Woman in Real Life

We have been gradually redecorating my daughter's bedroom to reflect the fact that she is now in her preteen years. She still loves pink (and purple as you can plainly see) but without the associated princesses and Disney characters. After shifting her furniture around, we found ourselves with a rather large blank space on one wall. My daughter has a fun and energetic personality, so I wanted to surprise her with an artwork that reflects her character and beauty.


I decided on a large photo canvas, which would be covered not only with pictures of my daughter, but some wording to express how we feel about her. I think the hard part and most of the work to any canvas print is preparing the photo or photos. It helps if you have your photos organized in such a way that you can easily access what you need. I opted to use photos from a few years back that I had previously used in a photo book. They were edited and ready to go, making this task super simple. I started by uploading my photos to Fotor's free online collage maker. I was then able to quickly slot them into a pre-made collage style. They have some very tempting collages with heart shapes too!

You could also add text in an online platform too, but I decided to finalize the canvas in Photoshop Elements. I first transformed the photo collage into black and white. Then I simply opened a new file in the dimensions of the canvas I wanted and pasted in my photo collage. Then I added X's and O's both above and underneath the photo collage.


Now for the fun part - getting my diy photo design professionally printed! I headed over to Canvas n Décor, a Canadian company that offers free ground shipping anywhere in Canada from their London, Ontario facility. Canvas n Décor offers turnaround times of 2 to 4 days, so you can have your project printed and on the wall within a week.

I chose to do a standard gallery wrap, with a 3/4-inch thick canvas (you can choose 1 3/4-inch thick too) in a quite-large 24" by 36" size. I chose a matte finish. (Low gloss is available too.) Since my photo is a collage, I didn't want it to wrap around the sides of the canvas. In that case, you can choose white, black or a custom colour for the sides of the canvas. I went with black to pick up on the black and white photo collage.


I ordered my canvas on Monday and received it that Friday. I had been a bit worried that the photos wouldn't look right in such a large size but they reproduced beautifully. I think the canvas adds a really sweet yet sophisticated touch to my daughter's room.


As you can see, I hid her name twice in the X's and O's for an added fun touch. I chose gold for the letters to pick up on the gold frames around the mirrors on the wall at the other side of my little girl's bedroom.


With all of the purple in the room (and this pink desk), we didn't need to add any more colour, so I like the calm effect of the black and white pictures and the subtle gold lettering.



This diy canvas print design is just the type of personal touch we were looking for to highlight the special girl who calls this room home.

Do you have any empty walls you need to decorate? Do you have pictures that have never been printed? (I know, I know, that's a topic for another day!)

Visit canvasndecor.ca for more options. I would love to do a panoramic canvas from a vacation photo!



*This post is sponsored by canvasndecor.ca. All opinions are authentic and my own. Thank you for supporting the awesome companies that partner with Woman in Real Life.