My Etsy store has been busy for the past few months. I’ve made some new custom orders and some old favourites, shipped off across the UK and US. August always brings a bit of a lull, which is fine for me as I am usually busy at home with school holidays. Now its back to school and I’m starting to focus on the autumn and Christmas in my store, so I have been looking at product updates. Some of my items need a refresh and some new photos too, so I have been busy with some very easy art projects to create a flat lay board which I can use for my Etsy product photos.

I’ve created four different flat lays over the course of 2 very enjoyable arty evenings. Even managed a glass of wine and some music while I worked! I actually enjoyed the process of doing it regardless of the outcome – being creative is easy to push aside but always enjoyable when you give it some time. Im also really pleased with the outcomes. So I thought I would share it on here for anyone else who might want to create something similar.

Materials

I bought 4 canvas boards from The Range. You can get these at art shops and they are often cheaper than a box canvas. As they are flat they also work better as props than a thick boxy canvas would too.

I used acrylic paint which we have quite a bit of anyway. I bought a couple more tubes of pale, neutral colours as most of our colours were too bright. They are backgrounds after all.

For one of the pieces I added in bits of tissue paper, handmade paper and an old map. I had these at home already. Its amazing how much craft stuff I have! I also used various items to create texture. These included some off cuts of lace and pieces of bubble wrap. Needlcraft fabric (the stuff with the holes in for cross stitch) could be good too.

The fourth flat lay board was a little different. For this I used bleeding art tissue paper. Again I had this in the house already as I had run a craft activity for my daughter’s craft party with it. This isn’t normal tissue paper. The surface isn’t treated in any way so when it is wet the colour bleeds out – hence its name!

Paper and paint -flat lay board one

Process art is as much about the process as the final piece. I really enjoyed building up bits of colour and texture on this first piece. What is nice is that it can’t really go wrong. It’s abstract, random and if you don’t like a bit you can build over the top of it.

I used yellow, cream and white tones of paint and applied them in various ways. This was the first time I had tried painting onto bubble wrap then pressing it onto the canvas. It is quite effective, subtle if you use a similar colour to your background or dramatic if you use a contrasting colour. I was quite happy with where I got but it needed more, so I stuck on torn off pieces of an old map, bits of tissue paper and some pieces of handmade paper with flowers in it. I even added a bit of sheet music i had torn up in a box from a past craft project. They did look a bit stuck on, so I went over the top with more paint and texture so that they blended in as a layer.

I kept working up more layers of paint and colour. Then finished off with some brighter colours – pinks and greens – to add a pop of colour. Finally a layer of watered down white to blend it all together a bit more.

Here is the finished piece, shown as a background on a shelf…

Lace print pattern – flat lay board two

My second flat lay board was so incredibly quick to do. I used a piece of lace as a stencil to stipple my paint through. I used two shades of brown and a yellow and covered the whole canvas in the same design. The effect is almost like an animal print, particularly where the paint was very dry. I moved the lace in different directions every time I re-laid it so the pattern became more random. I used a blunt stubby kids paint brush to dab the paint through but a sponge would work too. The trick was not having too much paint on the brush.

Here is the final piece as a flat lay board featuring tiny Elvis…

Subtle paint textures – flat lay board three

The first two were fairly bold in terms of the depth of colour. I wanted this next one to be really subtle with barely there colours. As I made this directly after the second piece, I still had the browns and yellows left. The brown was rather dark for this piece. I watered it down a little to make it paler and added some blue and green shades in too. This was a similar process to the first piece in that I built up layers of colour and texture. However I didn’t add in any paper or other textures this time. I started with a faint brown wash then added colours gradually.

To make texture I used the bubble wrap again and a piece of heavy duty lace which I used to dab paint through, and also to use as a print once it was covered in paint. I finished with some washes of green and white to blend it together.

Here it is as a flat lay board for one of my doll models for my doll making kit…

Bleeding art tissue – flat lay board four

And finally! The last piece was a bit different, no paint involved at all. I used the bleeding art tissue paper I had and tore it into random strips and chunks. I kept them fairly big as I was covering the whole canvas. This is a really easy technique, the only challenge is not letting the paper blow around when it is dry. Start by placing pieces of the bleeding art tissue randomly over the canvas. You can layer or overlap pieces and the colours will merge slightly. Once you are happy with the positioning then simply spray water over each piece to wet it. This is where things can blow or move around so i often add little bits of water to each piece to make it stick slightly to the canvas and then go back over with more water.

Getting the right amount of water makes a big difference. Not enough and the colour wont bleed sufficiently. If you saturate it then the whole canvas becomes waterlogged and the colours run too much and there is no definition to the shapes. You want each piece of tissue to be wet but not swimming in water. The only thing left to do is wait. Leave the canvas alone, flat on a surface. As the water soaks through the tissue the colour will bleed through onto the canvas below. Once everything is completely dry you can simply brush the tissue away to see the canvas underneath.

I felt that the colours were a bit too subtle at first so once dry I did a second layer with bolder colours. Here is the final piece as a background for my little Frida Kahlo one of a kind doll…

Phew! Feels like a long blog post, but I wanted to share them all as each flat lay board is so different. They were so easy to make and I like being able to use them both as a background prop and as a flat lay. You might start to see them cropping up in my product photos in the future!