PBK Knock-off: DIY Butterfly Wall Art

I enjoy beautiful, simple decor.  I don’t enjoy paying a lot of money for it.  At this point in our lives, there are many more practical items that we need to spend our money on other than cute chalkboards or hand-painted wall art plaques.  A friend of mine took a second job as a stock associate at Pottery Barn simply to get the employee discount.  Once he had worked long enough to get the discount and purchased all the items his wife wanted for their nursery; he quit the job.

I have no intention of taking a job at Pottery Barn for a discount.  (Okay, maybe the thought has crossed my mind a few times…) However, I really love their decor.

Pea is still in a purple, pink, girly phase.  As part of the re-design of her bedroom, I wanted to include butterfly wall art.

These butterfly wall plaques are hand painted and are on sale for $34.99 each.  I like the pastels but they are a little too light for what we wanted.

I wanted three of them and the plaques from PBK are just a teeny bit out of my price range.  But there’s a will and a way!

I had canvas that I found for $4.00 each at Big Lots.  Surely, I could knock off these plaques–despite my inability to draw a straight line.  (Really!  How unfair is it that I love to craft and paint, can play three instruments, and re-create most cartoon characters in yarn with a crochet hook but I absolutely CANNOT DRAW?!)

So here goes my version.

Materials:

3– 11×14 canvas ($4.00 each)

foam brushes/paint brushes (on hand)

Spring Floral Scrapbook Paper (Got 180 pages for $9.99 on sale. I only needed three pages for this project.)

Butterfly template (free online)

Gold paint marker (on hand)

acrylic craft paint (I had them on hand but can be purchased with coupons for under $1.00 a bottle)

Modge Podge (glossy finish)

hole punch

Instructions for the DIY butterfly wall art

• Paint your canvas background with whatever color you choose to coordinate with the colors in the scrapbook paper you have chosen.  I also added streaks of white to the background to simulate the texture in the PBK piece.
• Let dry
• Print a butterfly template.  ( I got mine from here for free)

• Cut the template out

• Use it to cut butterflies out from the scrapbook pages (Pea chose both the background colors and the floral paper.)
• Modge Podge the butterfly onto the dry canvas
• Use a hole punch to punch out holes from the scrapbook paper and glue down as the tops of the antennae.
• Use the gold paint marker to draw in the antennae
• Go over entire canvas in gloss or in the glossy modge podge to finish it.

• Allow to dry
• Attach the picture hanging assembly
• Hang on wall and Enjoy!

I am pretty proud of these canvases.  Sure I am not a world renowned artist and the butterflies are not hand-painted but I they work perfectly in Pea’s room.