This is the third one of this design that I have made. The first one I created was for myself. I wanted something special to hang in my dining room.
[Read more…]Family is Everything Large Wood Sign
Our Family Hand Painted Portraits Wood Slice
Oh em gee….. like really. Sometimes I surprise myself. I attempt things often and get frustrated and think why do I bother. But that doesn’t stop me from trying again. I wanted to try my hand at painting some family portraits. I have seen some of these online before so I wanted to give this style a try.
First I sketched out what I wanted on the wood and the placement of everything. Then I had to go in with my super tiny paint brush and fill in the shapes with the different colors.
[Read more…]Christmas Hand Painted Wood Ornaments
Here are some more Christmas Hand Painted Wood Ornaments I painted this past December. I sure had a lot of fun creating some new ornaments.
Little Gnome Wood Ornaments
So I wanted to create a custom ornament for my aunt. I asked her what she would like. She asked if I could paint my gnomes on the ornament. What a great idea I thought! Of course I was gonna give that a try. These Gnome Wood Ornaments turned out super cute!!
[Read more…]Hand Painted Snowmen Wood Ornaments
Last year was my first year making any ornaments. The most popular ones by far were my snowmen. I brought them back this year as well. Here are some of the ones I created this year.
I love adding the little scarfs and the snowflakes. Once I add the snowflakes it really ties the whole look in. Love them!
Painting Horses
Painting people or animals is really hard for me. I’m a self taught artist and I’ve always struggled. I had a request asking if I could paint a horse. I himmed and hawed over it and figured I might as well try.
Custom Hand Painted House Wood Ornaments
Whoa…
Sometimes in life you don’t think you can do things so you don’t even try. Being older now one of the things I like to do is TRY. So when I was asked if I could paint real life houses on tiny little ornaments you know what I did? Yup… I tried!
I didn’t have the right size I needed for a nice ornament for the house paintings. I only had 2″ slices and really needed the 3-4″ ones. So before I went out and purchase them I drew a circle on some scrap wood so I could see if I could paint them. Above is how my first attempt turned out. I sent the picture, and to my surprise they loved it. That was the go ahead to make a bunch of custom home paintings.
As you can see… I had my work cut out for me! The biggest challenge was finding the wood slices I wanted and then painting these all in a short time frame to be done in time for Christmas. I got to say I do like a challenge.
I start off with painting the slices a dark color for the night sky and then I sketch out the houses I need to paint after looking at the images sent to me. These were all new homes that were purchased recently and being given as gifts for Christmas. How exciting.
My biggest challenge that came up after I bought the wood slices was cracking. I wanted birch wood slices, but they are hard to find. Especially in December. I found some at Michael’s I wanted and had my husband pick me up all they had on his lunch break, as well as a log that you could slice so we could make more. Unfortunately, the log when cut had more cracks in many. So we went an hour away to find more at another Michael’s store. Then in the end I ended up having to purchase a different wood online, and many of those came broke as well. Talk about a pain, right?!
I truly enjoyed creating the homes. I ended up making 22 custom hand painted 3-4″ wood ornaments in 7 days!
Here are a few of the homes with the pictures of the ornaments I painted to show you how they look!
Overall, I could not be happier with the turn out. I ended up painting these 22 custom home paintings on these tiny wood slices in a week, along with all the other custom orders, and I also painted an extra 6 home ornaments after this order. I’m very thankful for those who push me to create and proud of myself for trying!
Working on Sunflowers…
Sunflower art has become my utmost favorite to create. I love creating unique one of kind flowers every time I make one. Each piece starts off with me sketching out the flowers on to the wood. Then I trace over them with the paint. Often times I don’t trace exactly. I have more of a free flow kind of method. I tend to let go of the expectations of being perfectly shaped or symmetrical and go for the natural flowing and random shapes as you may find even in nature.
After I am done painting the flowers on to the wood and have them to my liking I need to go in with stain and fill in the spaces. I do the outside as well as the middles and other places I want to add dimension to.
Above are some of my latest signs. You can find many of these available in my Esty Shop online. Upon searching… I have not found many artists who have this same kind of technique for their signs.
If you look at some of my earlier work you can really see the difference in the sunflowers. I’ve graduated to a more flowing and free style with the petals, I think. Either way I’ve been enjoying every minute!