Celebrate season with winter artwork

I’m constantly rescuing catalogs from our family’s recycling bin. My husband hardly glances at their covers before he buries them under Diet Pepsi cans and stacks of newspaper.

I’m not a shopaholic – far from it. I keep them around because catalogs are chock full of inspiration for my crafty to-do list.

I’m one of those “stingy” people who sees a neat product for sale and proclaims, “I could make that.”

So when the holiday catalog for West Elm, a modern home furnishings company, arrived in the mail last month, I immediately began planning a project inspired by something on page 25. Hanging on a wall behind a couch that’s for sale is a very large, very simple snowflake image on a brown canvas.

My husband and I are going for a clean-lined look in our new (old) house.

Frou frou accessories have their place, but they look ridiculous in our unfussy home, like a girl wearing a prom dress to a spaghetti feed.

West Elm’s snowflake art isn’t for sale. Please enjoy these directions for a big, bold way to celebrate the season.

Your shopping list

Determine the size of the piece you want to create and purchase the appropriate size stretcher strips at a craft store. Stretcher strips normally are used to build a frame onto which canvas is stretched to create a painting surface. But instead of canvas, you’ll be stretching fabric, and instead of painting, you’ll be cutting and pasting.

The stretcher strips slide together using a tongue and groove design and a few whacks with a hammer locks them into place.

The stretcher strips used in the project pictured here were 30 inches wide and 36 inches tall. Since I created three pieces, I needed six strips of each length.

Now, purchase a background fabric that’s woven tightly enough that it won’t become sheer once it’s stretched. The blue fabric here is a T-shirt-like knit.

Next, buy the fabric you’ll use for the images. It needs to be something that won’t fray on the edges when it’s cut, such as fleece or felt. I used a thick white fleece so the blue knit wouldn’t show through.

Putting it together

Once you’ve built your frames with the stretcher strips, cut the background fabric so it’s a couple inches larger than the frames all the way around and staple it on. Pull the fabric evenly so you don’t have any ripples.

You need to decide what images to use for your art now. I surfed the Web for clip art, coloring books and cookie cutters and settled on a snowflake (from www.sandscripts.com) and a mitten and a dove (from www.coppergifts.com). Print out or photocopy the images you choose.

Now it’s time to draw the images on your fleece or felt. There are several different ways you can approach this:

If you’re talented enough, draw them freehand.

If the size of your canvas isn’t huge, you could enlarge your image on a photocopy machine until it’s big enough for your needs, cut it out, then trace it on the fabric.

I traced the images onto transparency sheets and placed the transparencies on an overhead projector. I pinned my white fleece to a wall, projected the images onto the fabric, then traced along the lines.

Now cut out the images. Use sharp scissors and work in a fluid motion so your lines are clean.

Finally, brush some fabric glue onto the backs of the images, center them on your background fabric and press down.

Alternatives

The possibilities for this project are endless. You could make a different set for every season (bunnies and flowers in the spring, sunshine in the summer and leaves in the fall, perhaps). Or you could create different themes for a child’s bedroom, such as zoo animals, ocean creatures or sports images. Just browse a cookie cutter company’s Web site for inspiration.