Bunny Cardboard Art

Inspired by Jen/Craftomaniac's cardboard Easter signs and some of the cute painted wooden bunnies I've seen here and there on the internet, I decided to try my hand at it. Since I don't have access to power tools or much in the way of wood around here, Jen opened my eyes to the possibilities of cardboard! Whoot! Now that's right up my alley since I love incorporating non-perishable trash in my crafts.

I absolutely adore "running bunnies," so I thought...why not cut one out for this craft project.

So I drew some bunnies on cardboard and cut them out.

As you can see, I also drew and cut separate pieces for the bunnies' tales, ears (for the running bunny), and hind leg (for one of the sitting bunnies).

This is actually two projects in progress, which I'm sharing with you. For the first one, I painted a round metal tray I picked up at a second hand store for mere pennies. Since I like that funky weathered look (and, as you can see, lots of it - lol), I layered a bunch of paint colors on the metal tray. The tray originally had a design on it, which I could see through with my first coat of paint, but I figured that all this layering would cover it up...which, indeed, it did!

I think this technique is called dry brushing or stippling, where you don't want your brush too wet. If it is, you're just going to end up painting thick stripes, which wasn't the effect I was going for.

To dry your brush even more, I just tapped it on my make do "palette" to thin it out a bit.

Then I made those "weathered" looking stripes and splotches - layering, layering, layering - until I got that cool look on my cardboard and tray. (Make sure you let your brush and surface that you painted on dry thoroughly, or else you're going to make a different color, since you're mixing two wet colors together). I also edged the bunnies with black paint to make them look older.

For the running bunny and the above bunny, I also used scrapbooking paper. I thought it'd make an interesting touch using additional cardboard cut outs and mod podging scrapbook paper on them. Once the paint was completely dry, I mod podged my cardboard cut outs (that had the scrapbook paper on them) onto the body of the bunny. I liked letting the tail hang off the body a bit - again adding some extra interest to cardboard bunnies!

As I mentioned above, I like to use non-perishable trash in my crafts whenever I can, so I made a stand out of an empty pudding box and mod podged it to the sitting bunny. I weighted it down so it would stand without tipping over.

Then I took a small wood dowel and glued the running bunny onto it, and placed the other end of the dowel inside.

(Excuse the other cardboard art in the background. That's another cardboard craft project. :)

I have a high shelf, so my pudding box won't show, but if I decide to display my little cardboard bunny "art" lower, I'd definitely paint the box or cover it with scrapbook paper.

As to the other project, I cut out additional cardboard pieces for a carrot, egg, and little stamped "Happy Easter" sign. For the latter two, I covered them in scrapbook paper. For the carrot, I used some crackle paint, which made for an awesome effect. I used green raffia for the carrot top part.

Before I painted the tray, I hammered two holes in the tray's edge. Once I was finished with the project, I threaded some twine through the holes to hang it up. And voila!

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