Canvas material is most commonly associated with artists painting beautiful masterpieces to display in galleries or in stately homes, work that sells for millions and always attracts the best attention.

However you don’t need to be a trained artist to produce a brilliant masterpiece on canvas. In fact you don’t even need to be able to paint, draw or even have any artistic ability at all. You can create your own canvas art simply by using your own photos. By printing your photos to canvas you can create your own canvas art, which looks just like real artwork, printed on canvas and ready to display in your home.

Any photo can be printed on canvas, it doesn’t matter about the source or even the quality, as the canvas material lends a special magic to any picture, making it look like artwork.

Indeed you don’t even need to be an expert photographer, as when you take a photo it can be cropped and resized to make sure that the composition is perfect for the artwork.

As the credit crunch takes hold many people are finding it difficult to make ends meet with Christmas approaching. Indeed the high street has just reported it’s worth month for years as consumers are wary of spending before Christmas.

However Christmas doesn’t have to be expensive, nor does it have to be impersonal to the extent that the usual presents have to be sent. Rather than buying DVDs, CDs and Video Games for Christmas, why not buy something much more personal, that will last much longer, and is fairly cheap in comparison to most electrical items found on the high street?

Why not give a canvas print of a favourite photograph as a gift this Christmas? Pictures of your family or your children make for excellent, highly personalised gifts that grand parents are sure to enjoy. When you have a photo printed on canvas you’re creating original artwork out of your memories that will last much longer than photos printed on paper and framed. Canvas is a durable material that lasts for years, and looks like genuine art.

When you give a photo printed on canvas you’re giving something that will be treasured for a lifetime.

Technology these days potentially provides the consumer with an even wider range of artworks with which to decorate the home. Instead of having a flat and obvious fake of the Mona Lisa hanging on the sitting room wall, consumers are now able to digitally transfer old masters onto canvas. They can thus create the illusion of a gallery of work which visitors can stroll past admiringly en route from the kitchen to the front door.

Other rooms can be festooned with less formal pictures according to taste. Lavish watercolours presenting windows to another world; still life studies of tables weighted down with gloriously coloured fruits and foods; children building sandcastles at the beach; and wispy young women, can create a theme within a dining room, a bedroom, or even a bathroom or loo.

Canvas printing is also becoming very popular with artists. Many do not wish to continually place original artworks in exhibitions because of high insurance costs and fear of theft. A canvas print also means that a popular study can be sold many times. And for those aficionados who like to patronise local artists, where canvas prints are available, there no longer lies the fear of embarrassment where a simple ‘how much’ will result in red faced disappointment. A canvas print of an original artwork can often be purchased for a few hundred pounds where the original may cost many thousands.

Generally canvas is regarded as a medium for paintings, such as oil paintings or acrylic paintings. They’d be of beautiful scenes or portraits, but now with printing technology as advanced as it has become, canvas can be used to print photos. The question is, what sort of photos can you print on canvas?

The answer is pretty much any photo can be printed on canvas. It doesn’t have to be a portrait photo or a picture of a scenic landscape. You can print all sorts of photos on canvas. For example, some types of pictures to print on canvas are:

Holiday photos
Pictures you’ve taken on your holiday make great canvas prints. They can be of you and your spouse on the beach, in a restaurant or relaxing by the swimming pool.

Photos of children
Your children always make great subjects for photos, and turning the photos into canvas prints is the best way of showing them off. You can display them on the wall and make a great piece of art out of them.

What better gift to give than that of a treasured memory? And what better way to keep memories alive than by photographs?

The digital camera is undoubtedly one of the best inventions of the 21st century. For most people it’s near impossible to go anywhere without one. Whether it’s the ecstatic look on a child’s face when he shoots and scores in his first football match or the breathtaking view of the sun setting over Lake Windermere. How amazing, that at a click of a button, a moment in time can be captured and treasured forever.

These memories could be stored on a PC, in a photo album or in a traditional photo frame. But then they could be printed on canvas and turned into an original work of art.

It seems no modern home is complete these days without a canvas or two, usually of a pretty flower or woodland scene to match the curtains. A personal image printed on canvas, adds a more personal, unique touch to the home, sparking memories whenever it is viewed. The first kiss on a wedding day, a small child blowing out the candles at his third birthday party maybe the family dog swimming in the lake.

Another option is to go black and white and recreate the nostalgia of a bygone era.

An image of the hustle and bustle in a favourite city or the peaceful landscape of a beautiful beach. The possibilities are endless.

Whatever the choice, a photo on canvas will be one of a kind and will add a sentimental feeling to which ever room it’s displayed in.

No longer the singular domain of the artists’ brushstroke, stretched canvas now provides a strong statement in photographic display. The vibrancy of colour on a canvas print, and texture of the medium itself, can really enhance an image.

Whether as the finale to a room makeover, or simply adding new detail to an existing decor, hanging canvas prints can add a touch of luxury as a feature in any room or office in which they are showcased - becoming a real talking point, especially if it is a personally taken image.

Deciding on where to locate the canvas print is the first step to display. Larger prints often look at their best centred on a primary wall so that they catch the attention of visitors as they enter the room. Smaller prints work best in clusters of two or three traced in diagonals or lines. The strongest display height is at eye-level (otherwise known as Museum Hanging), which engages its audience and allows them to take in the art without working too hard.

To achieve a perfect hanging ultimately depends on where and how you would like your canvas print to be displayed.

When you get ready to place your picture hooks, it is important that you remember there will be a drop on the picture-wire once tension is applied - and this could significantly drop the canvas if not taken into account. Some people prefer to tighten the picture wire rather than measuring the distance of the tension drop, but this should not be a preferred method as the tighter the wire tension; the more likely the picture may be knocked off the wall, or become difficult in trying to hang straight. It is worth taking a little extra time to measure accurately and have someone to assist you while you test and measure the drop.

If you are placing your canvas print over furniture (i.e. a sofa), it would be advisable to keep the base of the picture at least 6inches above the furniture - even if this means taking the picture just above eye-level. Another good reason to measure the drop!

For panoramic images, cityscapes or landscape pictures it is fashionable to break these images into panels, Diptych (2 panel), Triptych (3 panel) and Quadtych (4 panel), can really add an alternative style to the display. When considering how to hang panelled images it is considered that a 4inch distance between each panel shows them off perfectly - but it is entirely dependent on personal tastes and space availability. With panelled canvas prints it is also crucial that the hanging drop is measured accurately to ensure level is maintained across the whole display.

Whatever your print, however big the canvas, you can make a real feature in your space by just considering these few tips.

When it comes to displaying your wedding photos, most people opt for the traditional wedding album. They’re usually well presented, nicely bound and come in a stylish box for you to treasure for the rest of your life. However, the one problem with wedding albums such as this is that you have to store it away out of site. You never see the photos held within, and these are supposed to be pictures of the happiest day of your life!

Far better than hiding your wedding photos away in a wedding album, only looking at them when friends and relatives come to call, is to have them on display for everyone to see, at all times when they are at your home. For this you should have your best wedding photos displayed on your wall.

You could of course have framed pictures from your special day, but a much better option is to have the photos printed on canvas and hung on your wall like works of art. Canvas prints bring the best out of your wedding pictures, and make the images of the best day in your life come alive, as only a canvas print can.

So much better than to hide your pictures away, display them on the wall, printed on canvas.

Canvas is the classic material of choice for painters, its usage dates back as far as the early fifteenth century, and was then spread by the success of the Renaissance artists and continues to the present day.

Of course, the precise nature of the material has evolved over the years, as have the methods of its preparation and the application of the paint, but the fundamental idea of stretching a heavy fabric between pieces of wood has remained unchanged for centuries due to its practicality and to the results that canvas makes it possible to achieve.

Strangely enough one of the few things that an abstract expressionist would have in common with his most illustrious figurative predecessors would be the surface on which he paints.

The latest development in the method of application to this surface, which would surely have amazed the Renaissance masters, is the printing of photographs to canvas. Photography itself of course has long surpassed the levels of realism that even the greatest of those early painters could have achieved but now it is possible for even the average person to render their own photos on to a canvas in a way that preserves the detail and colours while giving them the textured feel that one would expect from a personally commissioned painting.

Alternatively, with techniques available in modern photography, it is equally possible to create deliberately and strikingly unreal effects which can add a whole new twist to this ancient practice of displaying decorative art on canvas.

Digital photography is growing in interest every year. There are more people getting photos developed than ever. There are several options available; including printing onto merchandise such as mugs and plates. Another option is putting a photo on canvas. This gives a visual appeal that is not achieved from normal gloss or matte photographs. Canvas prints are suitable for wall-hanging and look professional.

The quality of canvas printing has risen to a high-standard. It is now straight-forward to transfer a photo to canvas. There are many companies who offer the service at a good value. As it is becoming increasingly popular the prices are competitive. This ensures that people are getting better deals as time progresses.

Some people would argue that the cost is still significant compared to standard photograph printing, but canvas printing is not suggested for mass photo printing. In contrast, canvas photo printing is more directed towards those with personally unique photographs. Obviously any picture can be transferred to a canvas. However the target clientèle is usually someone with a sentimental or special piece.

Canvas prints are recommended for people who have one or more particularly special photographs. They can come in a range of sizes and are perfect for displaying the photographs to other people. They are well suited in homes or businesses to give an increased visual charm.

When you’ve taken that special photo that you want to show off to everyone, whether it be of your children, your holiday, your pet or even of yourself, there are many different ways you give it the special treatment to make sure you present it in the best way possible.

The most common way is to blow it up to anything over a 10×8 size and have it framed. This a time honoured way of displaying your favourite photographs. Other ways include having greetings cards printed, printing it on mugs, t-shirts or even jigsaws; all of these simple little gifts can be done by most photo developers.

However the best and most regal way of displaying your best photographs is by printing your photos on canvas. This allows you to display your best pictures in your home as if they were works of art, which of course to you and your family they are; only of course they’re much cheaper than paying gallery prices for artwork!

Transforming your photos to canvas is a simple and quick process that enables you to show off your best pictures in the best way possible, plus it’s a far more interesting method than simply framing them.