Sticker a Giant Painting

In this Instructable we're creating a large, modern painting by printing colors on white office labeling stickers and applying those to a clear plastic canvas.

It requires no painting skills whatsoever.

Better yet, it doesn't even require paint!

The total cost of this project is around 50 euros. My frame is size 1.80 x 1.60 meter, but you can use any size of frame or sticker. For the big version you'll need:

• 7m of thin wood beams to make a frame, about 3x3 cm wide, or a preconstructed frame.
• Some big screws that fit through the wood (~5cm long), and a couple dozen large staples + stapler.
• A plastic sheet of ~4 square meters - make sure it is not too thin to be stapled, it should not be so "wavy" that it wrinkles when held up in a light breeze. You can get a standard paint cover sheet or do like me and recycle the packaging of your new Ikea mattress.
• 2688 round, white office stickers. You can get these in packs of thousands, mine are 3cm diameter and there were 48 stickers per A4 sticker sheet.
• Either a lot of paint, or a decent printer.
• Some rope or lint and some tape

First, we'll need to make a frame. Lay out a square in the size you want, and drill a large screw through the side of each bar in each corner. It's best to predrill a hole for the screw, to avoid splitting the wood.

Don't sweat the construction details: This will not weigh anything, so you don't need corner brackets. I used a simple graffiti can to spray paint my frame black. The picture on the left was my small first test.

Then, lay out your plastic sheet on the floor and place the frame on top of it. Fold over the sides. Staple it down on one side in the middle, then go to the opposite side, lightly stretch the plastic, and staple it down. Do the same for the other two middles, then work your way towards the corners, each time lightly stretching the plastic. You want to make sure the plastic sheet fits snugly, but it should not overstretch to the point where you are damaging the sheet. Then cut off the excess plastic sheet on the back with a pair of scissors. There's a lot of video tutorials on stretching canvas over a frame out there, like this one, although you don't need to stretch the plastic as much.

Once the frame is ready, you'll need to print some colors on the office stickers. Take your chosen design to a free image splitting tool like this one. It's best if you choose a design that is easy to recognize, as it needs to be clear after we pixelate it. It's important to split the image before you pixelate it, otherwise it will be too hard to align the pixels to the stickers.

I split my image in 6x7 pieces because that is more or less the number of A4 sheets that fit on my plastic canvas. You now have 42 images that each show 2% of the final image. Each will be printed on one A4 sheet of stickers.

Now, import each of these 42 images into Photoshop (or a similar software) and do the following:

• Pixelate the image into a 6x8 grid (matching the amount of stickers on each of your A4 sticker sheets).
• Apply a "Paint brush" effect.
• Print it on a sticker sheet - make sure to account for the whitespace on the side of your sheet when printing. You can play with the print size to line this up, mine were good at a print size of 104%. Each sticker represents one pixel, so they should all be one flat color.

If you don't want to do this manually 42 times, you can also make a simple Photoshop action and automate it as described here. It's best to number the printed sheets as they come out the printer, so that you don't need to search too much what goes where later.

As an alternative to this whole step, you could also overlay a grid on your source design and try to match the colors with paint. However, this may become the bane of your existence, and the office stickers will curl if you use too much water.

Get some strong coffee, a long playlist, and if available, some little helpers ready. Lightly clean the plastic frame. Measure A4 sizes out on the side of your frame and with some tape, create horizontal and vertical guidelines for each A4 out of some thin rope or lint. You can also use some extra white stickers to map out the right distances for each sheet as I did in the first picture. Start applying the stickers of the first sheet in the top left corner and work your way across the frame. I left around 2mm between each sticker on each side.

Make sure not to bend the stickers when peeling them off the sticker sheet: Instead, try to pull the sticker sheet away from the sticker sideways/downward. Stickers that have been bent once, will have a tendency to fall off your frame later (This is also a classic office Post-it hack!).

You may occasionally have to reapply a few stickers if you end up too far from the guideline. You can take them off with a knife to avoid bending the stickers. You'll see that you become a stickering expert in no time.

That's all! Hang the finished result on a wall and admire your work :)

I tried to apply some different types of varnish on the above test piece pixel-doggo, to keep the stickers on more permanently and to protect the colors. However all the varnishes I tried either damaged the stickers (liquid) or clouded the plastic (spray), so in the end I just accepted that it will wash out a little over time.

I've had this up for a year now and so far the stickers have held strong. Some have peeled a little in the corners, but it is only those that I hand-painted, the printed ones are all good. When they do, it's easy to fix with a little superglue. If you mix hand-painted and printed stickers, bear in mind that the printed ones will be glossy and the painted ones matte.

If the plastic sheet has wrinkles in it, you can undo those with a hairdryer. Be very careful not to come too close though, if the plastic sheet is slightly overheated it may deform and you will not get it back in shape. That said, I did this in one spot by accident and simply covered it with the stickers. It's not visible from a distance.