Easy Christmas paintings on canvas (DIY snowflake and pinecone art)

If you’re looking for an easy Christmas canvas painting idea that looks high-end but costs almost nothing, this DIY snowflake and pinecone canvas art is perfect. For this year’s holiday decorating, I wanted to create a couple of easy Christmas paintings on canvas using inexpensive engineering prints. And I filmed a full video tutorial to walk you through it.

Since I had added more pinecones and some German wooden snowflake cutouts to our natural German Christmas tree, I thought those two pieces of art were the perfect new additions to our fireplace this year. A small change without spending a ton of money.

Step-by-step instructions for Christmas canvas paintings

Here’s how to turn a simple engineering print into an easy Christmas canvas painting with a textured, hand-painted look.
This method also works for many styles of easy Christmas paintings on canvas, especially if you want the look of hand-painted holiday art without needing advanced skills.

Step 1: Photograph your pinecone or snowflake (or any other item you’d like)

Place your pinecone, wooden snowflake, or any decorative item on a white poster board outside in bright but indirect light (a cloudy day or shade works best). This prevents harsh shadows and gives you a crisp, clean image for printing. Snap your photo, crop it tightly, and save it at the highest resolution.

After that, you only have to crop the image before getting it printed at a place that offers engineering prints. As I mentioned above, I had mine printed at Staples.

If you don’t feel like photographing your own item: I’m offering my snowflake for a limited time for free as a downloadable file. This is my Christmas gift to you guys! Choose the “File” tab in your browser window and then scroll down to “Save As” to save the file to your computer.

Step 2: Print the photo as an engineering print

Take your image to Staples or another print shop that offers engineering prints.
These large-scale black-and-white prints cost only a few dollars and are perfect for creating affordable, high-impact wall art.

I printed mine at 24″×36″ and trimmed them down to fit my canvases.

Tip: Double-check the print before leaving the store—sometimes they accidentally resize it! It happened to me twice and was very frustrating since I didn’t notice the mistake until I got home.

Step 3: Prep the canvas

Before applying the engineering print, I added a layer of white acrylic paint and a hard-bristle brush to give the canvas some texture and make it look more like a real painting. Let the paint dry.

Step 4: Trim the engineering print to fit the canvas

Cut your engineering print to the size of the canvas. Don’t worry about being exact.

Step 5: Coat the canvas in Mod Podge

After that, it was time to cover the entire canvas in Mod Podge with the roller. Or you can use a brush as I did in the video tutorial.

Step 6: Apply the print to the canvas

Take the engineering print and place it on top of the canvas. Smooth it out with a brush and fingers. Apply another coat of Mod Podge with a big brush and fingers on top of the print. You can poke tiny holes into stubborn air bubbles to help with flattening the print.

Let it all dry.

Step 7: Add some more texture with paint

Some areas may end up imperfect or wrinkled, which is totally fine and actually adds great texture to the artwork.

Once everything was dry, I added acrylic paint to the image and the surrounding areas, as shown in my video tutorial. You don’t have to do this step, but I think it adds dimension and texture to the overall look of the Christmas canvas paintings. This helps to make them look more like actual paintings.

And voila, you have two textured pieces of art that look like real paintings.