Welcome to my stop along the blog tour for Paint By Sticker Masterpieces, hosted by Workman Publishing! This activity book is pretty fun because you get the painting by number experience without the mess! Today I get to show you the masterpiece I created and tell you about my experience during the creative process!
Paint By Sticker: Masterpieces
Series: Paint By Sticker
Published by Workman on September 20, 2016
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Paint by Sticker is a compelling new activity for crafters and artists, doodlers and coloring book enthusiasts of all ages. Masterpieces encourages everyone to channel their inner da Vinci and create twelve iconic works of art.
Paint by Sticker Masterpieces includes everything you need to create twelve vibrant, full-color “paintings”—the stickers, the templates, the intuitive directions. The works include The Birth of Venus, by Sandro Botticelli, The Creation of Adam, by Michelangelo, Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci, Girl with a Pearl Earring, by Johannes Vermeer, Napoleon at Saint-Bernard Pass, by Jacques-Louis David, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, by Katsushika Hokusai, Houses of Parliament, Sunlight Effect, by Claude Monet, Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses, by Paul Cezanne, Dance at Bougival, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bedroom in Arles, by Vincent van Gogh, Breezing Up (A Fair Wind), by Winslow Homer, and the stunning study in color, Flaming June, by Frederic Leighton.
The cardstock pages are perforated for easy removal, making it easy to frame the completed images.
For this blog tour, I was assigned The Great Wave off Kanagawa! I’ve always loved this painting. I love how the version in this book remains true to the original, but has been simplified down to geometric blocks of color to create a prism-like look. Here’s a picture of the original, just so you can compare it to mine below:
The creative process was very relaxing, and so much fun! Each sticker is thinly outlined and labeled with a letter and number. These identifiers tell you which sections of the multiple sticker sheets the correct sticker is on so you can find it easily. Then you stick the sticker on its corresponding spot. Very simple, mess free, and easy to work on in small bursts of time. I loved paint by number projects as a kid, but it was always a hassle to set up and clean up after. You can easily throw the book in a bag and take it to work on during your lunch break at the office or to the park on a nice day. The stickers are shiny and the colors are so vibrant and pretty, and I really enjoyed working on it!
I will admit, parts of this project were difficult. I’m not sure if it was just my copy of the book or not, but many of the stickers were hard to get off the sticker page. Some of the stickers were not cut out completely, and they ripped when I tried to pull them off the page to stick on my project page. I felt like a needed an XACTO knife to finish cutting some of the stickers. I also noticed that some of the stickers were too small for their spot on the project page, so I have some white outlines around a few that are bothering me a little. lol. Some of the stickers are really tiny, so I recommend using tweezers to make sure they fit properly. There is a little room for re-adjusting once you lay the sticker down, but once you press it firmly it’s there for good. It’s also fairly easy to throw yourself off. If one sticker is out of place even a little it can throw off the rest of them. I found that once I got the hang of it (there’s a bit of a learning curve), I quit making as many mistakes.
Regardless of the few challenges I experienced, I really love this book and plan to buy more in the series as they become available (see all the books in the series here). My advice would be to just be patient and settle into a groove and you’ll end up with a beautiful picture! As I said before, I found this experience to be very relaxing and enjoyable and I can’t wait to create more of the works in this book (I love the selection of artworks chosen for this book)! I would recommend this book to art history-loving teenagers and adults. It’s a little tricky for young ones, but there are two Paint By Sticker books for kids that look like a lot of fun! Get one for everyone in the family, sit at the table, and have fun together!
This Adventure Ends by Emma Mills
The Cat King of Havana by Tom Crosshill
Tell Me Something Real by Calla Devlin