Crafting Canada Day

On the occasion of Canada Day, create an original work of art that will bring colour to your environment. With help from artist and host Mathieu Fecteau and artist Loriane Thibodeau, discover a unique technique: the art of taut thread. A workshop for toddlers and adults alike!

To complete this art project, download the available patterns (PDF document) and watch the video for instructions and a list of materials needed.

Download Crafting Canada Day

Download the patterns for this activity [PDF version - 1.11 MB]

Video with audio description — Crafting Canada Day

Transcript with audio description

Transcript of “Crafting Canada Day” video with audio description

Length of video: 00:02:26

This video is narrated with audio description.

[Upbeat music plays. Two maple leaves are on a red fence background. The leaves have a brown wood grain. White text reads, “La fête du Canada — Canada Day.” Light flashes across the screen, and the image is replaced with a white man in a red shirt standing in a grassy backyard. He has short, dark hair and a beard. A tall white wooden fence is behind him. He smiles. A grey text box pops up with a red maple leaf beside it. It identifies him as “Mathieu Fecteau, Artist, Sculptor and Handyman.”]

Mathieu : [Translated from French] Hello, everybody. My name is Mathieu Fecteau and I am a sculptor and a tinkerer. We are really close to my workshop here in Saint-Léonard-de-Portneuf. As part of the Canada Day festivities, I invite you to create a little craft project to decorate your environment. It is for the little ones, but also for the older ones. For toddlers, there is a version especially for you.
To do the craft project we will take our inspiration from a work by my friend, Loriane Thibodeau.

[On the left side of the screen, a picture pops up of a white woman with a brown bob haircut and short bangs. She wears yellow-tinted sunglasses with wings extending off them, and she holds a toy excavator. On the right side of the screen, a photo shows a purple piece of wood shaped like a speech bubble. On it, is pink string made into the shape of a fire hydrant.]

I love this work. It is both very meticulous and very, very, funky. It is done with lots of little strings stretched between nails. It is called string art.

[Close-up photos show tiny nails studding the design. The string is intricately wound around the nails to shape the fire hydrant. The pictures disappear.]

It is a technique that was very popular in the 1970s, but is still used by artists today. I will show you how to do it.

[Mathieu sets out materials on a workbench.]

To create this art project, you will need a support made of solid wood, plywood or chipboard. You will also need paper, a pencil, scotch tape, a hammer, nails and string.
We are going to start by tracing our Canadian-themed drawing.

[Mathieu draws a maple leaf on a sheet of paper. He marks an X on each of its outer points.]
Here, of course: a maple leaf. If you lack inspiration, you can also use our models, whether it is the beaver, the moose, the moose head or the hockey puck.

[Mathieu sets down drawings of each of these suggested shapes. They’re all made of straight lines with no curves. Each drawing has X’s marking all of the places where 2 lines meet.]

We are going to stick our drawing to our wooden panel and fix a small nail to each end of the drawing.

[Mathieu tapes his drawing to a small wood board, then hammers nails into the X’s.]

Afterwards, we are going to wrap the string around each nail while making knots sporadically, so that the strings hold up well.

[Mathieu winds red string around the nails on the outline of the maple leaf.]

We are going to cut the ends of the knots and cover the entire surface of our drawing, like this.

[He ties off the string and cuts the extra bits off. He then randomly wraps it onto nails diagonal from each other, which fills the leaf with a criss-crossing pattern.]

Then we will be able to remove the paper to keep only the string, the nails and the board. We end up with a great art project.

[Mathieu rips out the paper in chunks until all that’s left is the string on the backboard. He moves it aside and sets out more materials.]

For the little ones, we will need a pencil, a piece of paper and a ruler. We are going to trace each one of the dots and connect them with the marker.

[Mathieu draws the outline of a beaver directly onto a block of wood with a red marker, using a ruler to keep his lines straight.]

Then we will connect each of the dots to the others with the marker and the ruler. It gives the same effect.

[He draws criss-crossing and intersecting lines from the different points on the beaver’s outline, making a geometric shape inside it just like with the maple leaf.]

Once the craft project is done, we can put it on our lawn on a small stake.

[A small wood stake is attached to the maple leaf’s backboard. Mathieu sticks it in his lawn.]

We can also put it on our front door…

[The backboard has a hook attached to it. Mathieu hangs it on his front door.]

... or on our gallery, that way our neighbours will see our beautiful craft project.

[A metal chain hangs down from the roof of Mathieu ’s porch. Standing on a ladder, he attaches it to the hook on the maple leaf’s backboard.]

[Mathieu stands in his yard again.]

I hope you enjoyed my art project. Do not hesitate to send us pictures of your beautiful creations. Happy Canada Day! And be creative!

[A light flashes across the screen, and the fence background from the beginning appears with the words, “La fête du Canada — Canada Day.” The screen fades to a black background with the Canada wordmark on it: the word "Canada" with a small Canadian flag waving over the final "a." The screen fades to black.]

Video — Crafting Canada Day

Transcript

Transcript of “Crafting Canada Day” video

Length of video: 00:02:26

Mathieu: [Translated from French] Hello, everybody. My name is Mathieu Fecteau and I am a sculptor and a tinkerer. We are really close to my workshop here in Saint-Léonard-de-Portneuf. As part of the Canada Day festivities, I invite you to create a little craft project to decorate your environment. It is for the little ones, but also for the older ones. For toddlers, there is a version especially for you.

To do the craft project we will take our inspiration from a work by my friend, Loriane Thibodeau.

I love this work. It is both very meticulous and very, very, funky. It is done with lots of little strings stretched between nails. It is called string art.

It is a technique that was very popular in the 1970s, but is still used by artists today. I will show you how to do it.

Here, of course: a maple leaf. If you lack inspiration, you can also use our models, whether it is the beaver, the moose, the moose head or the hockey puck.

We are going to stick our drawing to our wooden panel and fix a small nail to each end of the drawing.

Afterwards, we are going to wrap the string around each nail while making knots sporadically, so that the strings hold up well.

We are going to cut the ends of the knots and cover the entire surface of our drawing, like this.

Then we will be able to remove the paper to keep only the string, the nails and the board. We end up with a great art project.

For the little ones, we will need a pencil, a piece of paper and a ruler. We are going to trace each one of the dots and connect them with the marker.

Then we will connect each of the dots to the others with the marker and the ruler. It gives the same effect.

Once the craft project is done, we can put it on our lawn on a small stake.

We can also put it on our front door…

... that way our neighbours will see our beautiful craft project.

I hope you enjoyed my art project. Do not hesitate to send us pictures of your beautiful creations. Happy Canada Day! And be creative!