My sweet daughter is a perfectionist. She used to love art but as she has gotten older she has come to almost despise it. She can picture what she wants to do, but her skill level hasn’t caught up to her imagination yet (I believe it will with practice). When I mention that her and I should do an art project together you would think I just asked her to clean the garage. I don’t mind if my kids don’t like the same things I do, but I don’t like the reason that she hates art – that it’s too hard. Art doesn’t have to be hard!

I came up with this simple little art project that is fool-proof. It looks amazing and requires no skill what so ever. She did it and was very proud of the end results. With simple little projects like this she is starting to enjoy art again.

Here’s what we did. I purchased a canvas (the kind with the wooden frame, these are easy to hang) at Hobby Lobby (half off of course). We looked on Print Shop and found a simple profile of a dog. We made it the size we wanted and printed it out.

Once it was printed, she cut the dog out and, using double sided tape, attached it to the canvas. Then she chose the paint colors she wanted to use. Even though you can’t really tell from this picture, she used orange, yellow and cream colored acrylic paints. Simply paint the entire canvas (don’t forget the sides). You don’t have to use more than one color. When you’re painting the canvas, lightly push down on the paper as you paint close to it so you don’t accidentally get paint where you don’t want it. Once you have the whole thing painted, remove the paper. You should have a white image of whatever you printed out. I went through with some white paint and a small paint brush and cleaned up any little spots where the orange paint seeped under the paper.

Here is the finished project above the fireplace.

I love art projects that are super easy, super cheap, and super cute! And thankfully, now my daughter does too!