Art Class 101

I'll be upfront: I'm not very skilled when it comes to art supplies, and their various applications. That's why I've always enjoyed cameras; I point and push, they do all of the hard drawing.

That being said, I got an itch to play with printing on canvas, and the various ways to do it cheaply, and this is where I arrived. Everything you see in this post cost me less than $10 total. A brief rundown of what I used:

40''x30'' Elmer's Foam Board - $4.75
4oz can of Elmer's spray adhesive - $4.75
Rusty old X-acto knife that I ninja'd from the wife - Free
Canvas and ink - Free (hookup from the day job)

So here we have one of the prints (24''x18'' printed, an inch or two as bleed on the sides, just eyeballed the cut)

This is the Elmer's adhesive. 4oz was more than enough for the job.

I'd already cut the foam board in half, giving me two 30''x20'' pieces. I basically wanted my backing boards to be an inch less than the printed surface area, so that I could wrap the print around, which would give me a nice clean look on the sides.

Scored along my lines, and broke the board along the score.

Finished the cuts from the backside after breaking in the previous step.

Centering the board on the back of the canvas, and testing each side. I wanted to figure out where the best spot for the board would be, in order to have overlap on every side. Once I figured that out, I marked the outline of the board in pencil on the back of the canvas (see next pic).

My super advanced workstation. If you look closely, you can see the outline of the board that I just mentioned. Once outside, I coated one side of the foam board completely with the spray adhesive, let it dry, and then folded up the ends.

Here are both ends folded up, glued, and drying. Note that I cut the corner off of the sides, in order to prevent bunching. You can see some discarded corners in the previous picture.

The finished product: tightly secured canvas on a reasonably sturdy mounting surface, for less than $5 a print. Not bad for a Sunday project.

I'll be shooting more soon, got a wedding coming up in 2 weeks. Stay tuned.