There’s nothing I love more than scooping up something that someone else doesn’t want anymore….and making it my own. My friend was selling this HUGE dinosaur at her yard sale and I couldn’t resist. I knew I’d either paint over it to reuse the canvas….or maybe change it up a bit. Mr. LBB loved the dino but Boo thought it was too scary. So I changed him up a bit to be more of a pop art dino!
Here’s the before:
The first thing I did was use a pencil and some acrylic paint to add polka dots….or pixelate the dino:
I didn’t even finish full areas…..just “dotted” until my hand got tired:
Pink is almost the opposite of green and brown right? I like opposites.
Then I used tape and paper to mask off the areas of the painting that I wanted to keep and went crazy with spraypaint and stencils:
I love using the “reverse” side of the stencil once it’s laden with paint:
I let Mr. LBB and Boo pull off the paper and tape to reveal the dinosaur:
We thought he needed some bling on those teeth so I added some liquid gold leaf. Think of it as a “dino-grill”:
The finished “pop art” dinosaur:
Here’s a race horse painting that I picked up at a thrift store. It was way too southwestern-themed for me…..but I loved the color of that blue horse in the front!
The first thing I did was to make it more of a modern gallery painting by attaching 1.5″ lattice board to the side:
Then I carefully taped off the horses (doesn’t have to be perfect!):
I layered stencils and bubble wrap prints over top the tape to give the effect of 3-D. Not sure where this one will go yet in the house:
The dinosaur is in my office for right now: (you can make that Coca Cola sign too…..tutorial is here)
Now I hope you’ll never pass by a thrift store painting without thinking “maybe I can change that up a bit!”
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Fun!! I’ve gotten a couple thrift store paintings to re-use the canvas.
AWESOME!!!. i love that the frame was painted in both pieces!!!
Awesome idea. I’m a thrift store junkie and yet, I’ve not thought about doing this. You can bet I will now. Lol. Thanks so much for opening my eyes. Yahoo!!
My daughter saw this and wants one….sadly I do a terrible job at trying to copy your art which I learned when I tried to do an aurora button collage for Christmas!!!! I think if I do anymore I can start a blog called lilblueboocraftfailures.com!!!!!!
I am now going to start accepting “lil blue boo craft fail” submissions because of you….so funny! Submit away!
Emailing you and your girl right away!!!!! Please get ready to laugh!!!
I have already left a message on my favorite local thrift store’s Facebook page to be prepared for my visit this week….looking for art!
Not sure I would classify either technically as “pop art” 😉 BUT, you did SUCH an amazing job!!! Especially with that horse painting!!!!! I didn’t think that one could actually be saves looking at the before pic 😉 But of course you did it!! xox
Ok art critic lol! Of course it’s not a Warhol I’m painting….but it does “pop” off the canvas now right?
OH my GOSH!!! These are AMAZING transformations! Totally something I would not think twice about in their original state.My first impulse would be to just use the canvas for something different. but…… I just LOVE this look. Now I gotta hit those thrift stores again. 🙂
First of all, I LOVE all of these. But the horses one is AMAZING!!! They seem to fly right out of the canvas after your redo. Can you be more specific about how you did it? I am definitely going to try and do the dinosaur one for my son’s room. 🙂