Hello friends, I hope this finds you well! We've been keeping busy while stuck indoors painting all the walls in our house. Of course, I can't just stop there and have been doing a little redecorating in each room too. We started with the grandkid's sleepover room and I'll be sharing that makeover soon. The longest wall in the room was looking a little barren and I didn't have any artwork to fill the void. So I did the next best thing and made this fun light bulb art canvas and I'll show you how further down in the post.

Fun Kids Room Light Bulb Canvas Art Canvas

In case you missed it earlier this week, I also made this fun turquoise and grey buffalo check canvas to hang on the wall beside it.

Thankfully several weeks ago when shopping for new bedding for the room, I picked up a couple of 23.6" x 31.5" x 1.5" stretched canvas' for a good price at our local JYSK store.

I've had a fun light bulb stencil (not an affiliate link) that I've been itching to use for a couple of years now. The original plan when ordering it was to make a chalkboard. I may still do that for the kid's playroom at their house. But I had so much fun using it here on this canvas craft instead.


But for the quotes on the canvas, I made DIY stencils with my Cricut Maker and I'll give you the specs for those further down in the post too.

Here's how I made the light bulb canvas

This post contains affiliate links so you can see what products I used or recommend for this project. As an Amazon Associate, I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.

Painting the canvas

I began by painting the canvas with two coats of the color Mined Coal (PPU 18-18) Behr Ultra Satin latex paint, the same color we painted the new bed and the back of the bookcase in this room (coming soon).

Stenciling the light bulb onto the canvas

I prefer using painters tape rather than stencil adhesive, only because I don't like the sticky residue left on the stencils. The colors I used to stencil the light bulb are Turquoise Waters multi-surface paint, Bright Yellow satin acrylic craft paint, and Light Yellow satin acrylic craft paint.


After the bright yellow paint was dry I pounced my round stencil brush with the light yellow color in a curved half-moon shape on one side of the bulb. It adds a little dimension and makes it look like the light bulb is on.

Making a vinyl graphic with Cricut Maker

With my Cricut Maker, I cut the bright graphic in glossy black permanent vinyl and added it to the inside of the painted light bulb. In Cricut Design Space I clicked the images icon and searched "bright" for a readymade graphic. I pasted this cute subscriber download into my project, resized it to 8.032 wide to fit inside the light bulb, and cut the vinyl.

DIY stencils with Cricut Maker

The plan was to cut the words shine and little ones with white permanent vinyl but I didn't have any on hand. Instead, I made my own stencils with stencil vinyl and my Cricut Maker Machine.


Now, this is where I would normally provide a free SVG file for you to use but the truth is that I'm still learning the ropes of how to use my Cricut Maker and haven't figured out how to save my projects in SVG format. One day soon I'll set aside some time to figure this out because we just finished the makeover in my home office. Now that I have a designated Cricut zone, I'll be using my machine far more often. Look for that room makeover soon on the blog.

Also, I couldn't figure out how to have the entire quote in one Design Space Project and set to cut both the color vinyl and the stencil vinyl separately. I know there is a way to do this and it's probably simple but instead, I made the color vinyl part and the stencil vinyl part in separate design space projects. I truly need to take a Cricut Maker course.

So my apologies for not providing a handy free SVG download of the stencil BUT I've included the specs for each below so you can recreate it for yourself. If you're a Cricut Maker pro, I sure could use your guidance on how to do the above.

Specs for curved SHINE stencil:

Font: Cricut Sans
Font Size: 182.28
Letter Space: 3.8
Line Space: 1.2
Curve Diameter: 15:515
Font Size: W 11.486  H 4.161

Specs for LITTLE ONES stencil:

Designed at 18" long but arranged on cutting board in two separate lines (I hope this makes sense).
Font: Cricut Sans
Font Size: 212.13
Letter Space: 1
Line Space: 1.2
Font Size: W 8.703  H 2.96

Once I had the stencils cut and weeded, I used a straight edge to line them up on the canvas. The quotes were stenciled with a foam stencil brush in a pouncing motion with white acrylic craft paint.

A budget-friendly option for the DIY stencil

Instead of expensive stencil vinyl (I got mine on sale), a budget-friendly option is making the DIY stencils with dollar store contact paper.

A quicker option for the canvas art quote

If you want the quickest and easiest option for making this canvas art, instead of making and stenciling the quote onto the canvas, cut the word with color permanent vinyl with either a Cricut Maker or Silhouette machine.


Here are some other DIY wall decor ideas I thought you might like. If you have any questions about this stenciled canvas art, please leave them in the comment section below or the Contact Me tab at the top. I love hearing from you!

If you enjoyed this light bulb canvas art idea, I'd be so thankful if you shared it with a friend and pinned it to your DIY Wall Art board on Pinterest.


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