Christmas Canvas Art

During this time of year, I thought this might be a nice way to use up/recycle scraps of wrapping paper and holiday cards.  This is a variation on the ribbon canvas I made a few months ago.

For this craft, I just used the following:

• small canvas
• wrapping paper
• Christmas cards
• tape
• scissors

I used packing tape because it's stronger than regular tape
 (and I happen to be using it to mail something)!

Cut strips of wrapping paper (whatever width you want).  I folded the strips length-wise to create a clean edge.  Tape each end of the wrapping paper strip securely to the back of the canvas, as shown below.

I like the idea of taping the strips down because if you want to reuse the canvas, it's easy to remove.
If you want to make this more permanent, staple the strips down.

Once you've taped the strips of wrapping paper down, you're almost done!

Play around on how you would like to lay out the strips.
You can spread them out so you have some space between them or have them overlap as shown.

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Next, just get some Christmas cards and cut out some of the pictures to use on your canvas.

 Play around with laying out the different cut outs.  I like having them poke out of the strips.
Just tape or glue the cut outs to the canvas and you're done!

Ribbon Canvas

I have a lot of cute ribbon in my sewing box.  The only problem is that I never know what to do with them.  This little craft was a great way to use up some of my ribbon scraps. 

For this project I used the following: 

a small canvas (the one I used was 8" x 6")
stapler / staple gun
ribbon scraps (I also used ric rac)
some "little something extra "

The first thing I did was paint the canvas, but it could work with a white background.  Then choose your ribbon and start stapling.  Note - if you are using a regular stapler, you really need to slam it down, so that the staple will go straight into the wood.  This might take a couple of tries.



Staple one end of the ribbon to the frame

 I discovered that I didn't need to pre-measure the ribbon.  All I needed to do was stretch the ribbon to the other side of the canvas, staple it down, then trim the ribbon.



Stretch out the ribbon to the other side of the canvas, staple it down, then trim.

 Keep stapling the ribbon on the canvas until you're done.  However, once I was finished, I just felt it need a little something extra.

Almost done!

So I drew some little kids on card stock and had them peak out of the ribbon.  You could also cut out some small photos for the same effect.  You could keep changing out the pictures and use the canvas like a little memo board.