Blogmas | Annual Holiday DIY Project

Hello!

I love being able to do something creative around the holidays.

It’s become a bit of a tradition to do ornaments and now that I have been exploring the dot painting world, it has really opened a bunch of ideas in my mind and it’s fun to share them with my loved ones and of course blog about them. My only regret is that not every person will get one in the mail.

Sidenote: For the past month, I’ve had three bouts of stomach flu or whatever – I no longer believe it was stomach flu, but I’m also terrified to go down that road to find out what is exactly going on with my gut. Anyways, since I was down and out for several weeks, I was even more scared to do anything constructive because it would always come back to bite in the ass–literally! I know, TMI but you gotta laugh, right?

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What you will need for this project:

• Unfinished wooden ornaments – depending on which product you choose, sometimes you will be given string, multicolored beads, paint markers
• Acrylic paint – I used two different brands of paint: Bunny Barn and DecoArt
• 3 Paintbrushes – a large, medium and smaller brush
• Palette container
• Damp and dry wash cloth
• Cup of water
• Dotting tools

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Last Christmas, I went back to the brand I used in my 2021 ornaments because they had two different collections, and I swore I had saved the others in one of the folders, but I guess I didn’t, which really bugged me in late October, so when I went looking for these characters days later, I had hoped I didn’t purchase the same designs! The ones I did find though, they had trees, bells, and snowflakes, but I really liked the others in the batch that I choose to overlook them and do my best to make every single ornament unique and I hope you (and their owners!) enjoy what I was able to do this time around.

The first day I only went in with eight characters and their base coats – for at least three of the ornaments were only painted in one color: the stars, snowflakes and hearts. Technically, the silver bells are only color, but they have a layer of glitter on top of them. I’d just like to point out the glitter wasn’t my idea; this was an addition made by my mother! For a woman who has panicked everytime I have paint out, she went all in with the glitter, I was actually very proud of her! Honestly, I didn’t know what I exactly wanted to do for these three and I went back and forth more on the hearts, but I do think keeping them as they are, is just as festive!

Once I had finished painting those guys, I moved onto the next few as i tried to do four at a time, but that really depended on the colors I still had available on my palette, so I did the baubles, snowmen, and angels, as they didn’t require much in the first layer. The snowmen were fairly simple as I just went to paint most of it in white and added the black on the arms, face and top hat. I had the thought of putting a neon orange nose of them but I figured all hell would break loose if I did so they went without their standard carrot nose. I just realized I didn’t even give them a scarf either. Oops!

The baubles were another easy-going ornament for me as I just used a color called “pure blue” and it is beautiful! I was tempted to use it everywhere but that was also part of the problem with it, since the shade was so vibrant, it was somewhat difficult for my mom to remove on the brushes, skin, …floor. It’s the same blue that reminds me of that scene in Harriet the Spy where her classmates “accidentally” pour a jug of blue paint on her. The last scene of her frantically scrubbing it off, is exactly how my mom had to remove it as well! Back to the baubles though, after they had dried, I grabbed my rustic gold and painted the section where you thread the string on top of it and it actually makes it look really good! I was worried I’d regret my decision there because when it dries, it tends to soak into the surface and instead of becoming lighter as acrylic paint normally does, it can look dark, but thankfully, the blue stands out just enough to balance out that dullness it can have at the end of the day.

This photo was taken before the wings of the angels (and the trees were decorated!) were taken.

The angel. I was somewhat thrilled to have a small stack of heavenly angels as a part of my holiday project. I was conflicted though because I wanted to keep them with a simple design, but also make them to be individuals as well; in the end I went with the latter as it just seemed better to go in this route in case, I got a little overzealous with making sure every angel was different from the other. So, they all received a sky-blue gown, white wings and light-yellow face/halo.

Next, I went to the reindeer, stocking, trees, and despite doing the Christmas trees last year, I was thoroughly excited to be a little more creative–sickness be damned at this point!

Anyways, I started with my trees, and I managed to remember the precise shade I had for my original tree project back in 2020, and it had a bluesy green color and I thought it made the trees more winter-y, which is what I really wanted to showcase a natural look with some decorations here and there. Every tree had the standard blue-green coat, brown trunk and yellow/red on top for the star. When I finished with the basic things, I moved on to create their overall look with yellow, red and blue dots everywhere; some trees had a design I enjoyed creating last Christmas and I definitely went for it on some of them, while the others have a couple or few smaller dots that make them seem cute and meek at the same time.

As for the reindeer, I knew they would appear this year, but since I thought, I was going to have that other collection, I figured I’d only have to focus my attention on the face of the reindeer themselves, whereas with the batch I ended up with, were made with the whole body intact, I was a little nervous on how to make them “believable” if that makes sense. Although I will admit, I did create a little Rudolph face on the bells last Christmas as an added bonus to the mix, and I absolutely loved that idea, but I was concerned on whether I’d feel comfortable making a harness over the chest and front legs like they were all a part and ready to carry Santa’s sleigh through the night sky. I didn’t use a pencil outline for any of my initial designs for when I started on the dot process, I just went with my gut and I’m happy to say it actually worked out in the end of the day.

To round off this cluster of ornaments, we have the innocent stocking. My mindset going into this one was to basically copy what my actual stocking looks like, it’s a ruby red with white topper or ruffle, I don’t really know what that part of the sock/stocking would be, but then again, I’ve never had to care of the correct term. Anywho, when I went into painting, I used this beautiful red shade that definitely captured the same color that of red-hot cinnamon candies, but that damn topper was difficult. My mom had thought of using the silver glitter again, and at one point I had agreed with it, but then I changed my mind when I suddenly found myself with two stockings with bright blue… Honestly, I don’t regret it. It’s really pretty! The other two were never painted actually painted; if I had the confidence to do it, they were going to have a textured fur look in that area but again, I still loved how they turned out too!

Here’s something funny for you, now that I’m officially done with these ornaments and they should be getting to their rightful places soon, I’ve already decided on what I’m doing next year. If I can find a bunch of them, my plain is to do gingerbread men and women. As much as I enjoy the variety packs, only having one character may be easier on me as I can just give my heart to my design process. What do you think about this idea?

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Do you have any special Christmas crafts you do for or with your family? For those who do not have anything, but have your own ideas though, what is it? Share with me in the comments!

DIY: The Dotted Sea Turtle

Hello!

Since we are only (as far as I know!) going once to visit with family, I managed to kill two birds with one stone. and I created some DIY birthday projects. You’ve already seen my nana’s present, so it is officially time to unleash the dotted sea turtle I did for my aunt and uncle!

This is how the sea turtle came in the packaging; I mentioned in my last post that I was thoroughly surprised that both canvases came together as I don’t believe they were made by the same brand or company. On the left of the photo, there is a peek of this wooden square that they were laying on while in the thin box. We thought it was a strange addition, but we believe it was brought in to make sure the cutouts weren’t damaged in the mail. I will probably use it as a safeguard for my future projects.

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What you will need:

• Canvas – You can search for various types of turtles, but my aunt specifically adores sea turtles, and this was the only one I enjoyed on my hunt.
• Acrylic paint – I used DecoArt bottles of gold, navy blue, green, and purple.
• Dotting tools – You can use various household appliances that have a flat surface, but if you’d like to get your own “professional” tools, they are available at Wal-Mart, Amazon and Etsy.
• Pencil with a good eraser
• Ruler
• Damp towels or baby wipes

LINKS:

Sea Turtle Wooden Cutout Style 3 | Dotting tools | Paints: Spun Gold, Navy Blue, Leaf Green, and Regal Purple

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Originally, I wanted the sea turtle to be somewhat similar to the pig canvas, so that it wouldn’t be such a difficult process to paint, but I couldn’t find any cutouts of medium sized turtles to fit my vision, so I had my mom help me find another and we agreed on this one. Honestly, the perk of this design was the ridges on the sides, they allowed me to have a better understanding of how big the shell itself would be to the turtle’s face and fins.

I wanted for the turtle to be lifelike but with a mystic flair to him. I actually had two ways I saw this guy in my mind; the first was the turtle mentioned on the film Finding Nemo. I wanted to create him with bits of yellow and brown to make him look the part, but I also wanted to add some shimmer like in “The Rainbow Fish” books without taking it too far. My mother won’t allow me to have any glitter inside the house–much less my room–because of the weird impulse to create a mess! It’s a fair trade as long as I can continue to do more projects in my room! Anyways, I decided to add both green and purple to draw out a bit of color to him to make him unique to other turtles out there.

To start, I needed to map out the shell, and I used both a regular pencil and a standard sized ruler to make sure everything was even on all sides, and I made the lines across the edges of where the shell would cover on each fin and made an even longer line so I could have enough space on his head. Once I was sure of each section, I moved on to figure out how I wanted to design the shell. I was really torn with how I wanted this dude to look, so I needed to see if I wanted to include separate areas like normal turtles have on their shells. They tend to have individual spots all around the outer edges and have a larger section in the middle and this can be on the top and bottom of their shell. So, I made three tiny circles with the ruler going horizontally and by the end, I even had my dad impressed with my little hack!

After I got everything planned out, I began to add the first stage of the dots.

I decided to go with the “bottom” layer first with my medium sized tool in the color blue and instead of using my light-yellow shade like I was going to use; I went with my new gold paint. Something you should consider while purchasing some acrylic paints, they tend to dry lighter than their original hue, so, even though the gold looks nice and shiny when it’s wet, the sheen kind of faded as it dried on the surface, so you might want to consider looking into a metallic gold just in case you end up hating the final result. Personally, I loved the color and I thought it worked really well with the surface of the wood. I only went around the outer part once – I debated whether or not I wanted to continue to the circle I created in the middle of the shell, and I ended up using a smaller dotting tool to cover the middle of the shell in gold.

After I finished the gold part of the shell, I decided to move on with the navy blue. A part of me wanted to add a small group of dots along the face and fins but I didn’t know how it would turn out with the dullness of the gold, I did put some gold in certain areas but for the most part kept it only for the shell itself. Anyways, when I started adding more colors, my initial thought process went right out of the window, and I began to experiment with the larger tools, they are thicker in width, I have some difficulty gripping them, so I tend to back away from them, but for this I wanted to have some fun and gave the turtle fairly obnoxious spots all over his back and even went so far as added them to the rest of him….

When you’re doing these types of projects, accept your impulses because they’re going to win at some point.

If I had any space left over, I just covered it with the green so that it looked like he had algae on him as real sea turtles can have a mixture of algae and barnacles all over their bodies! I didn’t intend for the purple to reflect the barnacles; it was actually a personally choice. My aunt and uncle love the color purple and it stands as an important hue for them so that’s actually my reason for using it but hey, if they want to include that little bit of knowledge to their guests, they can!

When I was finally done with it, I began to think of names for him. It was to come up with nana’s pig because I couldn’t get it out of my mind–my mom was pretty sold on “Hattie” it was the middle name that we couldn’t agree on! However, I decided to play a little game on my aunt and uncle, since they sort of knew about nana’s gift, I sent a message to them on Facebook, basically explaining I was working on another story, and I needed a name for my main character. This actually worked out better for me because they did not realize what they were doing until we brought it out for them.

I was inspired by a lot of pop culture like Pokémon and The Big Bang Theory with Squirtle and Sheldon, but I also remembered about the Galapagos tortoises, which made me think of Alex Trebeck and his love of the Galapagos Islands, so I made sure to pick out some names that were given to some different types of turtles that are (and were) located on the vast islands, like Rothschild, Duncan, and Fernand. They ultimately went with Nitro, as it is the name of one of their cars!

Well, that’s it!

I know this post wasn’t a proper “How-To” but it wasn’t that kind of project. If it had came in the same design like the pig, it would have been, because there were a lot of lines involved with it. For this, I was able to do whatever I wanted to do with it, and I think that’s the reason why I wasn’t so hard on myself for creating those huge dots on the shell, I was able to free-foot it, get it? If you ever get a canvas like this, I think you should look at it as your sign to be even more creative with everything.

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What did you think of my DIY project of “Nitro”? What other designs and/or shapes do you think I should consider doing next?

Blogmas: Wooden + Dots Ornaments

Hello!

As you may have noticed, and I still don’t know what happened because I had plans, but we didn’t put out any pumpkins this fall. My sister did, she decorated her entire front porch with various sizes of pumpkins, but we did not. I found it very surreal, because that’s my favorite thing to do in September and October is paint pumpkins. After that, I think my body was like, “okay, we need to find an alternative fast!” because this project came out of nowhere, but it ended up becoming a new favorite of mine.

In mid-October, I started looking for birthday gifts that weren’t books (I know it’s shocking!) and I found these wooden shapes and I sort of fell in love with them and then I found ones that were Christmas related and then all hell broke loose in my brain!

In the last year and a half, I’ve been watching a lot of reels and regular videos on YouTube of dot art. I still don’t remember what inspired the find in general, but I’m forever glad it came into my life. I used it in my 3 projects last Christmas. It was only a simple red dot here and there with a Q-Tip but it was still a new thing for me and I loved it. I have been working on it throughout 2021 and I finally felt comfortable enough to use the technique in my new project: the Christmas ornaments!

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What you will need for this DIY:

• Wood cut outs – it’s important for them to be “unfinished”
• Acrylic paints
• Paintbrushes
• Dotting tools
• Damp washcloth
• Paint palette or paper plate(s)

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Before we get too into this part of the post, I wanted to show you how the ornaments came in the mail.

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They were perfectly stuffed into this cute Santa Claus box. I was originally going to get the 160 pieces but I’m glad I switched to the 40 pieces because I would still be painting right now! Anyways, they were four traditional Christmas characters: a snowflake, bell, tree and baubles. You get 10 in each stack, so you have multiple designs you’d like to trade off, you are welcome to do it evenly. If you would like to purchase this set or the others, click here for the Amazon page. You also get clusters of string for each of the ornaments, plus a small bag of metallic beads, but I did not use them.

Raining Dots

I started with the Christmas trees, and I copied the same color scheme I did with my last project, so I mixed my green with a tiny bit of blue and I love how they all came out. After finishing all 10 trees with their base coats, I moved on to the trunk and I poured a small amount of brown into my palette, and I used one layer of paint for that part. I am a lover of DecoArt acrylic paints, (thanks to Lydia May on YouTube!) I usually don’t need more than two coats depending on the shade, and I was very happy with my color choices this time around, including the yellow!

Once everyone was in the process of drying, I switched my attention on my design ideas for a few of my baubles. I knew I wanted to create a series of animals, but I’m not really good at it so I went looking on Pinterest and found a great step-by-step guide of the Fox for my friend Brittany. She was the one who really inspired this part in the first place. I continued to search for guides of the Cow and Pig, but I wasn’t able to find anything, so they were basically all free-foot sketches. After that, I stopped for the day, and came right back to it the next day.

A couple of weeks ago, I was finally able to add another selection of dotting tools. I have the smaller sizes, and I’ve been using them for about a year now and they are very nice for me to grip my toes around and make my dots, but the others are various sizes and I have been wanting to get them for a while now because I wanted to try my foot at the larger dots. I am having issues how to grip them, but I expected that to happen. I knew I wasn’t going to go all out with my designs (honestly, I had the phrase, “less is more” in my mind the whole time!) and I tried to keep it that way.

When I came back to my trees, I was ready to decorate everybody, and I used two colors: yellow and a light gray (I mixed my gray with a tiny bit of white!) and I painted the stars with those colors and would switch the yellow star with silver garland. I was smart with this; I drew out a zig-zag design on most of them and would follow the lines with my dotting tool and I really loved it! Some look like traditional Christmas trees, but there are five of them with the “walking technique” which is coating your desired tool with paint and dotting down the canvas, I love this so much I did it to my Bonsai pot in the spring! My parents saw the final tree with this design, and they love it. Honestly, everyone I’ve shared it to, has expressed the same thoughts too!

So, here are how the trees turned out.

There Goes Rudolph!

The second (or third) shape were the bells. I wasn’t impressed with the bells at all, they were very boring even without paint on them…

My thinking behind them was the golden bells you normally see on pictures, but I could not get the yellow to turn to a pretty gold and I tried like three different times and was only successful after finishing with them. I was so mad at that point, but I moved on though. Since I had 10 of these bells, I was influenced by a fragment of a carol “with silver bells ringing” I kept hearing while doing the base colors and I created the silver hue again for the rest of my bells and I thought they looked so adorable!

I left to dry overnight and I was really worried about how boring they looked, so that night I thought about adding a reindeer face on it and in my dreams they looked so cute and I was over the moon when I started sketching out how I wanted the antlers to go, but once I started doing my dots I got a little worried because the design started to look a little bit like a pair of balls and by my second bell, I became terrified at what was appearing but thankfully my mom thought they were great, especially after I put the eyes and big red nose at the end.

The reindeer/bells are definitely my favorite, even with the cock and balls antlers, they still look amazing! I did a good job on them and that’s something I rarely do when it comes to painting, is enjoy what I am creating, and lately it’s been so fulfilling to believe in my artwork for the first time.

Let It…

For the third ornament, we have snowflakes.

I think both the trees and snowflakes were the easiest to do because they required a small set of skill. You can free hand your designs to make things simple and they would still end up being very beautiful. When I began on the snowflakes though, I thought I would be able to play with my various sizes of tools, but I rarely got away from the blue tool, which is a little bit bigger than the purple tool. I basically treated the flakes like the trees when it came to their designs and used the walking technique quite a bit throughout the process.

And like the trees, I kept my color scheme pretty limited, I only used white for the base and used two different blues, but my favorite shade was the bright, neon like because it reminded me of the Frozen films. I’ll be honest, I had Queen Elsa and Princess Anna (and of course, Olaf too!) in my head all while I was working on these and I’m glad I did because it got me out of my head, and I allowed myself to make mistakes with them because I mean every snowflake is one of a kind so I just left them the way they were… well, some of them! There were 3 that definitely had to be fixed but after I was done, I basically pushed them as far away as possible, so I wasn’t able to add more dots!

The Cast of Characters

Lastly, the bauble balls were my least favorite because I knew what I wanted to do with a few of them and it scared the living daylights out of me! I got through in one piece thank God, but not without psyching myself out in the first round.

So, like I explained above while I was waiting for my trees to dry, I got started on figuring out what I wanted for three of my baubles, the rest was pretty much left until I did the base coats. I treated the baubles like the bells, as I split them up as they were painted in traditional Christmas colors: green and red. I was so worried the red would be too dark for my animal baubles, but thankfully they design held up great against the paint, and I was still able see every part.

My biggest worry now was, do I have a brush that was small enough to paint the character without creating a big mess around it, and I was thoroughly surprised as I found a tiny brush that was not only perfect for the designs, but it quickly became a favorite of mine because it allowed me to gain back some of the control as far as what I wanted to bring into each animal. I didn’t stop using my dotting tools though as I had made the eyes and noses with a small tool, and they turned out as adorable as my Rudolph/reindeers in the end.

When I was done with them, I was fairly tempted to leave the rest of the baubles plain, but I thought they looked too boring for that, and I started experimenting and I made array of different ones but I did one that spells the word “Woof” for a family friend, they have a Pittie and they recently got a Beagle puppy so as my mom told me, “it fits” for them, and then I surprised myself again but creating two baubles in a Ugly Christmas Sweater design and I’m still upset I did just do that with the rest but it was just a beautiful disaster that I need to remember for next Christmas!

Bring Me the Rainbow

My final bauble is very special because it is my nephew’s. Nolan has become obsessed with the moon and rainbows, and since I already got him a Moon phase garland for his room, I figured I needed to bring out his love for the rainbow too, so I reserved a bauble ornament for him. I don’t know why I didn’t do this with my nana’s ornament since she too is obsessed with the rainbow! Oh well, I will make a note of this for next year!

I was thrilled to do this for Nolan but I was also terrified too because I had to use the ruler to create a series of lines for each color, and honestly, this was a doozy! I was having a hard time making six, somewhat equal, lines for each dot and it was a hard task at first but once I got it all figured out, I poured out my paint on my palette and got to work on the actual dots.

This media has also become a favorite of my nephew too. He currently had two or three CDs I’ve made in the last year or so, the first one he just took home and the others I gave him because he kept holding onto them. I think in the new year, I will try to teach him how to do it so he can be excited about his own creations too! Anyways, I used my pink tool, which is the middle size and honestly, it was actually perfect for this design. I was going to use the tiny brush again to remove the empty spaces in between the dots but I stopped myself from doing it and messing the entire ornament up. Nolan was very excited to get his ornament. I don’t think he understood at first why I had given him a different design compared to his mommy’s pink reindeer, but I know he will cherish it nonetheless!

It is strange when a small thought that can appear in the middle of a sleepless night, can grow into such a huge project and yet bring so much good to a slice of the world. Homemade gifts are good for the soul. I give kudos to anyone who has a small business and fix up orders every day, because that is no small feat! As I told my nana the other day, now that I am done painting and the cards were shipped out and people are receiving their ornaments, I still feel like I need to be doing something, and I really hope it was finishing this post.

I really hope you have enjoyed reading my process with this project. It was fun while it lasted, and now I can relax for the rest of this break. If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a lovely time with your family, friends and/or pets. For anyone else, have a wonderful weekend!