Christmas Decorate

Hand Painted Christmas Ornaments

Today I took down all of my fall decor.  We put on a Christmas album, I poured a glass of wine, and pulled out all of my decor tubs.  I pulled out the empty tubs to pack away my fall pumpkins. As I was packing away my pumpkins, my husband pulled out the Christmas tree and the all the Christmas decorations.

After I cleared some space in the living room, we started to put up the tree.  The holiday season feels official.  The tree is up!

About 6 weeks ago I posted about my 17 by the end of 17.  It is a list of 17 things I wanted to accomplish by the end of the year.  Item number 10 on my list was to paint Christmas ornaments.

MY INSPIRATION

The idea behind this item was that I wanted matte navy blue ornaments, but have not been able to find them anywhere.  My original plan was to take all of the ornaments that were discolored from age, because there always are at least a few, and paint them.  And then I found these:

The husband and I went to Micheal’s on Black Friday.  I needed to pick up stencils for my advent calendar.  As I was walking to the aisle to look at stencil options, I saw that they had 20 clear ornaments for about $5.  I decided to forego my original plan and to do something else entirely.

I have been so inspired by the beautiful ornaments painted by @tallulahfaire on Instagram.  The swirls of colors are just lovely.  I wanted to do something similar, but lack the talent to pull this off.  I know this to be true, because I tried.  It didn’t work.  That is okay, because I still ended up with beautiful, hand painted ornaments.

Source @tallulahfaire

THE PROCESS

Step 1: I gathered supplies.  This included paint brushes, paint, a mixing tray, and ornaments.

Step 2: Prep the ornaments.  I took the top off of each of the ornaments and set them aside.

Step 3: Mix paint.  I added paint on my mixing tray.

Step 4: Paint. I put each ornament onto the end of spare paint brushes and began layering paint onto the ornament.  This helped me to work on the ornament without touching the paint.

Step 5: All the ornaments to dry thoroughly.  Once painted, I put the ornament, still on the handle of a paint brush, into a glass to dry.  It looked like this:

I layered white, blue, pink, and gold to get beautiful, unique ornaments for our family tree.

My absolute favorite are the pink, magenta, and white ornaments. I loved this combination of colors so much that I painted 14 of them.

THE REVEAL

I am in love with the pink, magenta, and white ornaments.  That came out so pretty!