colors to add. The pink/coral color I used was to contrast too much green over spray.
Too much spray paint!
You need to see that even if you overspray you can simply match up the stencil pattern and pick another color other than the one you sprayed in order to fix it. All fun, no stress. I picked blue again.
So here is the After. My favorite part is how the vase turned out and the painting actually has some dimension now. Have fun and enjoy the process and the ability to remake something that was not being appreciated.
Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.
Hometalk may collect a small share of sales from the links on this page.More info
Comments
Join the conversation
2 of 4 comments
-
Awesome update!
-
O. M. G. This is an AWESOME idea. I have tons of “lost art”. I will certainly try this!
Frequently asked questions
Have a question about this project?