DIY Botanical Wall Art with Spray Paint

DIY Botanical Wall Art with Spray Paint

Use the DIY Botanical Wall Art with Spray Paint tutorial to help you make amazingly easy and modern botanical art for your home. This project is fast and fun with leaves & grasses from your own yard.

How about a twist on the traditional botanical print that adds a pop of color to your wall? Kids and adults will love this project and the collecting of leaves and grasses too.

Take a walk- gather your nature items and good memories

Grab your kids, spouse or friend and take a nature walk, what a great way to start a project.

It's not just nature items you are gathering here, it is good memories! Enjoy the time and the outdoors together. 

You can take a walk through your yard or through the park and pick up a few leaves and interesting nature items that intrigue you. Take care to choose items that would work well to spray paint over and create a good silhouette (outline without details inside). 

Botanical art- choose nature items with good silhouettes

Look at my pictures and you can see what my three nature items look like as silhouettes to give you ideas.

The oak leaves have interesting outlines, they aren’t just teardrop shaped which is nice.

The barberry stems have multiple small leaves on each stem which worked well. Be sure to watch for the barbs on this one…they hurt!

The grass gives a wispy image but isn’t very clear. I still really like it though. I give an idea to improve the clarity of this one in my notes below.

Pick enough of each item to have extra to do a practice project as well as your main project. 

Note: It isn’t OK to cut stems and pick things off trees and bushes in a public area or on private property. Please pick things up off the ground, on the sidewalk, or ask first. 

Spray paint leaf art- what colors?

Choose the color(s )of spray paint you want to use.

So, I discovered a new (to me) brand of spray paint that had eye popping fun colors. It is called Color Shot. The colors I used are With a Twist (green) and Summer Pedicure (pink). I want to buy more just because of the color names! (Who has the job of naming colors anyways?) 

FIY- Found that paint at WalMart. Couldn't find links on Amazon. The links above are to alternate choices.

I already had the Rust-Oleum spray paint in Cobalt Blue. I liked how it completed the trio of colors.

You can use as many colors as you want or just one would look nice too!

Spray painting- ventilation is key (so is no wind!)

I tried a couple times to do the spray-painting portion of this craft outside of my house and the Kansas wind was just being ornery! Everything blew every which direction. 

Finally, I put plastic down in our garage and left the garage door open for ventilation. This isn’t a craft to do inside.

Note: If you do need to craft inside, you may try doing a spatter technique with craft paints.

Try putting down a big area of paper, loading a paint brush with paint and giving it a shake over the canvas. Repeat this until the canvas and plants are well covered with paint.

I have not tried this myself yet so be sure to practice on a separate piece of craft paper before starting in on your canvas. Let me know how this works if you try it!

Again, spray paint drifts and is not good to inhale. Do this project in a well ventilated area and lay down paper or plastic to protect your surface.

Practicing leaf spray painting makes perfect

It is wise to do a practice run with each type of vegetation or items you have gathered. Some items don’t work well as a silhouette, and this prevents wasting a canvas.

Lay down a piece of craft paper and arrange your extras of the first botanical you want to create.

Tip: I found out quickly that you must use your hands to hold things in place. Some gloves will really help in clean up. I had some of the lightweight vinyl gloves left over from Covid and they worked perfectly. When the painting was done I just threw them away. Otherwise, read the directions on the spray paint can to clean paint off of your hands.

The practice lets you know how hard the spray paint comes out of the can and how the botanical acts when you spray paint over it. You may want to try another type of leaves or grass if you don’t like the look. And you will know how to hold onto the stems when you create your final canvas.

Spray Paint Leaves on Canvas

After you are pleased with your practice papers, repeat the process on each of your canvases. In the pictures these are 8x10 inch canvases.

I was pretty excited about the final outcome of this project. They are so colorful and such a neat twist on the traditional botanical print.

If I could do the canvas with the grass again, I would do one head at a time and place it close to the canvas when spraying the paint to make a clearer grass head image. 

It would also be fun to try painting the canvas with a solid color before doing this project. Then the silhouettes would be a color instead of white.

Botanical Canvas Wall Art

I would love to see your DIY Botanical Wall Art with Spray Paint canvases! 

How are you going to use your cool botanicals? In your home, your room/bathroom, as a gift?

I got to thinking that this would work great with one leaf on the front of a card, that would be easy and fast for a special occasion.

It would also look nice to do a single item on on a series of small canvases, maybe 4x5 inches in size. They could even be hung on a ribbon on the wall.

SO MANY OPTIONS!! Let me know what you try. You are full of ideas too!

Looking for more projects using items you find on a nature walk? Here are a few!

• Hide and Seek Rocks Rock
• Tree Leaf Identification Nature Journal
• Treasure Hunt Nature Mobile
• How to Grow a Tree from a Pinecone

Enjoy!

If you try this craft, let me know! Go ahead and leave a comment, rate it, and tag a photo with #WelcometoNanas wherever you post.

Come join the fun at https://welcometonanas.com

Supplies for DIY Botanical Wall Art with Spray Paint

• Nature items- tree leaves, bush stems, grasses, etc.
• Spray paint- colors of your choice (green, pink, cobalt blue)
• Craft paper to practice on
• Art canvases- 8x10 were used in this tutorial
• Vinyl gloves-