Hand Painted Mini Canvas Christmas Ornaments

Lots and lots of popular crafts right now include hand painting things. The most common medium is watercolor paints. While I have it on my to-do list to learn watercolors I just haven’t had the time… yet. But I love the hand-painted rage going on and wanted to get in on it. So I hand-painted some mini canvases to be cute little ornaments.

Hand Painted Mini Canvas Christmas Ornaments

Now I purchased a 4 pack of small canvases and I dreamed up 4 simple and easy-to-copy ideas for each of my ornaments. Just so you know I’m not much of an artist at all but I really try 🙂 I swear these really are simple and if you need a boost of confidence a few practice drawings on scrap paper will sort you straight out!

Items Needed for Painted Canvas Christmas Ornaments

• Mini canvases
• Paints
• Pipe cleaners (ribbon or string would also work)
• Hot glue gun

How to Make Painted Canvas Christmas Ornaments

I’m more confident drawing than painting and since I didn’t want these to take as long as a true masterpiece would (without true masterpiece results!) I decided to use oil paint markers instead of craft acrylics and brushes. Which you choose is totally a personal preference.

First up, Santa’s belt. Draw a yellow rectangle in the middle of your canvas and a larger rectangle around that. Fill in and you’ve got your belt buckle.

Fill in the center of the buckle with black and draw the strap of the belt on either side, running over the sides of the canvas.

Fill in above and below with red paint.

Finish off by tracing the buckle and writing Ho! Ho! Ho!

Draw an egg shape with a smaller egg shape below. This is a penguin and the outer shape is his body and the inner his belly!

Draw a yellow cone shape for the nose and draw two white eyes with a black dot in each. Fill in the rest of the outer egg shape. Embellish with a bow tie, hair bows or you can even glue on items. I love this idea but it just came to me so I drew my bowtie on!

Fill in the blank area with blue.

Draw simple snowflakes on the background. I actually have a really detailed tutorial here that might help you to draw snowflakes.

Now for my favorite, the snowman! Draw a large circle and inside around the middle an orange carrot shape. Make black dots for eyes and a mouth. Draw the shoulders/second ball of snow just beneath and give a few coal dots for buttons.

Fill in the background with solid green. And check out my process here. While I’m showing you each step for each painting in a row I actually had to flit around as the paint dried 🙂

Finish with yellow dots for the background. And if you’re wondering, I need to go to the store for peanuts, chicken, rice, and a freezer 🙂

Last, but not least, we have tangled up Christmas lights. Because tangled up lights are as much a part of Christmas as Santa Claus himself 🙂

Draw a “bulb” shape and fill it in. It doesn’t have to be perfect, by the by!

Draw the socket out of black by making a 3 shape on the right and a backward 3 shape on the left. Fill in.

Place your bulbs however you please.

Fill in the background with purple (FYI my purple paint marker sucked and this is like 4 uneven and awful coats – womp, womp!) Add highlights of lighter colors like pink on red, white on yellow, etc., and trace the outside of each bulb.

Draw winding and curling wires between the bulbs running over the edges of the canvas!

Cut a pipe cleaner in half and hot glue to the back to act as a hanger.

The string of lights is a lot of fun and it’s my favorite idea. Unfortunately, that mottled purple background is hacking me off and knocking it from my favorite ornament made here. But it’s still super fun!

The snowflake background here is definitely my fave but…

As much as I didn’t really like the concept, but felt it would be simple enough to execute, the snowman is surprisingly my favorite! By lots and lots and lots!

Hanging on my little lime green tinsel tree they are lots of fun and the perfect size. Because they are handmade they’d make lovely little gifts and they’d also be a great project to get the littles in on!