Zebra Stripes!

My niece Erika loves the color lime green and zebra stripes. Last year for her birthday my sister decided they would redecorate her room for her. I thought it would be fun to contribute to the happy decorating. She loved the painting so much that she decided to use it as her focal point in her room. I'm so glad she loved the painting.

Here's what I did:
I like to paint in layers. I find it works best for me. For the first layer I painted the entire canvas black. Once that dried I painted a layer of lime green glitter paint( what teen doesn't like glitter, right). After the glitter was dried I enlisted the help of painters tape. :)  Zebra stripes aren't crisp straight lines so I tore off the edges of the tape so I would get an uneven stripe. Once I had my stripe pattern down I painted over it with white. You can let it dry before you take the tape off but I've found that sometimes pieces of the tape will get stuck under the dried paint  and you end up having to dig and peel it off. I generally take the tape off when the paint is still moist. Removing the painters tape and seeing the pattern you made is quite fun and exciting.

For the flowers I wanted them to be a bit more sturdy so I painted the aqua color on canvas paper. When the paint dried I cut out two different types of flower shapes. One for the base layer of the flower and one for the top part of the flower.  The cut outs that would be the top layer of the flower I painted the underneath side a shade of green. That way when I curled the petals you wouldn't just see white canvas. The center of the flowers are clear glass rounds that I found at the craft store. I painted the bottoms of the rounds in lime green. I dry brushed around the edges of the flowers with lime green as well. When the paint had completely dried I used varnish to adhere the flowers to the canvas and to each other as well as the glass rounds. I also applied varnish to the flower petals to help them retain their curled form.

It's simple and nothing fancy but it was a lot of fun to make. And most important my niece loved it!