Painting Christmas Cards

As a devotee of  YouTube and learning new stuff, I became intrigued with watercolour painting about a month ago. A couple of my friends are quite accomplished art students and, although I didn't want to commit to any formal classes, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

I have never taken an art class in my life. Basic stick people are all I've ever drawn. But I became inspired by Emma Jane Lefebvre's channel and then Ellen Crimi Trent's. It motivated me to acquire some supplies and start painting. Amazon and our local art supply store, Curry's, provided the majority of my paints, brushes, and paper.

As my friends know, I like to do everything quickly so small-scale paintings on Christmas cards seemed to be very achievable. I found card stock and envelopes in my stash. Perfect! I could glue my little masterpieces to the card stock! Jeanette loaned me a bunch of card-making supplies. I used a couple of stamps.

I'm pretty pleased with how my paintings turned out. Yes, I know it's a three-legged sheep but that is what the artist created. Let's call her 'YARDley' because she only has 3 feet. (nyuk nyuk, nyuk)

This one had 4 legs, so there!

I added a little 'bling' with my HotFix tool. I did get the missing 'jewel' glue back onto the pot before sending this card out.

Curry's had these cool 4" x 6" pads of cold pressed watercolour paper that made sizing my paintings very easy. This guy makes me happy.

A roll of washi tape outlined the borders. I tried masking fluid on this snowflake. It's a latex resist that peels off once the painting is done. Kinda like drawing wax on a Ukrainian Easter egg.

I couldn't find any white acrylic craft paint in my stash so I actually had to buy some so I could flick 'snowflakes'. I also invested in a white gel pen to draw radiating beams. This snowy house goes along with my 'hygge' theme this year.

I do not have a very steady hand but still liked the effects of the different snowflake designs. A pet peeve is when people draw 8-pointed snowflakes but everyone knows they have 6 points (or multiples thereof)! 

I continue to practise painting fine lines with the very tip of my round brushes.  These little pieces are not fine art but I'm certainly having a lot of fun creating them. Most of these only took a few minutes to make.

I customarily haven't mailed Christmas cards out in several years - except perhaps to some folks who don't use email. This year, I will be handing some out to friends I get to see before the holidays and will mail some to special people. Of course, enclosed in the cards sent to folks that don't live locally and keep up with the everyday shenanigans of Skip and myself, will be our annual newsletter. We didn't do a whole heck of a lot this year, compared to our pre-COVID activities, but did somehow find lots of ways to keep ourselves occupied and entertained.