Christmas Tree Canvas Art using Buttons
Hello Crafty Friends! It’s day 3 of my annual series “12 Days of Holiday Crafts” and today I am sharing a canvas art project perfect to display for the holiday season. This cute Christmas tree canvas art uses festive buttons to decorate the tree and a snowy scene.
You can create this canvas art by hand-stitching the buttons into place, or by using glue. I love hand-sewing so I enjoyed hand-stitching each button on. But if you don’t love hand-sewing, or are doing this project with younger children, using glue is a great alternative!
Choosing the buttons for this craft is one of the best parts! I decided to use a mix of buttons from my stash as well as new buttons I purchased from the store, like the cute candy cane buttons and the star button. Some of the buttons I used were vintage from my grandmother’s sewing tin like the sweet red bow button and red leaf button.
While I decided to keep my button ornaments red and white, you can mix it up and create a colorful tree with ornaments of all colors or choose a color scheme that best matches your decor. If you have a large collection of random buttons, this is a great way to display your favorites!
DIY Christmas Canvas Button Art
Supplies Needed:
- Free Christmas Tree pattern – Grab the free file by filling out the purple form at the end of this post.
- 12″ x 16″ Stretched Canvas – I found mine at Joann Fabrics but these on Amazon are similar.
- Blue and white acrylic paint – I used DecoArt Baby Blue and DecoArt White
- Galaxy Glitter paint in Clear Ice Comet
- Green felt – I used Kunin brand stiffened felt in Kelly Green
- Brown fabric or felt scrap (about 1.5″ x 3″)
- Buttons – I used buttons from stash and purchased these buttons from Joann Fabrics:
- Wooden Candy Cane Buttons
- Black and Red Check Buttons
- Valentine Heart Buttons
- Wooden Snowflake Buttons
- Yellow Star Button
- You can also purchase holiday themed button sets on Amazon or use colorful buttons from your stash!
- Fabric glue
- Embroidery floss for attaching buttons
Painting the Canvas
Step One: Give the canvas a wintery scene by painting a blue sky and white snow. To make my snow sparkly, I went over the white acrylic paint with a layer of Galaxy Glitter paint. Let the canvas dry.
Decorating the Tree
Step Two: Cut a large tree from green felt and a small piece of brown felt or fabric for the trunk. Use my free template from my Resource Library or cut your own tree that fits the canvas you are using.
Step Three: Next, decorate the tree with buttons. If you are hand-sewing the buttons to the felt tree, do this before gluing the tree down. Arrange your buttons on the tree. Once you are happy with the arrangement, mark where the buttons should go using a thin Sharpie marker. *Tip: Snap a photo of your tree so you know which buttons go where!
Hand-sew the buttons on using embroidery floss.
Creating the Snowy Scene
Step Four: Add snowflake buttons and white buttons to the sky around the tree. I laid my felt tree on the the canvas and marked where I wanted to add my snow buttons with a pencil. You could glue the tree down first. I decided to glue my tree down after, since I was worried my thread would get caught on all the ornament buttons as I stitched.
Step Five: Finally, glue the felt tree and trunk to the canvas. If you are gluing the buttons on rather than hand-sewing them, you can glue the felt tree and trunk down first, then glue both the ornament and snowflake buttons on.
The Christmas tree button art is finished! It turned out so sweet and was a fun project to whip up! I hope to do mini versions of this craft with my kids since they were having so much fun helping me pick out buttons to use.
I will be back tomorrow for day #4 of my crafting series! In the meantime, check out my other Christmas craft tutorials for more fun projects you can make this holiday season!
Get the Free Christmas Tree Pattern!
Fill out the purple form below with your first name and email address! The free file will be sent straight to your inbox! If you have already filled out the form below, don’t worry – you won’t be added to my list twice! This freebie is for personal use only. I hope you enjoy crafting something special. Please let me know if you have any questions :)