DIY Lighted Christmas Art

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This Lighted Christmas Art came out so beautiful.  This is actually something Hubby and I created together.

I hope and pray you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. We had a great time! Both of the kiddos came home, which thrills me and Hubby! Our home becomes so lively and engaging.
I ate way too much delicious food, thank goodness for stretch jeans!

Oh! And did any of you go out Black Friday shopping? We did early Friday morning. Hubby and I refuse to go out on Thanksgiving. And you know what?! We were able to get just about everything on our list without all the craziness of when the stores opened.  Seriously, the stores were practically empty! It was great!!

Okay, now let’s talk about this very cool Lighted Christmas Art.

Here is a list of the items you will need to complete this project.

Canvas
Acrylic Paint
Favorite Paint Brush
Thin detail paint brush
Mini Light Set 20 Clear Bulbs
Chalk

You’ll want to make sure you protect your work surface.


What you’re going to notice here… is one we can be the best of slobs, as you will be able to tell by the plethora of crap everywhere…. and two, that our cabinets weren’t painted yet (If you want to see how awesome they look now, check them out HERE)…we actually made this last year and I didn’t have time to write about it. It's such a great piece of art, and I can not wait to unearth it from my Christmas stash!

So, as you can see, Hubs is getting ready to get started painting. When working with acrylics, you need to realize that the paint dries very fast on canvas. It helps to water down the paint, but it becomes more like a watercolor. You can layer the paint to increase the depth of the paint.


He starts with yellow and then uses a layer of orange. Make sure you paint the edges of your canvas, it looks a lot better!


Next, he flips the canvas around and ads a layer of blue then, black all the way to the end of the canvas. This is actually the sky.


Then, you’ll want to flip the canvas around again, to add mountains. It’s basically two bumps with a bit of shadowing. By using gray and white paint, you can see the details of each mountain.

I specifically wanted the mountains a certain height, because I wanted to put my nativity scene in front of it. Hubby added more yellow and a bit of red in the sunset part. It’s pretty easy to add touches to make it your own.


We wanted to add the ‘O Come Let Us Adore Him’ to the sky.

Print off the words with whatever font you like, rub the back of the paper with white chalk, then trace the letters onto the canvas. It works perfect!

Then I painted the tracings with white paint. Love, love, love the way it came out.


We wanted the stars to light up and shine. We poked a hole in the center of each star. Some holes are larger or smaller depending on the size of the star. For the Star of Bethlehem, Hubby rigged it so that an actual light poked through the canvas.  It really looks cool!
Here’s a close up photo.


I ended up having to paint the back of the canvas black as well, just where the lights were. If you don’t the lights will just illuminate the back and light won’t come through the holes.

Here’s what the back looks like. Hubby attached the cardboard to the edges to work as a guide for the lights. The one light that poked through needed a base to support it. It’s just taped on.


It was necessary to block off the entire lighted area, so that no light could escape, otherwise it just lights the back of the wall where you place your art. We used poster board and tape. Not quite sure why that hole is there… I’m thinking we needed to adjust the light that poked through.


It looks so beautiful with the nativity in front of it!


It's time to start decorating!!


Blessings!