Welcome To Nana's

  • All Crafts
  • Arts & Crafts
    • Drawing
    • Painting
    • Sewing
    • Paper craft
    • Nature
    • Recycled
    • Coloring Book
    • 3-D Project
  • Activities
    • Indoor
    • Outdoor
    • Science
    • Trip Activities
    • Recipes
  • Holiday
    • Christmas
    • Thanksgiving
    • Halloween
    • Easter
    • Fourth of July
    • Father's Day
    • Flag Day
    • May Day
    • Midsummers Day
    • Mother's Day
    • New Years
  • About
menu icon
go to homepage
  • All Crafts
  • Arts & Crafts
    • Drawing
    • Painting
    • Sewing
    • Paper craft
    • Nature
    • Recycled
    • Coloring Book
    • 3-D Project
  • Activities
    • Indoor
    • Outdoor
    • Science
    • Trip Activities
    • Recipes
  • Holiday
    • Christmas
    • Thanksgiving
    • Halloween
    • Easter
    • Fourth of July
    • Father's Day
    • Flag Day
    • May Day
    • Midsummers Day
    • Mother's Day
    • New Years
  • About
search icon
Homepage link
  • All Crafts
  • Arts & Crafts
    • Drawing
    • Painting
    • Sewing
    • Paper craft
    • Nature
    • Recycled
    • Coloring Book
    • 3-D Project
  • Activities
    • Indoor
    • Outdoor
    • Science
    • Trip Activities
    • Recipes
  • Holiday
    • Christmas
    • Thanksgiving
    • Halloween
    • Easter
    • Fourth of July
    • Father's Day
    • Flag Day
    • May Day
    • Midsummers Day
    • Mother's Day
    • New Years
  • About
×
Home » All Posts

DIY Botanical Wall Art with Spray Paint

Published: Oct 5, 2022 by Shelly · This post may contain affiliate links · Leave a Comment

Three completed botanical canvas paintings on a multi colored woven mat.

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.

White canvases, leaves and spray paint cans rest on a multi colored woven mat.
DIY Botanical Wall Art with Spray Paint tutorial helps you make easy art for your home. Fast & fun with leaves & grasses from your own yard. #WelcometoNanas #SprayArt #BotanicalArt #SprayPaintCraft

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). 

Dried wheat resting on a white canvas before painting.

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. 

Branches with little leaves resting on a white canvas before painting.

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!

Oak leaves on a white canvas laying on a trash bag painted neon green.

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.

Branches with small leaves on white canvas after painting red.

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.

Blue spray painted canvas with a white dried wheat silhouette

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.

Red spray painted canvas after the branches with small leaves were removed.

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!

Green leaf painted canvas after the oak leaves were removed.

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

Three completed botanical canvas paintings on a multi colored woven mat.
Three completed botanical canvas paintings on a multi colored woven mat.

DIY Botanical Wall Art with Spray Paint

Shelly
Use the DIY Botanical Wall Art with Spray Paint tutorial to help you make amazingly easy botanical art for your home. Fast and fun with leaves & grasses from your own yard.
Print Pin
Prep Time 30 minutes mins
Cook Time 30 minutes mins
Total Time 1 hour hr
Type Nature craft/activity
Cuisine Art Project
Yield 1 set

Equipment

  • none needed

Items Required
  

  • 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- 

Instructions
 

  • 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). 
    Pick enough of each item to have extra to do a practice project as well as your main project.
  • Choose the color(s )of spray paint you want to use. One color or several.
  • Doing this project outside is best. But I put plastic down in our garage and left the garage door open for ventilation (it's windy where I live). This isn’t a craft to do inside.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.
  • Do a practice run with each type of vegetation or items you have gathered.
    Lay down a piece of craft paper and arrange your extras of the first botanical you want to create. Hold in place by stems and spray paint straight down.
    Some lightweight vinyl gloves will really help in clean up.
  • After you are pleased with your practice papers, repeat the process on each of your canvases. These are 8x10 inch canvases.

Video

Keyword botanical canvas wall art, DIY botanical wall art, DIY project for home, nature craft project for family, spray paint leaves on canvas

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-

More All Posts

  • Three 4th of July firecracker treat boxes decorated with red white and blue paper and washi tape with some scraps of festive paper scattered around.
    Easy 4th of July Craft: Firecracker Treat Boxes!
  • A person. holding a milk jug windsock with a sunshine smiley face on it with many colorful strips of fabric hanging from the bottom.
    Make a Festive Milk Jug Windsock Craft
  • Red white and blue melted beads in the shape of a star sitting on a circular piece of wood next to a bowl of blue beads.
    DIY 4th of July Melted Beads Craft
  • A salt shaker full of button flowers with a ribbon tied around it against a blue background.
    Cute DIY Button Flowers in a Salt Shaker

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Hello there! I'm Shelly (Nana), an artist, previously homeschooling mother of 3, and now proud grandma (Nana) of 6. I love sharing artistically inspiring, hands-on crafts for kids of all ages. Let's go have some fun!

More about me →

Popular Crafts

  • Hand squeezing the a completed batch of light blue fluffy slime.
    How to Make the Best Fluffy Slime Recipe for Kids
  • Completed colorful tissue paper flowers, a purple and pink one resting on a glass cake stand with others underneath.
    How to Make Easy DIY Giant Tissue Paper Flowers (2 Ways!)
  • Overhead views of two different sprouts growing in glass containers.
    How to Grow a Tree from a Pine Cone
  • A sunset picture created with sharpies and alcohol on canvas, surrounded by bright sharpie markers..
    Cool Sharpie and Alcohol Painting on Canvas

Footer

↑ back to top

Privacy Policy

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Copyright © 2025 Brunch Pro on the Feast Plugin