Restoration Hardware French Animal Art knockoff

This project was featured on Knock Off Decor! Can I get a what what!

I just recently discovered that Restoration Hardware has baby stuff. Seriously, a-stinkin-dorable stuff. The pieces that caught my eye were these.

Adorable, right? $100 each, worth of adorable? Not so much.

So I took a screen shot, and dragged it into photoshop. Then took the brush tool and made a rough outline of each animal. The original pics are 16x20, but since I was making mine 11x14, I couldn't just make the animals the same size as the original. So I made some guidelines, and adjusted my animals accordingly.

 So I sent those to hubby so he could print them out for me. I had him print out two copies, one that I could cut the letters out of, and the other I could cut the animal out of. The inspiration pieces were a yellowish/neutral color, but I wanted to put these in our bedroom, which means that I need to make these in blue. So again in photoshop, I adjusted the hue to give myself an idea of what blue would look like.

Yup, still digging it, time to proceed. 

I had my dad cut some plywood into 3 boards that were 11x14. Then gathered my supplies.

Are you wondering what the tissue paper is for? I knew I didn't want the wood grain to show through on my piece. If that's your style, more power to you and you can eliminate the next steps.

 

So I took a piece of tissue paper, crumbled it into a ball, spread a thin layer of mod podge on my board, and uncrumbled the paper and laid it down.

Then just ripped off the excess when it dried, and then did a layer of mod podge on it.

Then I started with my painting. Layers and layers blue, gray and cream. Some layers I would do the colors in a stippling motion. Other layers I'd put it on a paper towel and then rub it on in circles. Then other layers, I'd mix the paint with water and sponge it on. And between each couple of layers, I'd add another layer of mod podge.

So I took my printouts, and cut out the letters with my exacto (darn you all of you lucky schmucks that own a Silhouette). Then painted those on my board. I did the letters before the animals, because on the example, the cat and dog cutouts are on TOP of the letters.

So on to the next step. I cut out the printed animals, and then used that as my guide. At first, I was going to use newspaper like the original did. But it got really dark and muddy looking, so I scrapped that and started digging through my magazines. You know what worked? An ad about Botox. Yup, Botox. No colors or pictures, just black and white. So can you guess the next step? Yup! Mod podge the animal to the board.

 I wasn't worried about the wrinkles. Wrinkles = character, right? Plus, it would have never been completely flat, due to the tissue paper. But I liked it like that.

Now, did you notice on the original that there are very light letters ON the animals? Yeah, I didn't notice it either until I looked at it a few times. So, I decided to do that too. So again, have hubby print out some letters (I used his name and our last name), cut those out (again, curse you Silhouette owners) and I lightly stenciled them on there.

Yeah, I didn't like how bright those were. So I just lightly dry brushed on some gray to tone it down.

Yeah, MUCH better. So then, finish it all off with a final coat of Mod Podge. Then have hubby hang them up (since I've been banned from hanging stuff up in the house).

     So the inspiration pic...

And my attempt.

         And a close up....

You likey? Me likey. And since I had all the supplies on hand, it was FREE.

And just because it's freakin' adorable. I told my husband that I was going to glue tissue paper to these, and he gave me a confused look and said "You're going to glue snot rags on there?" Apparently tissue paper = facial tissue. That man knows how to make me laugh. 

Let's have a party!