Christmas Ornaments

Every year for Christmas I try to make something to hand out as gifts. I cannot remember exactly how long I have been doing this, but I only make about a dozen or so of specially-made, printed cards, or hand-painted wooden ornaments. This Christmas had two themes. One was a white cross with holly branches, leaves and red-glittered berries. A second ornament theme was a white snowflake on a field of blue with accents of white-gold glitter.

I managed to get a much earlier start this year, and got them all done 10 days before Christmas. Usually I am working on these until the last minute during the last couple of days before Christmas. Don’t ask me why, but for some reason the holiday season just doesn’t seem right without a little stress and pressure to complete these on time.

For this project I have a simple palette of colors using acrylic paint on a wooden cut-out found at a local hobby-craft store. I only used two different brushes. One is the simple flat-brush used to lay down the base color of the ornaments, and the other is a really fine round tip brush. This small brush allows me to paint the delicate lines necessary to illustrate the snowflakes and holly branches.