DIY Holiday – Chrismas Carol Art

I have taken to decorating the little shelf over our front hall coat rack as a would-be mantle. It got decorated for Halloween, Thanksgiving and now its getting a little Christmas cheer. My local dollar store sells 12×16 stretched artist canvases for the low price of $2. They also sell $1 acrylic paint. I figured this was an excellent excuse to make some inexpensive holiday art.

The Coat Rack Mantle without any decoration

While singing Christmas carols at my desk one day (yep I’m one of those holiday spirit kinda people)  I decided that my art project should revolve around Christmas carols. I promptly went home and laid down some type in Illustrator of  the lyrics “Faithful friends who are dear to us, gather near to us once more”.  Hopefully our visiting friends and family will feel welcome this holiday season!

Type laid out in Adobe Illustrator

After I was happy with my type layout and font selection, I cut out the type using my Silhouette SD onto adhesive vinyl. If you don’t have a silhouette, you can pick up alphabet stickers from craft stores, or you can cut your own out of adhesive material. After my stickers were cut, I removed the excess vinyl (called weeding) and transferred my stickers using transfer paper (it’s sticky paper which pulls off the vinyl from their backing, then you place it where you want your stickers and apply using a credit card.)

Half the words adhered to the canvas

After my stickers were adhered I took a look and loved it just the way it was! I know, lazy me! If you want to do it right,  paint around the edges of the stickers with some white acrylic paint. You do this so that if any of the paint bleeds under the stickers, its white like the canvas so it wont be visible. After it dries,  coat the whole canvas in 2 coats of black, red or green paint.

After the paint dries, remove your stickers, and reveal the white canvas below. Or be lazy like me and just put stickers on canvas, then go drink some rum laced eggnog instead.

Where was I? Eggnog? Oops. Right. Project…

Then I placed it up on my mini mantle with a small artificial tree, candles, fresh greenery and a ceramic pear.


SOURCE LIST:

Materials:
12×16 Art Canvas
Adhesive Vinyl
White & Black Acrylic Paint
Eggnog for extra holiday cheer

Tools Used:
Silhouette SD
Paint Brush

Difficulty Level (on a scale of 1-5):

One out of five

Total Cost: $2 ($4 if you paint it)