I LOVE the look of photo canvases, but I don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars for a couple of them.
Do you wish you had a wall gallery of beautiful photo canvases to display your favorite family photos but don’t want it to hurt your pocketbook? I LOVE the look of photo canvases, but I don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars for a couple of them. I found out about this idea through Pinterest, and decided to try it out. The result was beautiful and worth hanging on my wall for guests to see.
You will need:
- A photo, your choice of size. (An 8×10 costs $1.46 at Sams and at Walgreens it’s $3.99. You can also print at home if you have a printer and photo paper!)
- A Photo Canvas the size of your photo. (I bought a pack of two 8×10 canvases for $3.99 at Hobby Lobby)
- Matte Mod Podge (An 8oz bottle costs $4.99 at Hobby Lobby)
- Sponge paint brush (A value pack of three brushes costs $1.29 at Hobby Lobby)
The first thing that you will need to do is pour some mod podge into a plastic bowl so that you can dip your paint brush in it. Paint a layer of the mod podge onto the canvas. Make sure it looks nice and even and that the strokes are going in the same direction.
Next, place your photo right onto the gluey canvas. Sometimes the photo is a tad bit larger than the canvas, so just check before you do the first step so that you can trim the sides according to the canvas size. 
After you place it right on top, dip your brush into some more mod podge and paint another layer over the photo. I always have to do two layers, so I can get the strokes looking even across the photo.
It will look like this. Let it dry for about 4 hours, or even better, overnight. 
Ta-da!! Once dried, it will look like this! This is optional, and I didn’t do it, but if you want it to have that rough canvasy texture, add some Texture Coating at the end and let dry for a few more hours. The Texture Coating can be purchased at gluefast.com for $16.40. But if you don’t use that, it’s ok! Your canvas will still look great!
Here is how my canvas looks hung on my wall.
Here is a side view of it.
I love this idea! I have a couple of photo canvases, but they do get expensive. Mod Podge and brushes are already in my art cabinet.
I love this! We have all of those supplies as well and they have just been sitting on a shelf, unused for some time. It might be time to get our craft on.
Brilliant idea, I would love to try it and make a photo canvas myself! I’ve printed a few photos on canvas in the past but it’s too expensive to do it all the time, so this is great!