DIY Leather Wrapped Painted Canvas

DIY Leather Wrapped Painted Canvas

I recently spent a few hours putting together a wedding song poster for our master bedroom. I had modge podged word printouts of our wedding lyrics onto a fabric canvas and decorated it with the matching ribbon border. It was pretty.

It was going to be one of the crafts featured as part of The Pinterest House Project, master bedroom edition…which I promise is slowly, but surely coming along and will be posted soon.

I had stepped away from my craft table for a few minutes to help Lilly go to the potty. In the two minutes while I was washing my hands afterwards, my two-year-old managed to completely destroy that poster with half a bottle of modge podge. It was completely my fault. When you leave out craft supplies in the area that a toddler can access, you’re just asking for it.

There was no salvaging. I tried. Instead of throwing it out the canvas completely, I decided to refinish it and reuse it.

I had bought some beautiful turquoise leather fabric on sale at the fabric store recently and thought it might be cool to wrap the entire canvas in leather. I had pinned a couple of book quotes that I was going to use as printouts for my master bedroom reading nook and decided it would be great paint one of them directly onto the leather.

Things you need:

  • Canvas – mine was just a cheap one from the dollar store & still worked just fine.
  • Fabric you can write/paint on – leather, vinyl, canvas (maybe a different colour), etc.
  • Print out of your design or wording
  • Ruler
  • Paper cutter – you can use scissors, but you want to make sure you have very straight cuts
  • Fabric marker – Honestly, I didn’t have one….I used a silver nail polish pen ;)
  • Paint & fine tip paint brushes
  • Paint pen – I just discovered these! I used one for the black and it was so much faster
DIY Leather Wrapped Painted Canvas

I laid the leather fabric face down on the floor and place the canvas face down on top of it. I took the edge of the leather fabric and folded up to make sure that it met the edge of where the canvas was stapled to the wood frame. I stapled the bottom to hold it is place and then cut equal amounts of leather border around the two inside edges of the canvas.

DIY Leather Wrapped Painted Canvas

Starting in one corner I lined up the edge of the leather to the edge of the canvas and stapled it down. I then moved on to the opposite corner and follow the same steps, ensuring that I pulled the leather very tightly across the front facing side of the canvas. Take extra care when folding the corners up to make sure they sit neatly. Think about hospital or hotel corners when making a bed. Use extra staples around the corners to hold them tightly in place.

Once my canvas was wrapped, I had to decided how I wanted the wording to lay out. I typed it out on a regular 8.5×11 piece of cardstock in landscape layout to get large lettering. I formatted it to be the fonts and styles that I wanted. I then used my cutter to neatly cut each line of text and placed them evenly onto the canvas to get a better visual.

DIY Leather Wrapped Painted Canvas

I worked with each line of text individually. I taped the line of text onto the canvas and used it as both a visual guide for how to draw and space the letters, but also as a ruler to ensure it was straight. I also used a ruler to measure out the spacing between each line of text, allowing more spacing for the two accent lines that were done in a larger font.

For the books at the bottom, I looked up a few clip art style graphics to get an idea of how to draw them. I had to keep in mind that they would be done in one colour, so dimension was going to be harder to show.

DIY Leather Wrapped Painted Canvas

Once the outline for the entire piece was completed, I used the paint pen to fill in the black text and the books and used a fine paint brush to fill in the cream lettering. It took a couple coats of each to really ensure the leather was covered.

DIY Leather Wrapped Painted Canvas

I am very happy with how this turned out. I’m sure I would have loved any of the beautifully designed printables from Pinterest as well, but this is so much more personal.

Here is a sneak peek at my master bedroom reading nook. It’s not complete – I’m working on a pillow for the chair and I’m not sure I am in love with the ribbon instagram photo thing that I threw together, but it’s getting there! I am definitely in love with my cord art ;)

Master Bedroom Reading Nook

Ideally speaking, I will make some valuable use of my time this weekend and get my little master bedroom sanctuary finally finished!

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