I did this painting in early December. It is a 24″x 24″ stretched canvas painted with acrylic paint. I decided to keep this for myself. I keep my snowmen/Winter decorations out all Winter. I haven’t turned the lights on since Christmas though. My closest hobby store is Hobby Lobby and I was looking for mini white lights, that were battery operated. I bought some but they were a little longer then I would have liked. I was envisioning very small lights. I know they are out there but I haven’t found them yet.
What I did to add the lights was use my X-Acto knife and carefully poked a hole through the canvas. Make sure you don’t go to deep because when you put the light through, it will go through to far. I recommend just until it get to the plastic part of the light. My light set was a 20 ct. Make sure to place the holes in a random position but spread them out to equally fill the space.
Problems with this project: These lights took 4 batteries and didn’t last long. I used Duct tape to hold the wires down. I don’t think this worked the best. A better way is to put a backing, such as foam board, on the back of the canvas to hide the wires but have access to be able to turn the lights on and off.
I also added a glitter paint to this painting to add another visual element. If you live around snow, you know that it can “twinkle” in the correct lighting. This is just a small bottle of DecoArt, champagne glitter. This takes much longer to dry then regular acrylic paint.
I had a lot of great responses to this painting so I did three smaller version on 10×20 canvases.
I hope adding lights to your painting doesn’t frighten you. It can be hard to actually cut your canvas. Lights can be used on paintings for stars or a word. Sky’s the limit.
Jill R Holland Designs 