It is a fair question, and it comes up often enough that it is worth answering properly rather than optimistically. The short version: selling on a canvas you painted yourself is generally straightforward, but the artwork printed on it belongs to somebody, and the money is smaller than most people expect.
Here is what is actually involved.
The copyright question
This is the part most articles on this subject get wrong, including an earlier version of this one, so it is worth being careful.
When you buy a paint by numbers kit you own that physical object. You can hang it, give it away, or sell that particular canvas on — the same way you can sell a book or a print you bought. What you do not own is the image.
The design on a paint by numbers canvas is a reproduction of an existing painting, and that painting is under copyright, usually held by the artist or their licensor. Ledgebay's kits, for instance, are made under license from working artists — Kim Norlien, the Hautman Brothers, Judy Buswell and others — who are paid for the use of their work. The copyright stays with them. Other manufacturers vary, and some use artwork whose rights are considerably less clear.
In practice that means there is a real difference between:
- Selling one canvas you finished. Ordinarily uncontroversial — you are selling a physical object you own.
- Reproducing the image. Making prints, cards or digital copies of your finished painting is a different thing entirely, and it is the artist's right, not yours.
- Running it as a business. Buying kits in quantity, painting them and selling the results commercially puts you in territory where the kit's terms of sale and the underlying license actually matter.
We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. If you are planning anything beyond selling the occasional finished canvas, read the terms that came with the kit and get proper advice before you commit to it. The Copyright Alliance has a readable primer on how copyright works if you want the background.
Say what it is
Whatever else you do, describe it accurately. A listing should say it was painted from a paint by numbers kit, and name the kit if you can.
This is partly a fairness point — a buyer looking at a landscape has a right to know whether they are buying an original composition or a hand-painted kit — and partly self-protection. A buyer who works out afterwards that it came from a kit will ask for their money back, and on most platforms they will get it. Buyers who know what they are getting and want it anyway are a real market. Buyers who feel misled are a problem.
What it is realistically worth
This is where the honest answer differs most from the encouraging one.
A finished kit canvas typically sells for somewhere between the price of the kit and modestly above it. Against that you have the kit itself, any framing, packaging, postage, and the platform's fees, which run to a meaningful share of the sale price. What is left over is rarely much, and it does not price in your time — and these take ten to twenty hours.
Do the arithmetic before you build plans on it. As a way of recovering some of the cost of a hobby you would do anyway, it works. As a side income measured in hourly terms, it does not.
Two things genuinely do improve the price: framing, and a subject with specific appeal. A generic landscape competes with every other generic landscape on the platform. A local landmark, a regional scene, or a subject with a following will sell faster and for more.
Where people sell them
Etsy and eBay carry most of this trade, and a look at either will show you what finished kit canvases are actually going for, which is the most useful research you can do. Local craft fairs and community markets often do better than online listings, because the buyer can see the canvas in person and postage is not eating the margin.
Note that some marketplaces have rules about handmade versus manufactured items, and a painted kit sits awkwardly between the two. Check the category rules before you list.
Preparing a canvas for sale
- Be sure it is finished. Set it somewhere well lit and leave it a few days. Missed sections and thin patches show up on a second look in different light, and they will show up in a photograph.
- Cover the numbers properly. Any printed number still visible through a pale color is the first thing a buyer will notice. Pale colors usually need a second coat.
- Tidy the edges. On an unframed canvas, paint the border in a plain black or white, or frame it. Framing costs money but it is the single change that most affects what someone will pay.
- Varnish it. A varnish protects the surface and evens out the patchy sheen where some colors dried glossier than others. Let the paint cure for several days first — our guide to sealing a finished acrylic painting covers the order to do it in.
- Photograph it in daylight. Indirect natural light, canvas flat or square-on, no flash. Most listings that fail, fail on the photograph rather than the painting. Include a close-up showing the brushwork and one showing the edges.
- Give the details. Dimensions, that it is acrylic on canvas, whether it is framed, and that it was painted from a kit.
Some alternatives worth considering
Most people who ask this question are really asking what to do with a stack of finished canvases, and selling is only one answer.
Gifting them tends to be more rewarding than selling them, and a hand-painted canvas of something a person cares about is a genuinely good present. Local businesses, cafes, libraries and care homes will often take donated artwork for their walls. And our customer gallery is somewhere to put a finished piece where other people will see it.
If what you want is to sell original work rather than kit work, the closest thing is to start from your own source material. A custom paint by numbers canvas made from your own photograph is your image to begin with, which removes the copyright question entirely — and it makes for a far more saleable commission, because it is of something specific rather than something generic.
In short
Yes, people sell finished paint by numbers canvases, and yes, you can. Describe them honestly, do not reproduce the image, check the terms if you intend to do it at any scale, and go in expecting to recover some hobby costs rather than to earn a wage.
You can see the Ledgebay designs in the shop, and if you want the finished canvas to look its best before it is photographed, these finishing habits make the most difference.
