Happy Labor Day to everyone stateside! Hope something pleasant, fun, and relaxing is happening at your house today!
One of the projects we had on our list for Emma's room was make some sort of night light, but one that could look pretty during the day too. I had seen this image on pinterest (pinned to the inspiration board for Emma's room) and it inspired the idea we eventually came up with. (Via Apartment Therapy).
This was a very inexpensive and relatively simple project, here's how to do our version.
- A stretched canvas (we were lucky enough to get ours 40% off with a Joann's coupon).
- A string of lights (ours is a string of 100 white lights, which is a tad bit bright, use a smaller strand for dimmer light).
- Acrylic paint in various colors (we used cream for the ground, neon pink, orange, green, yellow, and blue for the flowers).
- Paintbrushes.
- Pencil
- An awl, screwdriver, or something to poke a hole through the canvas.
- Masking tape
- Optional: We glued some little round mirror pieces here and there to reflect the light and some sparkle during the day. I had these already, but think I bought them at Joann's in the floral section.
To Make:
1. We painted the canvas with 3 coats of the cream paint. Make sure the surface is fairly opaque, otherwise the cord may show through from behind.
2. Draw your pattern on the front with pencil, or just start painting. We did simple geometric flowers in neon colors. Keep in mind the amount of cord between each light on the strand (the lights we used were 1/2" apart), and that you'll need 1 hole for every light.
3. Poke a hole for each light in your pattern using an awl or screwdriver.
4. Starting at one side, working on the back of the canvas, begin poking your lights through the holes you made. It helped to tape the cord down as we worked across the canvas.
5. Plug it in and watch it twinkle! (We have Emma's on a timer, it comes on automatically every day at about 4:00, goes off around 10.
Its such pleasant light. I can imagine when our Seattle days start getting shorter that it will feel cozy to walk in and see this when she gets home from school.
You can see all of Emma's room redo and read an interview on how we tackled it over on Design Mom. I will be talking about some of the other projects we did in the coming days, so stay tuned.
