DIY diaries : paint stroke canvas

Happy Monday, y'all!

I've got a fun DIY to share today! I've been trying to come up with something for this large canvas I have for a few months now. I had this fun love sign at our last apartment, but ended up painting it when we moved here. 

I was less than thrilled with the results, so I took it down and it's been waiting for a stroke of creative genius since then. :)

This is how it's been sitting for the last year:

I managed to find this pin, which got my brain thinking. 

I really wanted something more monochromatic for this craft, so I thought, why don't I start with white paint and do a gradient of added grey? Well, that's just what I did. I happened to have the white paint that matches our trim on hand and just enough grey paint leftover from our master bedroom. I gathered all of my supplies:

I made sure to lay down some butcher paper because Mark is really picky about his garage floors!

I just brushed the white paint on first to cover up canvas. I made sure to go vertically with the short side of the painting because I knew this is the way I wanted to hang it and I wanted the brush strokes to be part of the art. 

Below is after my first and only coat of just white. I covered up all of the gold and purple but didn't stress about getting it perfect because I liked the rough brush stroke. I painted over the nail head on the edges too, since it was black before.

Then I poured out some more white paint into my rolling tray.

I used a paint stick to drizzle just a little bit of grey into the white and started randomly painting on the canvas.

After my first coat:

I waited about 30 minutes between coats and continued adding more and more grey with each coat until I got it as dark as I wanted it. There are probably about 5 different shades overall. My goal was to be as random as possible but make the piece look whole. 

Here's my finished product:

Here it is in it's final resting place:

I have to say, this is probably one of my favorite DIY art pieces. It's super subtle and doesn't distract from all the other pattern/art I have going on in this room. It was also really easy. This is the 4th thing that has been on this canvas. Do you reuse your canvases too?

Like I said, I had everything I needed at home, but it would be relatively cheap for you to do it even if you don't have everything. Just start with a new canvas (between $5-$30 depending on the size) and buy some white paint as well as whatever colors you want to use. I may end up doing some smaller canvases with more color for pops of homemade art around the house. Love it!