DIY Canvas Wall Art

For my foyer project, I needed some big art.  We've got some huge blank walls, but unfortunately, my budget is, like.. zero.  So I started searching on Pinterest and other websites for a good DIY art project.  I came across this picture that I really, really liked.

I've seen a few different blogs that try to recreate this painting which, from what I gather, is fairly expensive.  I liked this blog post the most:  Painted Wall Art for Non Artists.

So I went out to the craft store and picked up a canvas (mine is 18x24 or something like that), a bunch of paint, and some circular foam brushes.  When picking out the paint, I decided to get two different shades for the base coat on the canvas.  I like how the inspiration piece looks distressed and a little uneven, and I didn't want mine to look too new or 'perfect' (ha!).

My next step was to ask my four- and two-year-olds to help me paint, because obviously, Mommy can't paint anything without their expertise.  The base coat was actually perfect for them to help with since you can't really screw it up.. unless you leave it unsupervised and your two-year-old decides to scrape the paint off with a toy-kitchen-spatula.  Then you might have to touch it up a bit.

Anyway.  This is what my canvas looked like when I was done.  Hopefully you can see the different shades on it.

The directions on the blog suggested using a paint pen, which I'm sure would have been marvelously easy and convenient.  However, I didn't really want to spend the money when I'm somewhat capable with a paintbrush.  I wish I had painted my branches a little differently, but I think it came out alright.

Once the branches are dry, I got dot-happy.  Most of my dots needed a second (and third) coat to make sure the branches aren't showing through, and looking at this picture, I can see that it's not perfect on all of them.

So this monster of a canvas is now hanging in my foyer (which is still a post for another day).  I'm debating on whether to add some outlining to the dot flowers, and whether I should do some distressing of it.  It does look a little too new, but overall, I'm really happy with it.