Christmas

24 Little Vintage Ornaments.

| mynameisdayna

I decided to do hand painted Christmas cards this year and I am so happy with them!

Hand painted Christmas cards.

It started out when I went to buy Christmas cards and I could not find any that I liked. So I went into my stash of vintage cards and copied of one of them and then painted over the bows with gold paint because they needed a little something extra. Then I was imagining telling people that I did a little hand painting on my cards, and how they might then be expecting actual hand painted cards, so in the end I just did paintings on them. I used the insides from the vintage card copies and just replaced the outer image with watercolour paper and little paintings of my vintage glass ornaments. I set up a mini still life on my desk to do them since I don’t have my tree up yet. Which, I did not realize until I was done, meant that I did not get all the tree light reflections in the ornaments–they are just straight up ornaments. Oh well, another day, another day…

Desk still life.

I took photos of all the little ornament paintings, but now I wish I had taken photos of each of them as full cards, because the inner card page really finishes them off nicely, but they have all been mailed off.

But anyway, here are all the cover paintings in the order that I painted them.

All the finished cards.

Like Mother Like Daughter.

| mynameisdayna

My favourite time of the year is here! I had these pretty Christmas bows out to take some product photos for our store and my daughter promptly pilfered them to add to her many purses. I had taken them back from her twice already when I looked at them and realized how beautiful they were. If I were to start carrying an odd assortment of my favourite things in my purse, as she does, I would consider carrying this blue bow around. Maybe she’s onto something; why don’t I carry fun stuff around in my purse anymore? I mean aside from my Doctor Who sonic screwdriver…oh wait! She’s just like me! Haha!

Watercolour Wednesday — Blue and silver Christmas ornaments…for New Years!

| mynameisdayna

I did not get anything done since last week—it was a very busy Christmas as usual, and I was sick for the last half of it. It looks like today will be a recovery day before going back to work tomorrow. It was a good thing I had this watercolour that I did as a back-up for my friend (who asked me to do the tree and ornament paintings from last week) in case she didn’t like any of the other three (yes, I worry and over-think EVERYTHING). It turns out that she did like the first ones (just like she said she did) so now I have an extra pretty ornament painting :)

And since it looks like this may be my last post for 2011 HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Watercolour Wednesday — Blue Christmas Ornaments, Christmas Tree.

| mynameisdayna

I’ve done something else that I said I would never do — a commission! One of my friends asked me to do a painting with a blue Christmas ornament and a  tree branch. I stressed and fretted and did three paintings and was not initially happy with any of them until a couple of days later when I decided that I loved all of them…(with the possible exception of the second one I did…which is pictured below right).

.

And it’s not even Watercolour Wednesday. I guess that kind of makes me a Watercolour Artist. Hmmm…

| mynameisdayna
Photo of my backyard, Dec. 11, 2011.

I woke up this morning to a whole whack of snow—gorgeous! Perfect for putting me in a Christmas mood. It was my downtown studio day so I decided to take some tree ornaments with me to paint.

I’m on a total watercolour kick. It’s not even “Watercolour Wednesday”, but I’ve already got my post done for Wednesday so this is an extra one for this week. I remember when I was in high school my mom told me that I had a knack for watercolour and should do more of it. I also remember being a snob about it and saying that I had no intention of being a Watercolour Artist.

I took some progression photos of this one just because it’s kind of neat to see. And a fun detail: can you see the reflection of me in the blue and pink ornaments? Too fun.

Living room with Tree, 3pm.

| mynameisdayna

I had an incredibly productive day on Tuesday and decided to start my painting for this week’s post. I worked on it during my daughter’s hour of “quiet-time” (formerly known as nap-time) over 3 days. And for once it was actually sunny 3 days in a row! My daughter was very excited when she came out from her quiet-time and saw it. She started listing off everything I had painted in third person: “Mommy paint the bushy tree, mommy paint the T.V., mommy paint the rocking chair.” Then she went to look at the living room and came back quite perturbed, demanding, “Mommy paint the couch.” It’s true, the couch should be in the very front, but there just wasn’t room. You would only see the top of it as a long brown stripe at the bottom of the painting. The composition is pretty tight and not as in “excellent.” My daughter is becoming quite the art critic.