Practical Ways to Integrate Custom Art in Your Home

Now that the days are clearer and people are walking about more, those for-sale signs are being picketed left, right and center! If you’re looking to do move into a new home, or do some home improvements in the good weather, we have some ideas below to integrate art soulfully and practically in your home.

Soundproofing Panels

Using a combination of canvas art and egg-crate foam creates the perfect solution for soundproofing a room. Our reference page walks you through all that you need to make your rooms beautiful and functional at the same time. You will need:

-Canvas panels (upload your own pictures here for that extra personal touch)

-Eggcrate foam of the same size and dimension as the panels (found on Uline, Amazon, Walmart or Michaels).

Just put the two together and hang them up, and you’ve got an extra layer to keep noise and sound from bouncing around or reverberating through. Perfect for basements, apartments, or any area were you could use a little peace and quiet.

Custom Screen Blinds

When it gets hot, blinds allows sunlight to brighten the place without cooking it. Interior decorator Jen Chu has one made with contact paper with customized text. Using our satin-banner material, however, you can print virtually any art, photo or design on it, so your blind doubles as a fantastic, personalized art statement as well as a shade.

Our satin-banner material is wrinkle-resistant, water-resistant, and just the right amount of stiffness to be used blinds or a divider. Its grain allows light to filter through, while covering enough surface to provide shade overall. We also print with archival inks directly onto the material, so you’ll also have a wide gamut of colour to showcase all the rich details of your art, photo or design.

Wallpaper/Splash Walls

A couple of years ago, I visited Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, England, and was amazed to see this room, where everything on the wall was handpainted:

While you may not be able to afford personally patroning a classical artist to repaint your room with highlights of your travels, personalized materials for splash-walls are easy to make. With our adhesive Photo-Tex, you can print any design you need in strips up to 60” wide, and however long you need. They’re water resistant, easy to apply and remove, and best of all, leave no damage to the walls.

Print your favourite designs on the and use them to dress up any blank space. Check out this bedroom from IKEA, where they’ve “wallpapered” the back of a closet space in order to create a splash wall. Do the same with Photo-Text with your own art or photograph for a truly individualized and personal touch.

(Psst, if you’d like to reupholster some of your cushions with some custom art, we also now do fabric printing up to 60”x40” too).

Ready to get started? Upload your photo here today.

Those are some of our favourite ways to pack some art with some functional use! Have any ideas of your own? Share them with us below!

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KeenArt Media is an online fine art printing and framing company, specializing in canvas, archival and photographic prints and reproductions. We are proud to serve and support artists from all over Canada. 

KeenART Media Ltd. www.CanadaOnCanvas.com

Toll Free: 1-888-533-6278 (KeenART)

Working hours: Pacific Standard Time

8:30 AM to 5:00 PM Monday to Thursday

8:30 AM to 4:00 PM Friday

Our Top Tips for Applying Resin

Resining is steadily becoming one of our more popular services. Resin is a high-gloss epoxy coating that creates a gorgeous, durable finish on any rigid piece. While the final effect can be stunning, resin is also notorious for being finicky and unpredictable. To prevent air bubbles and other unexpected reactions, we have a few tips below to help you prepare your art piece for the best resining experience possible. Whether you're bringing it or doing it on your own, these tips can still apply.

ArtResin project examples, from EasyComposites.com

1 - Keep your material rigid.

Whether you're painting on birchwood, doing a collage on aluminum, or sculpting on top of mdf, the principle is the same – whatever the medium is, make sure it is stiff, flat and rigid. As resin hardens, it becomes heavier, which can cause the fluid to shift unevenly throughout your piece.

A common material that people want to resin is canvas. While possible, we typically recommend sliding in a wooden backing board behind the fabric to better support the resin. If you are buying pre-made or manufactured canvases, try to pick higher-quality ones that have thicker weights and that have been stretched as tightly as possible. This will prevent the resin from pooling in the middle of the canvas, causing it to sag.

2 - Fully seal your material before you create your artwork.

We all know that the base material should be primed before you do you artwork – however, in this case, it is imperative that your surface is completely sealed before you begin your project. Otherwise, air may be able to filter through between cracks in birchwood or the gaps between canvas threads, resulting in more air-bubbles in the resin. Although air-bubbles can usually be mitigated by use of a blowtorch, some bubbles can still develop after the resin has been torched, hardening into long silvers of white cracks.

3 - Make sure your artwork is completely dry.

One last thing to consider is to ensure your artpiece is completely dry and sealed with a top coat. Sometimes resin can lift certain mediums (think wet-based mediums like acrylic or ink in great concentration, or dry mediums that are powdery, such as pastels, chalk, etc), and they can migrate over to different part of the image. Sealing dry materials in with some fixative or matte top coat will help keep mediums in place while the resin runs and cures.

And there you have it, some of our main 3 tips for successful resined pieces! If you would like us to resin a piece for you, visit us here. If we do not have a branch near you, or if you prefer to try it diy, we also sell ArtResin in our art supplies section. ArtResin is a new product that is much more safer, less toxic and more environmentally friendly than previous expoxy counterparts – a great medium to begin wetting your feet with.

If you would like to try your hand at resining, we sell Art-Resin in kits starting at 32oz. You can purchase art resin from our Arts and Supplies section here.

If you would rather we apply the resin for you, we also do offer resin-pouring services! Prices can be found on our calculator here, and it usually takes about 7 business days to complete. Resin can also be added to canvas print orders, or any order that has a rigid surface.

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KeenArt Media is an online fine art printing and framing company, specializing in canvas, archival and photographic prints and reproductions. We are proud to serve and support artists from all over Canada. 

KeenART Media Ltd. www.CanadaOnCanvas.com
Toll Free: 1-888-533-6278 (KeenART)
Working hours: Pacific Standard Time
8:30 AM to 5:00 PM Monday to Thursday
8:30 AM to 4:00 PM Friday

Happy Canada Day!

We are so thankful and proud to live in Canada. From all of us at CanadaOnCanvas, happy Canada Day!!


Check out our Ideas Gallery for that next big special day!

KeenArt Media Ltd. Toll Free: 1-888-533-6278 (KeenART)
www.CanadaOnCanvas.com 
Working Hours: Pacific Standard Time
8:30 AM to 5:00 PM Monday to Thursday
8:30 AM to 4:00 PM Friday