Little Yellow Bicycle: Canvas Colorables

have you seen the new Canvas Colorables in stock yet along with the Get Your Game On collection from Little Yellow Bicycle?

these things are SO cool and the options for altering them are absolutely endless. they come two to a package and you can find them for basketball, baseball, soccer and football.

when Little Yellow Bicycle mailed this collection to me, i didn't hesitate to jump right in and experiment a bit with a few of the canvases. the finished size measures approximately 5" x 7", but are printed on a slightly larger sized canvas and wrapped around a mat board type material making them sturdy enough to stand on their own.

i decided to try to alter these canvases using just the materials i could find around the house instead of going out and buying special paints. so for me, that meant, cheap acrylic craft paint, crayola watercolor paint, glitter glue and sharpie markers...oh, and a few colored pencils too.

i first created a light color wash using the crayola watercolors over the whole canvas.....that's the light blue you see filling in all the white space. then i went back and colored in the darker colors---blue, lime green, orange and yellow using acrylic craft paints that were slightly watered down to give that mottled look. any areas that were too saturated were easily wiped thin using a baby wipe.


to finish off the canvas, i colored in some brown with regular crayola colored pencils, then added glitter glue to the stars, added red highlights to the word 'SOCCER' using a damp q-tip dipped in red paint, and finally splattered some red and orange paint. to get the perfect splatters, i use a super cheap paint brush (a toothbrush could work too) and thin the paint with water.

once that was done, i added on some chipboard from the same collection along with a few star stick pins from the Head of Class collection.

for the basketball canvas i wanted to try something with a little more saturated color...

to do so, i started out by coloring the canvas in with Sharpie markers. the brown, blue, green, orange, and yellow is all Sharpie. once that was colored in, i went back over some of the areas with acrylic craft paint just to add highlights and give the colors some depth.


i did these highlights without watering down the color at all. i also added in some copper metallic and silver metallic paints to give it a bit of a shimmer which is hard to show through photos.

finally, i finished it off with a few chipboard shapes (the arrow and the basketball) to give it a more finished look and add some dimension.

now, you're wondering 'what do i do with it?' well, i'm glad you asked. in my opinion, this type of thing would be PERFECT to place in one side of a side by side frame along with a picture of your sports star, or to frame and give as a coach appreciation gift. really they can be personalized any way you see fit using team colors, adding numbers to the jersey, or even the player or coaches name.

OR, you can use your hole punching tool to turn it into the cover of your next mini album!