I’ve been having a lot of fun with these mini canvases lately. Here’s one I did with my class at Jerry’s Artarama. These things are great.

Our theme for the last class was Under the Sea (I thought it would be fun to do a snail). We used acrylic paint, sharpie markers, acrylic gel medium, sand and glitter.

It’s a great little project. Super fun and super affordable…and I’m hooked. Here how it works. First we sketch our drawing onto the mini-canvas (the one shown here is 4″X5″ and goes for about 3 bucks). The next step is to paint in the image using acrylic paint. Once you’ve finished that it’s time to add some texture.

I added clear gel medium to the bottom of this little canvas. Everywhere where I wanted the to be sand I covered with gel. The trick is to really lay it on thick. Once I had it coated I took some beach sand and sprinkled it over the top of the canvas. Then I shook it over a garbage can. Anywhere there was gel the sand stuck everywhere else it shook off.

My students did the same thing. Some of them used sand, some used glitter, some used both. The gel starts out a translucent white but dries clear so its easy to see what you’re doing. Once everything is dried we outlined our characters using a sharpie permanent marker. They all looked fantastic.

You can really get creative with a project like this. I highly recommend it for kids 5 and up. Just one word of caution. Acrylic paint and sharpie marker does not wash out of clothing so make sure you wear something old or cover up with a smock. Good luck can’t wait to see what you come up with.