Elmer's Glue Art!

A couple of weekends ago I bought a 7 pack of 12" x 12" canvases at Michael's for $11.99.  After contemplating for days trying to figure out what my first project would be, I finally settled on Elmer's glue art.


I've seen this technique all over Pinterest and I was willing to give it a try.  After re-looking it up again I found out that the nice picture I'd seen many times over with the caption "Elmer's glue on a canvas" turned out to be puffy paint.  (I don't know how many times Pinterest pinners have put an incorrect and misleading description of a picture.  An example: a picture of matte nail polish that says, "broken eyeshadow + clear polish = matte polish!"  Wrong.  If anyone clicked on the source of the picture, that description was not accurate at all.  But, I digress...) 


I decided to go forward anyway because there were other projects that actually used glue and turned out fine.  But, I soon discovered that out of the two mediums, puffy paint would be infinitely easier to work with... So, if you want to try something like this, I would go with puffy paint.  Just a heads up. 

I started off just sketching after I decided I wanted to make a medallion shape and paint it over for the hallway.

After settling on a design it was time for the gluing!

Now, I have a very steady hand.  I could've been a surgeon, my hand is so steady.  Despite that fact, it didn't counteract the unpredictable nature of the glue.  I'd squeeze it out evenly and beautifully and move on to the next section.  I'd go back two minutes later and it globbed all over leaving some thin parts and some fatter parts.  It was extremely frustrating. 

After a significant amount of retouching and drying time (about an hour to two hours), I painted it over with leftover turquoise paint.

After that dried I took some of my Mocha Valspar Glaze...

From Lowes.com

and painted rough brush strokes and let it dry.  I think that once the glue is painted, it looked much better and the globs are less noticeable.

Ta da!  And here it is hanging on my hallway picture wall.

You'll also notice that the bottom left picture frame has been changed from the US Navy picture.  I just used this fabric scrap temporarily because it looks better than the sailor hanging the wrong way... like this: 

Oh, and I never got to mention my little beetle picture in the top right...

Yeah, I painted it.  Technically I copied it from another artist.  Which is fine, I'm not selling it and just using it for my own purposes.  I think he's adorable though. :)