Easy to Make Halloween RIPped Canvas Tutorial

Oooooh, I’m super excited to share this week’s crafty tutorial with you. It’s a little spooky and tells the hauntingly beautiful tale of Thomas and Isabella. Two lovers whose tragic story has been immortalized in this eerie and easy-to-make Halloween RIPped canvas.

They met their fate on dark, stormy night when a gust of wind blew in through an open window, causing one of the candles to topple over. The flames spread quickly engulfing our lovers as they shared a tender moment in the drawing room.

In death, the two lovers remain inseparable, their souls bound together for eternity. On quiet nights, their skeletal remains can be seen wandering the mansion’s halls.

Thomas holds an unlit candle in his hand as a reminder of that terrible night.

In this not-so-spooky craft tutorial, I’ll show you how to make a RIPped canvas and fill it with ghostly elements to tell a story.

But, before we get there, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram. And don’t forget to subscribe so you’ll never miss a post!

What you need

• Cotton Box Canvas 14”x 10”
• Cardboard
• Sharp craft knife
• Paint and paintbrushes
• 2 x skeletons
• Fairy lights
• Decorative bits

I used small frames, creative common pictures, a fairy candle, and dried Baby’s Breath (Gypsophila).

How to make a Halloween RIPped Canvas

This little Halloween scene is made up of a few parts, which include a grungy gallery wall with vintage works of art all framed by an exploding, RIPped and torn canvas.

Our two small skeletons (Thomas and Isabella) add a touch of macabre whimsy to the scene. I’ll cover each part in the tutorial below starting with the gallery wall made from cardboard.

Creating a cardboard gallery wall

Using cardboard to make the back gallery wall was an easy choice. It’s inexpensive and we have loads of boxes waiting patiently for their repurposing moment. Use the canvas as a guide to cut a cardboard rectangle.

To disguise the wiggly waggly cardboard inside bits, I covered it in an old bedsheet. You can use whatever scraps you have lying around.

Just trim it a little bigger than the cardboard and use Mod Podge to glue it down.

Leave the Mod Podge to dry before painting.

Painting the gallery wall

IMHO nothing says haunted quite like damp, mottle-stained walls. It always looks like the house is weeping and that’s the effect I was going for here. To get the look, I applied a layer of texture paste (homemade recipe here) mixed with a little bit of raw sienna (dirty yellow) and burnt umber acrylic paint.

Apply the colored paste with your fingers or a wooden craft stick to create a rough texture.

Once the paste dries, mix burnt umber oil paint with turpentine to make a glaze. Apply the glaze randomly over the cardboard wall to create a mottled, water-damaged effect.

You can do the same thing using acrylic paint and acrylic medium, but I prefer oil paints for something like this. The colors are richer, and they leave a slight sheen which adds to the grungy look I was after.

Making miniature portraits and frames

I loved this part. Back in the day, before old age messed with my eyes, I used to enjoy painting miniature portraits. There’s something so special about capturing someone’s essence on a canvas the size of a postage stamp. Those days are long gone but I still have a collection of tiny frames that didn’t quite live up to the framing rules set by the Miniature Art Society of South Africa.  and this eerie Halloween scene was the perfect opportunity to put them to use.

I also have a silicone mold for making little frames in my craft stash so I could whip up a few more using resin and paint. I’ll leave a link at the bottom of the post where you can find the mold.

To age the frames, I lightly buffed them with bronze gilder’s paste.

The portraits and images inside the frames were all found on Wikimedia. If you want to play around, you can use something like Bing Image Creator to make your own.

All the pics were resized and glued to the back of the frames.

Once the frames are ready you can glue them to the grungy gallery wall.

Just remember to leave a 1.5” to 2” gap around the edges for the canvas, which is up next.

Prepping the RIPped canvas

Let’s talk about the canvas for a bit since it frames the whole spooky scene.

Canvases come in different shapes and sizes. For this RIPped Halloween project, I used a cotton box canvas. You’ll find them at most arts and crafts shops and they’re usually 1.5” deep. When you flip them around they’re perfect for creating small dioramas and fairy scenes.

Using a box canvas as a base saves you the trouble of making a deep wooden frame (or shadow box) and adding a strong, stretched fabric over the front. Depending on the make, the canvas may be pre-primed (that’s just a fancy way of saying they’ve put a layer of gesso over the canvas) or raw.

Mine was pre-primed, so I only needed to add a few coats of black paint to the front of the canvas.

And on the back of the canvas, I randomly smooshed on some of our homemade texture paste.

The back of the canvas will be flipped and curled over once we “RIP” it. A pretty napkin mod podged onto the back and front of the canvas would look lovely too. As long as there are contrasting textures and/or colors on the two sides so those RIPs stand out. Just have fun and and experiment.

RIPping the canvas

Okay, so technically I didn’t rip the canvas, it was more of a controlled rip slice……. with a ruler and a craft knife.

Start in the middle of the canvas and don’t cut too close to the edge.

This is what the sliced rips look like on the other side of the canvas after they’ve been curled over.

Put a drop (or 3) of glue on the sliced points, curl them, and glue them down on the canvas.

Adding lights

We’re almost done, I promise. To add an eerie glow, I used fairy lights with a slim battery pack.

Working from the bottom of the RIPped canvas, glue the fairy lights around the inside of the wooden frame. Make sure the battery pack is easy to get to from the front of the canvas before gluing the lights down.

I started off using superglue but switched to a glue gun. I’m not a big fan of using a glue gun for miniatures. The glue blobs are too big and blobby for small scenes, but for getting the fairy lights to stay where I wanted them, it did the trick.

Posing the skeletons

Unlike our vampire winged Sergeant Skullie, the only moving parts on the cheap skeletons I used were their jaws.

Which is fine if I was telling a story of skeletons chomping each other’s legs off. But Thomas and Isabella are lovers not bone eating zombies, so I had to make a plan using a lighter, knife, and super glue. Chop the legs off at the knees so they’re a little shorter. You may have to cut off different parts of their anatomy to make them fit inside your canvas. I save the limbs I cut off to add to Baba Yaga’s hut.

I cut their arms off too and glued them back on in the position I wanted.

You can also use a lighter to gently melt any joints and then bend them while the plastic is still pliable.

Please be careful not to burn yourself. This is what they looked after mutilating the poor things.

Putting the RIPped canvas together

Time to put all these parts together and complete our bone-chilling masterpiece 😀 Add glue all around the edge of the gallery wall.

Place the RIPped canvas over the wall and press down firmly.

Leave the glue to dry and then pop Thomas and Isabella inside. And by pop I mean, glue their legs inside the frame.

Make a small miniature candle as a reminder of how this all started and glue it down.

Place a bouquet of flowers in Isabella’s hands as a testament of their enduring love.

Now as we bid farewell to Thomas and Isabella let’s take a final look at our RIPped Halloween canvas.

What do you think? Is it something you would make for this Spooky season and what would you put inside?

If you like idea of making a RIPped canvas for Halloween don’t forget to pin it for later.

Sharing is caring

Oh, and if you’re looking for some of the things we used, we’ve got you covered. Disclosure: Clicking on the links below, means we may receive a commission from Amazon. But don’t worry it won’t come out of your pocket, and it helps us make more amazing crafts to share with you 😉

Canvas and Paints

For the decorations

And if you prefer to buy rather than DIY, perhaps these beauties will appeal.

And as always, wishing you a wonderful, crafty week filled with lots of love. Thank you for popping in for a visit.