Get your artwork on canvas

I often get offered photo canvases to review and have never taken any of the offers up, as I’m not hugely keen on photo canvases. I think they can look great if you have huge tall walls (I have a friend who has some stunning photo canvases of her daughter up on her walls and they do look great), but I feel they’d look wrong in our house. But some other parent bloggers and I were having a conversation about photo canvases and it suddenly occurred to me that it should be possible to use them to print artwork instead. So I got in touch with the most recent one to send an offer, which happened to be Photo-Canvas, and they loved the idea.

Photo-Canvas

The order process was very simple. They have a range of sizes available and I picked a smaller one of 30cm x 30cm. I picked an artwork to use, uploaded it and picked a background colour and wrap colour. Here’s the image I chose:

I didn’t check the advanced instructions, and so I should probably have supplied it at a higher size, (since it’s a vector image with digital effects added in Photoshop, this wouldn’t have been a problem). But that doesn’t seem to have adversely affected the quality of the print (perhaps it would have looked even better if I’d followed these guidelines, though!).

The canvas arrived the next day, which I was impressed with and seems that next-day delivery is standard for many orders (some larger ones take a bit longer and if you order late in the day, you’ll need to wait another day).

It came with fittings, so you can fix it to the wall. Obviously, you also need some tools, such as a drill if you’re going to use the plugs – though I used one of those special picture hooks that you just hammer into the wall, as they’re simpler.

For some reason, I let the girls choose where to put it. I may have to put something else there at some point and move it to a slightly more central position, as it’s not quite right (and I can be funny about positioning and alignment and balance and things like that!). (It also draws attention to the fact that the cover has fallen off the light switch, so now I’m going to have to buy and fit a replacement cover – which is probably actually a good thing, I suppose.)

So, using a photo canvas service to print artworks instead of photos worked out very well and it struck me that it could also be used to print some of the children’s artwork. Maybe do an annual collage of all their best school or nursery artworks they bring home? It also got me thinking about making some of my artworks available on canvas and there are some great services available to do this – where all I have to do is upload my images, link to them and the suppliers do the rest. So watch out for me pimping my own artwork canvases any day soon! (In the meantime, feel free to look at some of my artworks on my illustration blog, and here’s my other review of this service on that blog.)