snowflake and pinecone DIY Christmas canvas paintings

A couple of years ago I made the pinecone artwork in shown in this post below. For this year I wanted to make a different similar piece and an actual video tutorial about how to make Christmas canvas paintings out of cheap engineering prints.

Since I had added more pinecones and some German wooden snowflake cutouts to our natural German Christmas tree, I thought, those two items were the perfect pieces to add to our fireplace this year just to switch it up a little without spending a ton of money.

DIY Christmas canvas paintings

Materials needed for Christmas canvas paintings

You can photograph your own items and I’m describing how I did mine below.
If you don’t feel like doing that then you can find my pinecone in my Etsy shop HERE and I’m offering my snowflake for a limited time for free as a downloadable file. This is my Christmas gift to you guys 😉 (go HERE and then chose the “File” tab in your browser window and then scroll down to “Save As” to save the file to your computer).
You could also use a darker wooden snowflake photo I have in my shop HERE.

• I had my snowflake and pinecone images printed at a local Staples as an engineering print for $6 at 24″x36″
• 24″ x 24″ canvas (or HERE) for snowflake and  24″x 36″ canvas for pinecone
• matte mod podge
• scissors (my favorite HERE)
• small roller and different sized brushes (I used a roller for the pinecone but only brushes for the snowflake as shown in the video tutorial)
• black, white, tan, beige and brown acrylic craft/artist’s paint (48 color set HERE or single colors HERE)

Step-by-step instructions for Christmas canvas paintings

I took the photos of the items by placing each on a white poster board outside with natural light and snapped my photo. Make sure it is filtered light that you get on a cloudy day or in the shade so you don’t get harsh shadows. 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. Always make sure that you double-check the print right away when you pick it up. The folks at Staples decided to resize my print twice and print it that way which ended up being very frustrating because I didn’t notice until I arrived home and was ready to start my project.

1. 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.

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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. Let it all dry.

Some areas were imperfect and wrinkled which is fine because it gives the artwork texture.

6. When the paint is 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 and makes them look more like an actual real paintings.

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

Photos of finished Christmas canvas paintings

Willy is the best little model and loves posing. I can’t get enough of taking photos of him.

I purchased the wood bead garland at Pottery Barn on clearance years ago but I came up with a wood bead garland DIY to make your own very similar one out of furniture feet or affordable wooden body massagers.

I recently used the snowflake canvas with my newly made gingerbread Christmas ornaments and love the look.

So you think this is something you can try as well? I think you can do it and it adds the perfect subtle holiday decor.

As always, I would love it if you’d share this post with your friends who might like this or on Pinterest. Thanks so much.

Tschüß