DIY Grinch String Art Decoration

Add some extra light to your holiday decor and make a lit Grinch, using string and LED lights.

Do you LOVE How The Grinch Stole Christmas? Such a great story. I’ve always been obsessed with that book and it’s awesome characters. So lately, I’ve been inspired by some great string art and have been thinking about Christmas decorations. So I thought an idea might be to utilize fairy lights as string art to put a bright twist to the craft popularized in the 60’s.

Also, if you haven’t seen them yet, I even have another Grinch Christmas decor tutorial, using cement and resin, which you can check out here.

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What Not To Do:

Don’t remove the printed paper from the plywood until you have strung the yarn. I removed it too soon and it took me twice as long.

DIY Difficulty Level | Easy

Materials For Making DIY Grinch String Art

• 1/2″ Plywood (less likely to warp than 1/4″) cut to 22 x 48″
• *220 grit sand paper
• Led fairy string lights-33ft
• 1″ Escutcheon pins or shade bracket nails (head should be 15 or 16 mm)
• Thick red yarn
• Tape
• Scissors
• Pencil
• Hammer
• * Power drill
• * 1/16″ bit
• * Printer

*Not shown in photo

The Grinch String Art With Lights Tutorial Steps

Step 1 | Prep The Plywood

Sand the edges of the plywood. Just make them smooth enough that you get splinters.

Step 2 | Print The DIY Grinch String Art Outline

Print out the Grinch using my free downloadable image, you can get it here. Depending on how your printer is set up, it may require 15 sheets of paper. When you click on the image, it will open as a PDF on another tab. Scroll down, you will see the image.

Step 3 | Layout The DIY Grinch String Art Artwork

Keep the sheets in order when they come off the printer and number them. Then lay them out on the plywood. Carefully tape the sheets together so that the outlines lines up. You can trim the edge of each top sheet that overlaps if you want to make it perfect, but’s it’s not necessary.

After taping the image together, use the frame I drew in the printable to help center the image on the plywood. You may need to trim the outside edges of the paper if it overlaps the plywood.

Step 4 | Hammer The Nails

Now follow the outlines and start hammering in the nails. Go deep enough that they don’t fall out, but they don’t need to be too deep. Mine were about 1/3 of the way in.

At the upper parts of the body, I was more detailed and I put quite a few nails close together. Use this image below as your guide on where to place the nails.

Step 5 | Drill The Hole For Threading The Grinch String Art Lights

Drill a hole for the lights and string at the bottom of the Grinch where his feet meet. Get it started by pulling the non-plugged end through the hole, then tape it to the paper to keep it in place, you’ll thread the lights later in Step 7.

**Please note, I had to adjust the way I did this, so in the following images the printed paper has been removed. Leave your paper attached, it will make it much easier.

Step 6 | String The Yarn, Then Lights

Next, start stringing the yarn. Tie the yarn to the nail at the middle of the feet, near where the lights are threaded through. Then work the yarn around the nails, don’t let the yarn overlap.

When you get to an area where you have to back track and it will overlap, just tie it off and trim the end, then start with a new piece. The eyes, nose and eyebrows are the trickiest to do so use the image above as your template, if you’d like.

You may notice, I ended up with a couple of random nails for some reason that didn’t seem to be in the right place, so I just didn’t wrap yarn around them and pulled them out afterward.

Now go ahead and string the lights.

Hint: Be judicious with the placement of the lights because there’s just enough strand length to complete the Grinch. You want to avoid overlaps as much as possible and unlike the yarn, you can’t cut the lights.

Step 7 | Remove The Paper

Gently remove the paper by pulling from the edge (I forgot to get a photo of this). This took a little bit of work where the nails were close together. Once all the paper is removed, just plug in your cheeky Grinch string art.

Let me know what you think!