Easy Oil Pastel Wall Art

I have a confession to make. White walls are my mortal enemy. I cannot stand flipping through all those fancy decorating magazines they sell in the grocery store. All I ever seem to turn to are the pages of living rooms with stark white walls and color everywhere else. I just wanna scream! Will someone please just paint a wall turquoise and be done with it?! White accessories don't bother me. For some reason it's just white walls. This is the problem I'm having with my little girls room. The house we rent doesn't allow any painting to be done. I will be so glad when we buy our own house. There will be paint. Oh yes, there will be paint everywhere!

Okay I'm done ranting about paint now. On to the project! I had a bunch of blank 10 x 10 canvas laying in my entryway and a blank wall to fill. I looked at all my art supplies and saw paint. Good idea, or so I thought. Apparently you've got to use paint before it dries up! Lol. My second choice was oil pastels which I have always loved. I've had the same set since I was in high school ( I'm 29 now) and they still work perfectly. I'm a believer in buying long lasting art supplies. Oil pastels, colored pencils, crayons, white Elmer's glue. All great stuff that you can do a lot with.

Here's what you'll need:
Primed Canvas, any size, even those cute tiny ones will work
Oil Pastels
Roll of painters tape
Old cloth or t-shirt, even paper towels work

Once you have a design in mind it's time to break out the tape. Mark off your design with the tape and use your oil pastels to place color where you want it. Because oil pastels are very blendable I just did a very general coloring in with medium pressure (you don't want hard lines) with the colors of my choice. For this one I chose to do a big H because my daughter's name is Hope. After you have your color where you want it take your paper towel or rag and rub the canvas smoothing the color out. If you've never used oil pastels before I highly recommend them. They are very versatile and very easy to use. If an area looks too light to you, add more oil pastel and blend again. It might seem scary at first to just go coloring the heck out of a canvas and it might look terrible after you've colored it. Mine did! Just take a deep breath and use that cloth to blend! Ahhhhh that's better! Once you've blended it all just pull the tape off and reveal your awesome design! I love hanging canvas with no frame so as soon as this was done it went right up on my daughter's wall. She loves it! Happy Crafting! <3

**If you're unfamiliar with oil pastels and are still a little unsure of how they will look blended, i found this helpful link on artkin.