trees

Hand Painted Wood Ornaments

A while back I bought a box of little wood slices with the intention of painting them all with little landscapes and giving them as gifts. If I could get enough of them painted before Black Friday, I was considering selling them to hopefully make a few bucks before Christmas. It was mid November before I painted any, so yeah, I think I’ll have to buy another box and try again for next year.

Instead of stressing over getting a bunch of ornaments painted and shipped before Black Friday, I prepped all of them with Watercolor Ground and had the kids who joined us for Thanksgiving paint them. Ages ranged from 4 to 18 and they went to town making some really awesome ornaments. I brought Tombow markers, some inexpensive acrylic paint, and a set of iridescent watercolor that was on sale. I was so proud that they all had fun and spent a good amount of time painting their ornaments on Thanksgiving. It was a great activity for them to all do together that wasn’t a video game.

Watercolor Ground is a painting medium that can be painted onto porous surfaces to allow them to be painted with watercolor or gouache paint. I applied two coats to each of the wood slices and it allowed the wood to behave a little like watercolor paper. It’s not nearly as absorbant and you do get some bleeding or weirdness from the grain of the wood, but it’s overall a much easier surface to paint on than if I’d just painted on raw wood.

Of course I had to paint one wood piece to see how it would turn out and made this little painting of Half Dome from Yosemite National Park. I LOVED how it turned out. The medium doesn’t behave exactly like watercolor paper, but it’s close enough to make for some fun little paintings. On this one I used a combination of watercolor, gouache, and water-based brush pens. I made a TikTok video showing this process that you can see here.

Painted Wood Ornaments

I had so much fun with that first ornament that I had to make another one… or a couple more.

Joshua Tree Nat'l Park Painted Ornament

This time I tried for an epic sunset at Joshua Tree National Park. With the sunset I tried harder to get more of the look of a watercolor wash. The paint doesn’t blend quite as well as it does on paper, but I was happy with what I was able to achieve. Then I used gouache and brush pens for the trees and foreground. What a fun and unique park to explore! Here’s is the TikTok video I made of the process.

Hand-painted Ornament Green Parrots

The next one I did was a Christmas gift for my son’s 2nd grade teacher. She has two parrots and my son had the genius idea to paint her beautiful birds onto one of these ornaments. He sent her an email asking which breeds they are (Blue Fronted Amazon and Solomon Island Eclectus) and she sent him a few photos. I was more than happy to paint them onto the little piece of wood and he wrote his name on the back. You can view the TikTok video here.

Babylon Arch Painted Ornament

The next ornament I made for my sister of Babylon Arch. She and I hiked to this beautiful arch in southern Utah last year while we were both on a women’s retreat. It’s such a magical place with beautiful views of the Virgin River and gorgeous Navajo sandstone. For this ornament I used gouache for the whole thing. It’s been fun to re-remember how to use gouache, get the right consistency, and how to layer to get the affect I want. Here you can view the TikTok video.

Coyote Gulch Ornament

For the last ornament I made this year, I made this scene from Coyote Gulch for my friend Michelle. She and I, along with another rad woman, backpacked to Coyote Gulch this past spring. I wrote a long blog post about it earlier this year. The third night of our trip, we camped under this alcove and it was such an epic camping spot. Here’s the TikTok showing this ornament’s progress.

Making these ornaments has been such a joy this fall that I'm planning to order more wood slices and then spend the spring and summer next year painting a stock of them that I will sell online and locally. I am hoping to get into some local arts and crafts fairs and festivals next year selling prints and stickers, so maybe I can sell some of these ornaments there too.

What are some epic locations you’d like to see painted on an ornament?





Hike it Baby Artist Series Stickers

I started doing design work for Hike it Baby a little more than a year ago, and it’s been SO much fun to create whatever I can for them.

Every year they host hiking challenges that encourage families to get outside with their kids. Up until 2018, they had quarterly challenges in January, April, September, and November, and the goal is to hike 30 miles in 30 days or spend 30 minutes outside three times each week. Participants can log their miles or time on the Hike it Baby website, they’re entered into drawings to win awesome prizes from sponsors, and they get to join in a Facebook group solely for participants of each challenge where we share photos from our hikes and encourage each other to keep getting outside. We get to see some pretty epic photos from hikes in the Rockies, the Appalachians, the Oregon coast, the mountains in Alaska, and even some great hikes in Japan. It’s an inspiring group to be a part of for those 30 days.

Everyone who registers for a Hike it Baby 30 challenge also gets a sticker to commemorate. In the past stickers have always been a solid color with a fun little graphic. The color and design is different each challenge and participants love to collect them. I had the privilege of designing two of them from 2017; the brown sticker with the foxes and the navy blue sticker with the buck and fawn.

For 2018, the folks at Hike it Baby decided to up the ante on the Hike it Baby 30 stickers and they asked me to do a landscape watercolor painting for the four challenges; each representing the season and a different landscape in the Hike it Baby world.

I was so pleased with how these turned out in sticker form.

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January Challenge - still one of my favorites!

April Challenge

April Challenge

September Challenge

September Challenge

November Challenge

November Challenge

Three of these designs made for great t-shirt designs too.

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More than a few people have joked that we can’t possibly go back to the older style anymore, so we’re brainstorming ideas for 2019. We shall see how it turns out!