Painting the Solar System

I've always had aspirations to be a great artist. However, sometimes what you hope to be and what you actually are are two different things. I've decided when we're ready to put my little man into a big boy bed that I'll redecorate his room in a space theme. We're not quite ready to give up the comforts of the crib yet, so I'm taking a slow pace at getting the decorations together. I've been looking online for some inspiration when I found this art piece on etsy. Amazing! I just absolutely love it. But I wasn't quite as in love with the price tag when I figure I can make something "just like it" at home.

Etsy's version

Enter the finished solar system. Three weeks of off and on crafting landed me with this puppy. Not quite as spectacular as the etsy find, but I think I'll still stick it up in his new room. Hopefully those wobbley orbit lines won't drive me batty. Click on it to view larger.

My version

Here's how I made it, in case you're curious. I took a 16x20 canvas board ($5) and layered on the navy blue acrylic paint. I used a brush at first, but I was going for a real swirly effect, so I was eventually finger painting. After that dried, I dotted on some white spots for starts. I was trying to use the splatter method I remember doing in 4th grade, but after a few mess-ups, I went back to painting them by hand. The hardest part of this project was choosing the scrapbook paper. I used quite a few scraps I had laying around. To apply, I just mod podged them on. The swirls were obviously my nemesis here, which I hand painted on. Should've used a paint pen or something, but I got impatient towards the end. I searched around a lot for multi-colored, multi-sized alphabet letters, and I actually found these at walmart for a dollar. Score. So instead of paying $156 for the etsy version, I paid around $8 for my homemade, slightly smaller version. Hubby should be proud.