Hardboard Nursery Art

I was inspired by Lil Blue Boo to make a piece of nursery art for my soon-to-be-here grand-nephew. Great-nephew? hmmm Not sure which one it is. Either way it makes me feel old. I can hardly believe my little baby niece is old enough to be married and having a child. Crazy how quickly time flies!!
Anyway, I've gotten off topic. Here and here are examples of Lil Blue Boo's nursery art. I don't think mine turned out as fantastical as hers do...but then again this is the first one I've done!
It really wasn't terribly difficult. And I don't think it takes a HUGE amount of skill (Can you hold a paintbrush? Use painters tape? How about cut ribbon? Know how to squirt out glue? Then you can do it too!! ;-) )
The supplies I used to destroy construct my piece of art:

paint, paint brushes, painter's tape, ribbon, letters printed from the printer, little wooden letters, glue, and paint pens

Base look of canvas was done using brown, green, and tan paint squirted on randomly and then blotched sort of together. Let mostly dry, then add a little more of whatever color you think it's lacking (in my case, "pure" green, and "pure" brown), and blotch all over. Then let the second layer mostly dry, and do the same process one more time. Next put painters tape down in a random way to tape off areas you don't want to get painted. Then paint the areas you do want to get painted.

blue painters tape, wet brown, green, and tan paint

Remove the painters tape when the newly painted areas are at least 95% dry. Add embellishments as you like. At this point I used a medium tipped silver paint pen to add dashed lines and dots, glued on ribbon, then painted on a leaf-less tree.

The start of a first sergeants patch being painted on.
Add more embellishments while the paint dries. I used clip art in Word for the tank, and found the owl online, then printed them in color. Then I used the medium tipped silver paint pen to write in some words.

 

I finished off the sergeants patch using a medium tipped black paint pen, wrote in a few more words with the silver paint pen and then worked on the name. For the name I traced around the letters I printed off the computer with a pencil, as well as wooden letters I bought for pretty cheap at Wal-mart. Then I painted the letters in with a fine tipped black paint pen, then traced around that with the medium tipped silver paint pen. After all that was dry I painted in the larger letters with blue paint so they would stand out. What you can't see is that off to the side I was painting the wooden letters the same green that I used in the blotching process, and for the one stripe.

I attached the painted wooden letters with some glue, added in some more words with the black fine tipped paint pen, and touched up all of the black outlines of the blue letters. Once that was dry I added in some silver dots in a sort of patterned fashion. If I had brads, I might have added those to all of the major points of the letters as if they were being held up by them. Also added in: a black painted in "picture corner" in the lower right hand corner. Why? Because I accidentally got black paint on my hand, and then smudged it on the picture. Oops!! Oh well... I think it looks cute.

A close-up of the letters. It's kinda hard to tell, but the E is up off of the canvas.

A close-up of the owl in the tree and the striped area.


 So... There you have it! My first attempt at a personalized hardboard nursery art piece. I hope my niece and her husband like it! Her husband will probably like it since there's military stuff on there. ;)