Valentine's Day: MacKenzie Childs Inspired Folk Art Heart

 

I've spoken before of my love of MacKenzie Childs but my "not love" of MacKenzie Childs prices. So buy some, make some! 

Supplies

• 8x8 Canvas Boards ( Blick Art)
• 8x8 Shadowbox Frame (Michaels)
• Acrylic Paints (Craftsmart, Apple Barrel)
• Paint Marker (Craftsmart)

I had these 8x8 Canvas Panels in my supplies along with a shadow box frame from a 2 pack from another project. Like most of my projects, the idea just popped into my head. 

I painted the canvas with a coat of white paint, then taped off stripes to start my  signature MacKenzie Childs checkerboard background. Using a brayer helps make sure your tape is laid down well. 

I wanted to keep the space for the heart clear so I hand cut a heart ( here's the folk art part...it's not perfect which is the whole ethos of folk art) from contact paper ( Dollar Tree is your friend) and put this down before I taped off my stripes but you can't see it clearly here. You can below.

You can see the edges of the contact paper heart here. 

Had to recharge my camera battery so missed pics of a couple of steps. I taped off the panel horizontally and here's where I goofed, but we'll fix it later. I outlined the heart with the black paint marker, painted it pink then went over with some white paint. I wanted it to be "splotchy" and again, not perfect.  See? Even laying down the tape with the brayer, my paint bled (UGH!) but no matter, again...we're not going for perfect. I edged each of the stipes with gold paint, added gold dots aroudn the heart,  and here's where I fixed my checkerboard.

Using a straight edged brush, I filled in the "missing" white squares with a couple of coats of white paint. Since MacKenzie childs goodies are all hand painted, I hand painted! 

Popped my finished canvas into the shadowbox frame and done and done!

Other MC inspired projects: 

DIY MacKenzie Childs Pumpkins 

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Our Hopeful Home

Mackenzie Childs Inspired DIY Pumpkins

 

If you've spent any time in Home Decor world, you are probably familiar with Mackenzie Childs signature style. I love it, not only because she uses tons of black and white but because it's whimsical, pretty, and not rigidly perfect. It's also expensive and while I'd love to have a bunch of pieces, I don't. But hey, we're Makers so what do we do? We use our faves for inspiration and DIY that stuff! 

Here's an example of the real ones: 

Supplies: 

• Plain Ceramic Pumpkins ( $1 each from Target)
• Paint Pens ( I used Craftsmart from Michaels)
• Acrylic Paint 

Step 1: 

Gather your supplies. I found these ceramic pumpkins for $1 each at Target in the section that none of us can get past. They know us! I also grabbed two paint pens: gold and black. 

Step 2: 

For the signature Mackenzie Childs check, I went down the lines of the pumpkin with the black pen. 

Since the style here is to look handpainted, you don't have to be perfect. 

Step 3: 

I went horizontally around the pumpkin with the paint pen to create the squares.

Step 4:

Tip: When I've done checkerboard before, I've gotten the order messed up so I've taken to putting a pencil dot in the squares to be filled in before I start filling! 

Step 5 

When all of the squares were filled in, I went back down the pumpkin spines with a gold paint pen and colored the stem. (I went back over that gold spot w/ black)

Et voila! 

The process for the Striped Pumpkin was similar but I used acrylic paints instead of paint pens.

I did a couple of coats for opacity. 

To finish, I also used paint and just went down each side w/ antique gold. 

Et voila!

I am pretty happy with my $2 project!