New Product: Self-Adhesive Cloth

At Canada on Canvas we now have an exiting new product for designers and crafters. It is called removable adhesive cloth and it is unlike anything I have ever seen.

This material has the texture and durability of cloth, but has a self-adhesive backing like a sticker. It can be stuck on most surfaces, and even better, can be removed and re-positioned without loosing it's stickiness. It is also water resistant and very flexible, so it can be used to wrap around corners.

Of course, the best thing about this material is that it is receptive to the Giclee process. It can be run though our fine art printers, so we can print it with any image you can imagine in beautiful full colour. 

Ideas for Designers:

This product can be used in many home decor applications. Many designers have started incorporating vinyl cut decals into room design, and Self adhesive cloth is another easy to apply wall decoration, but with a softer look and more colour. I have designed some lovely wall murals as examples. These repeating patterns can be printed any length and can stretch all or part way around a room.

Ideas For Business

Businesses could also make good use of this easy advertising solution. We have already had an order a full fridge door sticker, with a beautiful full colour image related to the organization’s philosophy. The great thing about this material is that it can be used to turn any surface into an opportunity for delivering a message. 

Ideas for Crafers

There are also many smaller projects that could be done with this material. It could be:

---Placed on the front of a light fixture or lamp shade for a personalized back lit image.

---Made into stickers to hand out in gift bags at events.

---Used for decorations on computers and personal electronics.

But my favourite idea comes from my own love of bookbinding. With this material it would be easy to design and create custom cloth book covers – think the old fashioned Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, but in cloth! With a little measuring and cropping, and some text, any journal, note book, old, beloved hardback, or hand-bound book project can have custom designed cover art! No gluing required! I for one can't wait to try this.

With all these possibilities, I can't wait to see what you come up with!

New! Fine Art Cards

It has been said “T'is better to give than receive”, and judging from our customers, this is certainly true! Or customers love to give gifts, especially personalized gifts. Since we know no gift is complete without a card, We are now offering personalized card sets printed with images and text that you choose.

These card sets are great for sending out family Christmas cards from home or from a business. They can be used as wedding invitations or birth announcements, party invitations or thank – you cards. We always include envelopes, you just add the address!

Personalized cards are great to include with gifts, as it is a little something extra to remind the receiver of you! Because you are using your own image or design, you will never have to agonize over the racks of cards at the store, and your gift will always be unique.

For artists, gift cards are a wonderful way to give your work some exposure. People who love your work will be happy to have a copy of the beautiful images to keep, even if they can't buy the whole painting. Many artists Find that art cards are a great way to supplement their income. At Canada on Canvas we always use pigment-based inks and high quality paper, so you know that your cards will be bright, sharp and long-lasting.

Ordering is not easier than ever with our online order form. The only hard part is choosing the picture!

Father's Day

Special offer to blog readers: 15% off canvas art when you use the coupon code LOVEDAD

Father's day is approaching, And on june 19^th, I am sure all of us who where blessed with good dads will get a little nostalgic for that first and most important man in our lives. Not everybody has a good dad, but that fact just makes those of us who do all the more grateful for the family we lucked in to. I personally had a really amazing father. He was, and is, totally supportive and caring, and even if he can be a bit of a jerk sometimes, he always made it completely obvious that he loved me and my sister more than anything else in the world. And I forgot to call him on his birthday.

This is the thing about fathers. Somehow, even though they know you love them, and you know it means so much to them, they seem to rarely ever get told it. Maybe because they are men, and men are supposed to be less demonstrative than women, we think it would be better for these things to remain unspoken. No mater how much we think something is understood, however, it is always good to let someone know for sure how special and important they are to us.

It seems like we never forget Mom. We send her flowers or a gift, or at least a phone. We will never forget mothers day, because we are reminded months in advance. It is estimated that, on a national level, we spend 4.8 billion more on mothers day than on fathers day. Mothers are important, of course, but so are fathers, but it seems we tell them so less often. This June, maybe it is time to make up for past silences and make sure dad gets the message loud and clear.

Loud and clear does not have to mean unsubtle or not beautiful. At Canada on Canvas we can create a personalized canvas print or fine art paper print from any photo you like, so you can give Dad a very personal gift that he will love. Pictures, especially family photos, are records of all of the good times you have had together, and of how far you have come. We can create a canvas print from an old family photo, or we can design a custom collage on canvas of pictures from the photo album or of his grand-kids.

Photos of the grand-kids are another great gift idea for Dad. His grandchildren are the most precious gift you will ever give him, and seeing their smiling faces will always bring him joy. These do not have to be professional shots. Some of the best photos are candid snapshots that happen to record a special day or moment. Kids tend to make the best subject for candid shots, since they are vary active, and often most adorable at their most infuriating moments (it's their survival tactic).

At Canada on Canvas We are starting to offer a new service that we are calling 'Text Art'. It works this way: you send us a text document with the message that you want printed. It could be a collection of memories, A short letter or poem, or a collection of words that express how you feel. Let us know how you want it to look, and we will create a piece of text art to be printed on canvas. We will send you a proof, and if you like what we have done, we will print it for you!

Any text can be made into art. I have created two examples using the text of this blog post!

You know what dad would like best, Just be sure not to forget him on June 19^th, Father's day.

Text as Art

I have been seeing an interesting trend in the art that our customers at Canada on Canvas have recently been sending us. The trend is Text Art, and in reminds me both of the concrete poetry of the 1950's, and of the tradition of embroidered samplers. It is always interesting when old traditions get re-cycled and re-vamped by new technology.

Writing is perhaps our second-most common means of communication. In the past, we used to write letters to those we loved to share our feelings. Nowadays writing is more ephemeral. Whether it is an email or a text message, we read it and forget it.

But it seems that people still value heartfelt words, and look for ways to preserve their thoughts and send them to loved ones. Recently at Canada on Canvas, we have received many orders for canvas prints that are not photos or even images at all, they are made up entirely of text. Usually these will be collections of memories or thoughts about the person the gift is for, letting them know all the ways they are cared about and appreciated. We always say that when giving gifts it is the thought that counts, and these original people have discovered a way to give the thought itself!

Text is the perfect way to convey a message, but it is also a visual form that can be beautiful in itself. In the 1950's poets and artists experimented with the visual quality of text to produce pieced that combined the visual and the linguistic. With the renewed interest in typography and design, there has recently been a new interest in this type of art. Many digital artists are investigating the possibilities of text or font-based art with exiting results.

There are also some great tools on the internet that can generate text art out of text that you make. One is Wordle, which will create a “text cloud” based on the most used words in your text.

Here is one I created using the text of this blog post there are also many online tools that will create ascii art. They allow you to feed an image into the programme and it “writes” it using keyboard characters. Digital artists and designers can create personalized images that combine art and text in innovative and beautiful ways. At Canada on Canvas we can print these images on fine art paper or canvas, creating one of a kind gifts or wall decorations.

Fathers Day is coming up in June, and what better way to let dad know what you really mean to him than with a canvas print cataloguing the memories that you treasure, or the lessons he has taught you. Often these things go unspoken...but they deserve to be recorded and remembered.

Classic Art Prints from Canada on Canvas

At Canada on Canvas we we know how important art is in people's lives. Art can make you happy, it is something beautiful that can be enjoyed by everyone. Canada on Canvas believes that everyone can be and artist. We know this because very day we create Fine Art giclees from the stunning photos and art images send us by our customers. We also host an online art gallery of Canadian artists, helping them with selling their art more easily. We believe that the single best thing about Giclee printing is that it can help make art available to everyone.

We also know that Art, specifically painting and drawing, has a long history. Painters like Renoir, Monet, and Cezanne, people who worked in many different times in history and in countries in the world, are still loved today for the striking, beautiful, and sometimes unsettling images that they produced. Many of these images have become iconic, like Van Gogh's “starry night” , but many more are less well known, but are just as beautiful and interesting.

To view a selection of some of the best classic art of the past, visit the Classic Art Gallery at CanadaonCanvas.com, where we have a gallery of high resolution images of many great artists. The best part is, all of these images can be ordered as a giclee canvas print in a variety of sizes for only the price of the print. Because we use the highest quality of inks and canvas, and high resolution files of these classic art images, the canvas prints we make for you are as close as possible to owning the original painting.

Of course not everyone can own an original Morisot. The treasures of art are kept in museums so that they can be seen by everyone. But this art was made to be enjoyed, and a treasured painting is something you want to be able to see every day, not just once in a while. Fine art printing can let you own the painting for a tiny fraction of the the cost, and also allows and unlimited number of people to own the same painting, without taking away from the enjoyment of others. This is made possible due to fine art scanning technology, which convert the colours and brush strokes to digital information so that it can be reproduced digitally. The power to convert and image to digital has greatly increased the availability of fine art to its audience. A great example of this is the Google Art project, which has digitized and mapped dozens of galleries and thousands of artworks.

Digital images are great, but no one wants to look at a painting on a computer screen for very long. This is where giclee printing comes in. Before it was possible to print on canvas, the only way to hang a classic art piece in your own home was either to be a millionaire, or to purchase a poster print of the classic work. Paper, however, lacks the physical presence and texture of a classic painting. The giclee process has allowed printers a much greater choice in the materials they print on, and many companies not make canvas for the giclee process this canvas can be stretched in exactly the same manner in which artists and their assistants once stretched the canvas on which they worked. A canvas print is one step closer to the look and feel of the original and for this reason it has become a popular choice for art reproduction among artist and art lovers.

To view our Classic Art Gallery and order prints, please visit CanadaOnCanvas.com

Mothers day is coming up fast! if you are considering buying mom a personalized canvas print, or a print on canvas of a classic art work, be sure to use the code "lovemom" and recive a 15% OFF!

The code is valid until may 8th, but order now to make sure mom gets her gift on time!





Give her flowers that won't fade! order a beautiful canvas print!

Giclees Explained

Giclee is a word used to mean a fine-art printing process that uses digital images and high-end printers, inks, paper and canvas material. The word literally means “to spray” and is a reference to the way the printer sprays the ink onto the canvas. Giclee is a relatively new process that has been increasing in popularity among artists and photographers over the last ten years.

How It Works

The Giclee process starts with a digital image file. Most of the time we print from files taken from a digital camera. We can also print from scans, or digital art created on the computer or though a combination of scanning, photography, and digital imaging programs. The image is prepared for printing. It is sent to the printer, and the image is sprayed on a “substrate” (paper or other material) using pigment-based inks.

The word “Giclee” is also used more specifically to refer to printing on canvas using the Giclee process. Since Giclee printers can print on a wide variety of materials, it is popularly used to reproduce fine art, or make photographs into canvas pieces. The image is sprayed onto canvas, and the canvas is stretched on a wooden frame.

In order to create Giclees on canvas, the canvas print is taken by a framer and “gallery wrapped” to create the traditional look of an artist's canvas. (gallery wrapping refers to a canvas being wrapped or stretched around a wooden frame. This is the method that artists have been using for centuries to prepare their canvases for painting and hanging. Many paintings in museums are mounted using this same process) the canvas can then be framed using almost any type of frame, or left unframed for a more modern look.

Alternatives to Giclee:

There are other ways to produce printed artwork. Previous to the development of Giclee, artists used four-colour offset lithography to produce copies of their work. This process is still used, and is more economical for large print runs, but due to the difficult and time-consuming setup involved, offset printers often require print runs of 1000 or more. For individuals or artists running on-demand businesses, Gilcee are much more economical.

Artwork can also be transferred to canvas using a chemical canvas-transfer process. This works quite well, but it requires a printed original that can be sacrificed, since the process strips the inks out of the print and transfers it to the canvas. This is a physical rather than a digital process, it can only be done once, and the image can not be re-sized for the size of the original. It is quite effective for mounting posters that deserve a more elegant display, but it is not recommended for irreplaceable originals, and it is not actually a reproduction method, since you start with one print and end with one canvas.

Advantages to Giclees

The major advantage to the Giclee process is its accessibility and quality. With this process, it is possible for anyone to make almost any image into a fine art print or canvas. Professional artists can use it to reproduce work and sell to more customers, photographers can use it to create beautiful displays of their shots, and others can use it to make art out of family photos, great vacation photos, or any image they just happen to like. Because the setup for Giclee is digital, it is no problem to do single prints. There is no time-consuming chemical process or expensive setup, but the high quality of the pigment-based inks, the precision of the printer, the fine texture of the material and the high quality available from digital files insures that the print rivals other processes in colour, detail, and texture.

If you are starting with a physical image, whether an old photograph, a poster or a painting, the image can be scanned to create a digital copy, and then printed using the Giclee process. The quality of the final product will depend on the quality of the scan. The improvement in digital scanners means that paintings, photos, negatives, and slide can yield very excellent results. A major benefit of digital reproduction is that it you can increase and decreasee the size easily, making both posters and art cards, large canvases and small, from the same image.

Please visit out site at canadaoncanvas.com for moer information and to order your giclees