Shamrock Canvas Art

Well, Valentine's Day is already over. You know what holiday comes next? PRESIDENT'S DAY! But we'll just skip that one and head on to St. Patrick's Day. For my holiday decorations, I decided to make some shamrock or four leaf clover art.

By my calculations, I'm about a third Irish. On my dad's side, my great-great-grandfather, Patrick Leonard, came to the US from Ireland in the 1870s. They stayed full blooded Irish through my grandfather and my dad is at least half and there's also some Irish on my mom's side so I just rounded it up to a third. Therefore, as an ethnic mutt, it is the largest portion of my heritage so this holiday has always made me happy (so long as I ignore the part where it's kind of become a big drinking fest).

I even went to Ireland in 2006 and studied abroad in Cork. I had the most amazing time!! Here's a picture of me at the Cliffs of Moher. During this trip, where I visited the Aran Islands, I had an old stereotypical Irish man tell me I was too tan to be Irish. Alas.

Ahhh, I miss it. The constant rain, however, not so much.

Anyway, back to my craft! This project was my first time using vinyl! It was partly inspired by some projects I've seen from some wonderful ladies in my Grow Your Blog mentoring series. I loved the coloring in this heart art from Megan at Crafty Meggy and I loved the canvas shape art from Eva at Tale of the Scotts.

I started off with this cute little clover shape from Clip Art in Microsoft Word.

I copied the picture into Paint, saved it, and opened it in my Silhouette Studio where I traced the outside edge and enlarged the image to fill the canvas. I came away with this shape.

I then peeled off the back of my adhesive vinyl and stuck it on the canvas (after I realized I made the mistake of cutting a 12x12 shamrock shape for an 11x14 canvas which is why the stem is hanging off the edge). I added some painter's tape since some edges were right next to the canvas and I'm a really messy painter.

I had this all ready and then I realized that I had no green paint besides a light Martha Stewart paint called Green Curry. I had to wait and go out the next morning. I got an evergreen and a kelly green. I began painting stripes with a sponge brush. I mixed some of the greens together and I added some white so that all my stripes were different.

Then I carefully peeled the stencil off. Here it is:

 

I'm so happy because it came out exactly the way I wanted it! For now, it's just hanging on the wall but I plan on incorporating it into my St. Patrick's Day decor that I'm starting to put together.

 

 I've got a lot of Ireland decorations in my room where I think it would look great, even after St. Patrick's Day!

 I also just want to give a shout out to my 50% Irish Daddy-O who is celebrating his 60th birthday today!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

I'm linking up here!

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