Ceramic Ornament Painting with Watercolor and Gouache

1. Introduction: Hello my friends and welcome back to class holiday edition. Now, while you may not be watching this in December, I am filming it in December, and I am at the tail end of this magical time of year, just about to wrap up, close the shop and spend this time with my family. But before I do, every year as I plan and prepare and eventually present my Christmas collection. The amount of inquiries that pour in from hobbyists, professional artist, and everything in-between all over the world pour into my inbox. They would like to know where do I source my ornaments from? How do I paint? What brushes do I use? Is it acrylic, watercolor, gouache, everything. Then how do I seal it and protect it and keep it safe throughout the year until last for generations. Well, I'm going to be divulging into all of those things today in this class with you. And I am so excited because the amount of enthusiasm and passion over these ornaments continues to blow my mind. And I know that it's something so many of you have longed to do, either for yourself professionally or just as a gift to people that you love. So in this beginner friendly class, and it is a beginners class, I won't be going in. I won't be covering necessarily the same exact style I use for my ornaments. We are going to cover so much of the foundation. I will be sharing where I source my ornaments from. I will be taking you through the supplies I use, including paints and brushes. And I will walk you through a varnish that I use and the entire process of how to do it. I hope you are as excited as I am because this is going to be a good one. I think it's a class you'll probably come back to again and again and be able to carry this education with you into future endeavors and projects. So as you will soon see, we have one style, but two different approaches that we're going to be learning today. And you'll see here I have two ceramic ornaments. One is a little bit darker, has a little bit more texture and drama while this one is a little bit lighter, looser and has both do have a gestural field. And so I'm going to walk you through both of these because, you know, just because I paid something one way doesn't mean that you're going to love painting it that way. So I want you to feel free and to know that there are so many different ways you can approach painting on ornaments and there is no one size fits all. So I will also walk you through the things that we will be needing prior to beginning this class, one of which is a ceramic ornament. This is an fired clay. If you are not able to procure a ceramic ornament, not a problem. In fact, we're going to be beginning our class with paint on paper. This is where we're going to gain confidence and experience before we head into the final class project portion. So if you end up not being able to get an ornament this year or they're just not available in your country. This education is still applicable in the form of possibly Christmas cards or other ceramics you're able to get your hands on. So I'm excited. I hope you are too. Grab yourself something warm to drink if it is in fact December and it's chilly outside. And let's get started. 2. Supplies: Hello dear friends and welcome back to class holiday edition. I am so excited to be here with you today. We have something really special on our agenda today. As you can see, we are going to be painting these flocked Christmas trees. We've already spoken about that, but just in case you may have skipped the introduction video. We have a beautiful project in store. So first we're going to cover our supplies because there are some new ones. So go through this with me real briefly just so you can check your your your toolbox and make sure you have everything you need before you begin. The first and most important component would be a ceramic ornament. If you don't by any chance have ceramic. Of course this knowledge can be applied on watercolor paper. We're actually going to be doing so some of our practice on watercolor papers so that we're better prepared and more confident. As we go into the final class project together. I do want to make that statement in case you're super excited and want to get started. You can try this out on paper as well. However, most people are going to want to paint an ornament, so makes sure you have a ceramic ornament. As mentioned in the supply list, these particular ornaments are purchased from Bisk imports. They make a great ornament is real weighty. It's got two sides. I'm gonna be showing you two different options here of how to go about creating this ornament. And it's just the perfect size you can kinda see in my hand, is not too big, not too small, and is perfect for gifting or just for putting on your tree. Okay, so the next supplies that we're gonna go through our paints, we're going to be using these colors. I'll include the pigment numbers in the supplies so that in the event you do not have these exact colors, you can find something similarly, similarly similar and match accordingly. So the first color is, I'm going to be using Grumbacher, hookers green. Then I'm gonna be using my merry blew step. Yeah. This one actually just kinda snuck in there. We're not using that Bye-bye paint. We're gonna be using Daniel Smith undersea green, a favorite of mine. And then we're also going using our Winsor and Newton, permanent white quash. Lastly, we are going to be using this gold marker. It's my favorite. I really can't vouch for others. So I just want to make sure like, if you have another gold pen, I'm not sure how it's going to react on the ceramic, this one I know and trust and abuse. It's on Amazon. It's inexpensive. Obviously, I'll put all of the information in the supply list, its pilot gold marker. Other than that, you're going to make sure you have your brushes ready to go. We're gonna be using a variety of brushes. We're going to have a nice big brush. It does not have to be the flat. This is a flat brush. You can see it has a flat, a flat line here, but I want you to have a brush that's bigger than the other ones. So this is a size ten. Anything less than that? I don't think it's gonna get the job done. Right. So ten or 12 would be great. Can be filbert flat, just something big, not not around something that's going to cover a little bit more ground. Then we're gonna be using a filbert six. And this is, these are all Princeton brushes. This is the Umbria series. This is a Princeton round Aqua Elite. This is a size six. And then we're gonna be using the velvet touch size six. Filbert. You'll need to have a pallet. You'll also need some paper towels, something to put under your ornament to keep it soft and not cracking on a hard surface, you're going to have a cup of water. And then obviously to finish off your ornaments, you're going to need some ribbon. So artist's choice, you get to choose the color. I've picked out a really pretty Christmas Eve, moss green, and then also just as simple, beautiful, neutral linen color. So your choice there. And then also as I said, we're gonna be practicing some of these things on paper just to get us warmed up. So I'd like you to have your Canson watercolor paper. Any size is fine. I'll be using 11 by 15, but any size is going to be fine. Alright, let's move forward. 3. Practicing Stroke On Paper: Okay, so the very first thing we're going to practice is just getting familiar with the strokes that we're gonna be using, either on paper or on ceramic. So for that, I'd like you to pick up your number six filbert brush. And I would like you to activate your hookers green if you haven't already put it on your palette, go ahead and do that now. And then you're going to just gently activate the paint with water. Bring it out here towards the middle of the palate. Add water. We're going to be using broth consistency to begin with. If you're not familiar with my consistencies and how I labeled them, you may want to go back to an earlier class that really helps us get an idea of what the water to paint ratio should be. Okay, so I'm adding tiny bit more. You can always go darker, you cannot go lighter. That is, unless you scrub the paint off either with a paper towel or lifted with a brush. But we're hoping to not do that. So makes sure your ratios are where you want them. As I said in my supply video, I'm going to be showing you two options to this ornament. Either a darker version, which is shown on this side, where we use a bit more pigment and then a lighter version, which is a little bit looser and just has a different effect. So I wanted you to have a couple of different options to play with, and that's what we're gonna do. So let's go ahead and continue mixing this until we have it where we want it. And then you can move your palette off to the side. And we're just gonna begin by practicing a few strokes. The base of this ornament is going to be a really easy. It's either going to be a medium or a light background. We're going to practice the light background first. So that means we're using just a little bit of water or excuse me, just a little bit of paint with our water. And following the shape of the ornament, which is circular, we're just going to be begin to fill in the surface area. And I'd like you to use some round, circular strokes. The idea here is that not all of the strokes are going in the same direction. We want sort of a, a, a loose background so that nothing is to structure eyes yet. Because when we lay down the beginnings of the foundation, those trees, we want those to stand out. So this initial layer is really just about getting the pigment onto either the paper or the ornament, the ceramic. You'll see that ceramic is much different, absorbs water and pigment much differently. But this is just going to give us an idea of how to implement that strategy on a ceramic ornaments. So let's go ahead and do that now. Going to be using the side of your brush and just begin to lay in some strokes, some sea marks, and pick up some water and just begin to fill in this area. You're going to see when we worked with the ceramic, how differently it absorbs very quickly. So we won't get these bleeds that we're getting on paper, which are very pretty. But what we'll do is we'll end up picking up a little bit more pigment. And we'll be going over the lighter areas just a bit, just to add a little bit of variation of color. Like I said, you don't want it to appear as though all your strokes are going exactly the same way. There's gonna be some, some messy components to it. So just laying down those initial strokes, picking up a little bit more pigment. And just kinda using the sides of your brush or not really coming right on top of your brush at that 90 degree, if you're using the side of your breast to just gently lay in dark color. So there we have a roundish shape. So if you were to be doing this on paper, obviously, you would you would fix those edges so that they looked a little bit, I think just a little bit rougher, lighter. So I would kinda come out here on the side and just rough it up a little bit. This is using not a whole lot of water and paint on the brush. You're wanting to create something that isn't perfectly circular. Just because if it's not perfect, the eye is going to feel that. 4. Building Layers on the Canvas: I paused to allow these initial layers to dry before we add in one final layer, you're still going to be using your number six filbert brush. And we're going to be using cough syrup consistency. What you're gonna do here is you're going to activate the paint the same way you do. But I want you also to make sure the bristles on your brush or not too saturated. So that would involve wiping some of the excess water off on your paper towel matrices. My brush is already fairly dry. And then you're going to pick up the paint and you're just going to block off on the paper towel to get some of the excess paint removed. That way, we're gonna get more of a, a dry layer effect, which I'll show you in a minute to achieve this look. So we have the initial layers, they're really light and then we have this slightly darker. And then we come in with this third layer where we just darken things up a bit. Again, we're using the side of the brush and you're going to just sort of activate this area using your brush. It doesn't need to be perfect. But if you're just creating a foreground, you are loosing and a loosening up that canvas that there's room to play with it and to add this really beautiful light structure of Christmas trees. And then we're going to create just some darkening areas here. Then excuse me, off to the side. Maybe just some loose aspects over here. Nothing too heavy. Again, we want the Christmas trees obviously to be most prominent, so we're just sort of heading in with that third layer. If you feel like it might be a little bit too dark, then you can always pick up a little bit of water and blend it. Like I said, you don't want anything to structure eyes in here because the trees are the things that you want standing out. There we go. We have some lighter areas, some darker areas. We're going to pause to let that dry. We're going to come right back with a new brush and begin adding the actual Christmas trees. 5. Creating The Christmas Trees: So using the same green, we're now going to be using our size six filbert brush. And we're going to darken that color just a little bit. So you're gonna be doing a, about a 60%, 60%, 70% paint and 30 to 40% water. It'll depend obviously on what color you're using too. If you're not using the exact same brand and color, your results will vary. So just kinda tinker with this. You want something that's darker than what you have here, but you don't want something that's so dark that you can't add one more layer on top of that. This is all about building up the layers and really creating this rich foreground. That's going to provide this contrast to the Christmas tree, but not take away from the focal point. Once you have a good amount of paint and color, you're just going to make sure your brush is fully saturated in that paint. And for these strokes, you're going to be doing a sort of a multitude of strokes are gonna be doing some straight overhead and then you're also going to be using the side too. I really want to get you familiar with just moving your wrist around and being able to fully access wrist mobility here. So don't be afraid to loosen up. This is why we're doing it on paper. This is not the actual ornament. You can obviously pause, take a break, do these steps again and again until you really feel confident with the looseness of the pine trees. So let's head in and just begin fleshing out that initial shape of the Christmas tree. What I like to do initially is to make sure that I am lined up with the ornament. Rather than drawing a pencil sketch, what I'll do is just kinda loosely sketch the line because we're gonna be covering that up anyway. So we need to build in a stem. And so we might as well do that with the paint initially, rather than slowly working our way, Cauchy died off of the canvas. So to do that, you don't want to go up too high. And again, we'll cover this when we're working on the ornaments. So I say, you want to deviate a little bit to the left. So this, let's say like right here would be your middle. Let's deviate to the left a little bit and begin your Christmas tree. Give yourself about an inch here, just because you're going to have fear in a warm room for them to feel as though their space moving beyond your Christmas tree. You don't want your Christmas tree overlapping off the edge. And it would just give us, it would, it would ruin that sense of centeredness. So let's go ahead and do that now, deviating a little bit to the left and just plugging in a stem using the tip of that filbert brush. It doesn't need to be continuous. You can break it up a little bit, you just want and you can eyeball this or you can ruler it. I eyeball. I feel like I have a pretty good sense now of what it should feel like. But if you feel more comfortable, you can always get out a ruler and draw a line. Then we're going to create a little bit of space here. And we're gonna do one more which is centered and not too far, right or left as you want enough room to come out here with your Christmas tree. While also being mindful of the integrity of Christmas trees, the way they faced sort of overlap in nature. So right about here, and I'm gonna come up a little bit under and I've given myself excess room to go up a little higher if I need to. This is my big tip. I have several big tips that I'm gonna be sharing with you in this class, but this is one of them. Go more towards the center and avoid coming too close to any of your edges. I think the tendency is always to keep going up higher. And you want to have room because if you don't have enough room to come up here and do these delicate aspects. Your trees just going to, it's going to start to look as though it only has one length of branches. And you really want to have room up here for these sort of delicate areas of the Christmas tree. So like I said, just start a little lower. So I'm going to start right about here and do the same thing. Just eyeballing it using the tip of the brush and it come down a little bit here. I want this one a little longer. And this one a little shorter, right about there. Okay, so we have our stem built-in. Now we're going to begin to plug in what's going to be our branches. And now there are so many different ways to go about making branches. Obviously, there's very botanical lifelike ways to create these. I tend to err on the side of looseness with a little bit of crisp detail that's kind of like my my magic point is. Bringing out some of the real life likeness of the object while almost as looking at it or trying to feel as I'm looking at it through a foggy windshield. So try and get that picture in your head. You're the windshields all fogged up. You're seeing this Christmas tree outside, you know what it is, you can glean the shape of it, but you're not trying to capture every detail. Keep a light hand. Loosen up here if you're feeling too tight and just really allow yourself to sink in to the looseness of it. Not being too overly thoughtful about each stroke. Okay, if you need to pick up a little bit more paint on your palette. And you're gonna begin to plug in those branches. There's nothing fancy about it. They're just kinda quick, jerky strokes. You want to leave a little bit of space in between. You want to make sure that you're kinda coming at a triangular position. There are Christmas trees that actually go the other way. They come up like this and they're super beautiful. And you can do that instead where you move up like this into a delicate area. I prefer, I guess I'm just more comfortable doing the Christmas trees that move in this downward position. You want obviously each layer to be slightly wider than the last, although there are areas where it alternates. So again, if you feel like you mess this part up, know that in nature, their nature is riff with imperfections and it makes it so beautiful and unique, so lean into that. Don't put too much pressure on yourself. Just began kind of basically creating the shadow of the tree. Leave yourself some room because you could always plug in more later. And we're gonna be doing that exact thing when we go in at a different, with a different layer. Again, you can see here, I've gone up to about here, but I'm going to end up coming up a little bit higher to create just that tip. And then I'm not going to run off the top up here. So just plugging that in and continuing to work my way down the stem or the stem because it's not a leaf or a branch, a trunk. Picking up a bit more paint and coming in here. I'm going to come here. It's finally at the end with a shorter branch on either side. Just to give it a nice sense of balance. And there you have it. That's a really nice shaped tree. You can get the sense that it's shaped like a tree, but it's not so overly structured that you feel like you're losing that sense of looseness. And we're gonna do the same thing on the other side here. And try not to overthink any of the steps. Let's your foggy mind kinda guide you. And this can be used for Chris Christmas card making two. That's kinda what I wanted to show you on paper as well as ceramic because I know, as I will have said or as I already said in my introduction video, this is my most requested. How do I do Can I have a tutorial? Do you have any classes? And I'm so glad to be able to finally offer you this. I wanted to make sure we covered all of our bases on paper and on ceramics. Okay, so just filling that in here and coming up just a tiny bit more, not too high. You want to have the different levels and adding a few more strokes. There we have a really nice shape tree and we're gonna be adding. We want to have extra room down here because this is gonna be our snow bank here and we want to have equal distance, doesn't have to be perfectly equal, but you want to have it mostly equal unless it's consciously understood that, okay, these are supposed to be off to the side and there's supposed to be this open space on the right or the left hand side. That's something I is the artist you can decide, but you wanna make sure it's obvious. It's not just it's not caught guide is not like oh, it looks like she went too far off the page. It's it's it's intentional. So to focus on the center, we keep everything in the center. Okay. So this should be dry enough. We're not using heavy washes or anything. So I'm gonna put this brush down and then I am going to mix up my undersea green and sap yet together to create a really pretty deep green that we're going to use for the underside of the branches to create some, some contrast and to show, to show like the, the more structured part of the Christmas tree. Okay. So go ahead and take that number six round brush. Continue to add water as you need it. You don't want it so dark that it appears black. So make sure you're really finding that happy medium between green and brown. Get enough paint so that you can continue returning to the palette, picking up as much paint as you need. Mine is dried because I was obviously experimenting with this class before heading into taping it. So I'm having to activate it a little bit more. Fresh paint obviously won't require so much work. I have plenty of paint loaded on my brush. I'm going to start here on the left, work my way right, obviously because I don't want to smudge sticks. Now, also another mention is you could do some really pretty light work in the back here if you wanted to create something that feels like Misty Pines, I'm sure many of you have followed true beauty and she does a beautiful misty pines tutorial. And so if you wanted to do that, you could take her class kinda understand the concepts of layering those really like Christmas trees in the back and then bringing the closest row of trees to the forefront. So that would be a really cool way of just emphasizing upon this class. Although I like the simplicity of this for an ornament, because ornaments are gonna be smaller. And if you cram in too much detail, it's just going to overwhelm that. So it's depending on how you want to use it. I wanted to throw that option out there. Okay, so using the tip of your brush, you're going to begin to come up under the branches and a little bit on top. And you're also going to kinda come nestled up against the trunk of this tree to create shadows within the trunk as well. Because we imagine that these branches are coming forward, they're overlapping, they're very bushy. And so we want to create that aspect. So let's come up right here under these ones first. And just with the toe of our brush, we're going to begin to add in some darker areas. Your paper may still be a tad bit wet. You could take more time to let it dry. You'll find out real quickly if the paint spreads or if it stays where it's at. If it's too dry or too wet. To continue reading really delicate. With these strokes. I'm going to wash off a little bit of paint just to make sure that it's not too dark initially, I can always make it darker. I'm gonna come up here against the trunk and add some darker areas. Coming out a little bit past the branches here. Come back here at the top, creating activity to I like to work my way all around. I don't like to just go in one direction. I like to see what's happening and keep adjusting and recalibrating. As I work. Here we go just a couple of dots up here for that tip of the tree. Just kinda scrubbing the brush up and down here, creating those beautiful shadows. To be back into the water, picking up a little bit more paint. I'm going to come up here against the trunk. Again, down here at the trunk. And creating these shadows. We're gonna do the same thing on the other side. Here at the tip. Coming just slightly past that initial layer. And finishing off right down here below. Coming up against the trunk. There you have it. Okay. If you feel like there's there's not enough shadowing, you can go over it one more time. Again, just kinda looking at what you've done. Where it might benefit from a little bit more crispness. Adding in just a few more areas. Loosening that up. Okay. In the next video, we're going to practice flocking the tree. Almost sounds like you're saying about were there I would have to be really careful. Alright, see you in the next slide. 6. Flocking The Trees: Important step here we're gonna be using the same brush that we used for those initial layers. So that's that size six filbert, you want to make sure that you have all of the excess paint off of your brush because we're going to be using our white gouache now. So just make sure as you're dipping into your water, which may need to be changed out, that you are removing all of the green, most of the green, it doesn't have to be perfect, but you want to get as much off as you can before we head in. If not, it'll just be more of a minty snow, which isn't bad. I've used that method in the past and that's fine. But I do like the crispness of the white where it just really jumps off the page here. Okay, feeling good about that. I am going to put a little bit of my Winsor and Newton, permanent white gouache here. And another tip here. When the gouache comes out of, straight out of the tube, it is obviously at its most moist. What I like to do is to give the gouache like three or 4 min to just hard in a little bit. These are the things that you really only experienced by trial and error and just getting your hands dirty. There's times when I have to step away and then I come back and the gouache isn't quite as moistening like, Oh, that's a really, a really cool effect that, that happened unintentionally. So consider that you could even use a hairdryer to just solidify it for a minute and just allow it to dry. And just don't feel like you have to rush in there and use it right away. This is the part of the project where we can take our time and go slow. The gouache will be waiting for you. It can always be re-wet. It's not acrylics. Acrylics are much more temperamental and you have a short window of time to use them, unless of course you're using a wet palette, but we're not today. Okay. Go ahead. I get the excess water off of your brush and you're going to come in here. And so your dress, your dress, I don't know why it keeps saying your dress, your brush should be very dry at this point. And you're going to pick up a little bit, just using these short strokes, a little bit of the gouache on the tip of your brush. The way to do this is to not clump it on initially, we'll get to that point where you, you see beautiful pine trees and they are completely thick with with snow. And it's a beautiful effect. But I wanna make sure that's something we're doing intentionally and not accidentally. We'll start off with just this light dressing of snow. They way that it will stand out most prominently is by putting it on some of the darker areas as well. So even though these are kind of our shadow under brush, we're going to move it. We're going to move the snow all around in different areas. So I'm using the side of the brush and I'm just beginning to apply the snow using the side coming up here along the trunk. Again, using this side of the brush to just fill in the areas where eventually I want to layer on a little bit more with this light background. And we're only going to do this once on paper. I'll show you the darker background when we're working on our actual ornament, the snow is not going to stand out quite as much as it will on the dark green. So I wanted to show you both of those options because I love the light background of this because the tree stand out so nicely. But the downside is that the snow doesn't stand out. So you kinda have to pick what you like best about both of these approaches. Dipping into my gouache again, it's gonna be more moist because I just got my brush wet and applying a little bit more and working my way down the tree. Okay, so now I'm going to come on top of this and I'm going to thicken up the paint a little bit. You can see that I have more paint on my brush and I want to sort of clump it on there in in in intentional areas. I'm just using again the tip and the side of the brush to come on top. Coming over to the trunk as well because it likes to bunch up around there. But being careful not to cover up so much of the tree that it just looks like white paint. Right about there is where I feel like okay, that's that happy point between overflow locked and just stay at a a thorough dusting of snow. And do the same thing over here this time, plugging in a little bit of white there, and just begin layering it on top. Again, coming on top of the trunk here. Can always go back over it. I'm going to stop there just because I know we want to move into the actual ornament to just show you the process and the technique. Then what we're gonna do is we're going to come down here and we're going to add a snow bank. And so again, like with our initial strokes, we're just going to keep it really loose. And I have you use circular motions with the side of your brush to create a snow bank. It's almost as though you're just kinda scrubbing it on there. It's up to you. How far up you want to go. You can take it all the way up. You can take it halfway. It's really up to you. I like to come up to right about the bottom of the tree to kinda get a sense that the trees are sinking into this snow bank. You can always, after the fact, if it's too, too light, head back in with more watercolor, some more layers, something closer to this. And then that snow is going to pop off the page quite a bit better. Running out of gouache here. So I'm going to put a little bit more on the palette. Here we go. Again, that initial light layer is nice because you can keep building that up. Okay. So I kinda like what that site you'll see when we do the ornament, I suggest going over the edge so that it just for the snow to make it feel as though there's not like this definitive line. You can choose to do that and make it bigger. An area where okay, this is where the scene stops as a whole. You know, with with the Christmas tree on the ornament, I went over the edge so it appears as though it's kinda flowing up over. Alright. So that's a good stopping point. Everything is going to be pretty dry by this point. X with the exception of this layer. But everything up here is so it works for our next step. If it's not for whatever reason dry, make sure this is fully dry before we head into that next step because you don't want a wet canvas. 7. Adding Final Embellishments: So this pin is one of my favorites. I use it for so many different things. Handwriting when I'm personalizing things for you, I use it as a signature and it's just so great, it's very versatile, so I think you'll enjoy using it. You'll need to depress it. And you want to make sure that you do that on a test sheet of paper. So you want to take the brush, pump it a few times, get the paint flowing. Obviously wanted habit of having having had shaken it previously. So makes sure If not, I don't want to shake you too hard here. Shake that pan a couple of times, get it the paint flowing and then depress it onto the paper to make sure It's going to flow out nicely. You want to have a nice stream. If it's pulling, it's gonna be too much. And if you're getting dry dry stuff, I can't even get dry stuff, but if it's really good dry, you know that you need to pump it a few more times. We're going to begin to make some golden snowfall, which obviously is not typical. You could use white if you wanted to, especially on the darker background. But I think the goal just kind of breaks up the monochrome sort of aspect that we have here with the green and white. Again, this is a simple design. It's something that goes with everything. And I wanted to offer a beginner friendly palette as well. I may end up creating more videos about how to paint Christmas ornaments, but I wanted to sort of ease you in because as I've been told, when I share my ornaments at Christmas time and months before, it looks easy to watch someone do it. But when it comes to actually putting it into practice, it can be frustrating, overwhelming, discouraging all of those things. And easing you in is what I like to keep you happy because that's what creating is for, is to keep your spirits up and to enjoy the process. So there is no rhyme or reason to this. I will give you my suggestion, which is to have areas where you crowd the snowfall and then open space. So rather than doing like each dot, exactly an eighth of a centimeter millimeter apart. I like the the erratic newness of the snowfall. I like to just begin plugging it in. And there we go. That's what happens sometimes is it pools, so I probably waited too long. I'm going to scrub that off and we'll just work with it. This is what happens when you're creating in your life. Nothing is ever really ruined. It just ends up not being exactly how you intended it to be. So scrub that off. And then we'll start again. And I'm just going to blend that gold with a paper towel into the background. Kind of looking at it, it almost looks like it could be a golden moon, so I may just utilize that. And then this is like the golden moonlight coming down upon the tree. So it while it's wet, I'm just going to use my paper towel to scrub it. I hadn't planned on putting a moon in there, but how would that look? Really beautiful little moon area there. So I'm going to work, I'm just going to go with it. This is what happens when you're creating and you have to just decide, okay, am I going to throw it away or am I going to just roll with it? I'm gonna make sure my pen is hopefully not gonna do that. Oh, it is, it's acting up. So let's see let me see if I can get some consistent marks. That's the thing about working with these types of pens as if they're not your traditional ballpoint pen, you may get some flooding. And so I like to write before I use it, make sure it's behaving. It works beautifully when it's working beautifully, if that makes sense. And I'm just going to begin carving out a little circle here. Inside that circle, I don't want it so big as to cover the beautiful moon dust. And so I'm just going to shape that mon. And I love it. I truly do. It adds a really beautiful luminescence aspect to the painting. And you could even go in and create some more of that behind. So say you wanted to like create more of that, plug it in there. And then the paper towel can just kinda scrub it, blended in the background so it can be heavier or lighter. It's really up to you, but let's go in and while my pen is behaving and begin with the snowfall, which is to begin plugging in these beautiful little dots. Just erotically. No rhyme or reason to them. I like to do a bunch in one area and then maybe just do one or two in-between those areas. You can obviously add as many as you like. It's up to you. You sum up near the branches and even in-between the branches as shown, come up here on the edge of the scene. I like to have fun. I just do a few and then I stand back, do a few and then stand back. And you'll see obviously you have to kind of play with the paper to get that sense of golden luminescence. But it ends up looking really bad on a Christmas tree because you have the light shining on it and so you really see it and it's so beautiful and I think you can have so much fun. And I love this little addition of the moon here is so fun. I tend to embrace the mistakes unless of course, it's like a commission and it's supposed to be certain way. And then I'm like, Oh boy, alright, scratch out another couple of hours into my schedule. I tend to not work with Mercurial tools in that case, though. I like to make sure I'm very confident when I'm approaching a commission like that. Alright. Going over to the other side, again, plugging in snowfall, taking a break, kind of standing back saying okay, I like that. You can even get bigger dots by pushing a little harder and then, and then smaller dots. So a variety of, of, of sizes would really be a boon to the scene. You can do some into the snow. Really the sky's the limit here so you can keep going. I'm going to stop here just so we can move on. But you have a really beautiful scene. This is pretty much what we're going to do as we move into our class project. I wanted to get you on paper so that you can use this for Christmas card. If you imagine this is like a square, how beautiful is that going to look? You couldn't even write if you wanted to take your pen and write at the bottom of the card, you might want to get a ruler out so that you're moving in a straight line. I'm going to test my pen one more time before I do that, just to make sure it's behaving. And pretty little Merry Christmas there at the bottom and you can fill it in however you like. I am not a calligrapher. I do not purport to know anything about hand lettering. I don't know anything. So there are many better teachers at this that you could look up if you wanted to do something super fancy. But it's a cute little components, so, alright, we're gonna move into the class project. Hopefully you feel ready, if not, practice on paper a little bit more. Get yourself something warm to drink. Or if you're in the Bahamas, maybe my time. Alright, let's move on. 8. Class Project Part 1: painting the background: Okay, so here we are at the very beginning. So looking at your ornament, it does have a front and a back. You can kind of get a sense for that by flipping it back and forth. And one side is just a little bit more like it's hard to describe. I would just say it looks more like a front, It's a little fluffier, whereas this feels a little bit more flat. It also might even have an imperfection around here which could easily be sanded away. If you see any of that. You could obviously do a little care initially to the ornament to make sure that there's no blemishes on it. We're going to be using all of the same brushes and paints. But you may want to have things written stuff. I actually did not rinse out my cup here. So it's sort of like a, a very, very pale green, which is going to be fine for this background. Because what we're gonna do is we're going to lay a wash of water on top, which is going to be absorbed very quickly, is basically just to be an extra layer, something that is beneath the many layers that we're gonna be adding. So for that, we're going to use our number ten brush. I want you to make sure there is a ton of water on your brush. The brush should be dripping with water. It should be falling off of the bristles. You're going to see in a moment here how quickly the water is absorbed. Immediately. With this, you don't have to move super quickly, but you do want to make sure that if there is any sort of color that you're moving it around, you can see here is mostly just providing really pretty neutral background. That's all I really want to do, the sides as well. Turning it over all around, making sure that it's all nice. And one color. Everything's getting absorbed super quickly. So I'm pouring tons of water on there. And it is absorbing the water and you'll see it is actually pulling the water into the canvas and it's going to help our paint react better. So I would say definitely do this step. Here we go. We've painted both sides, can flip it back over to the front for all intents and purposes. There we have it. Okay, So we're going to basically do the same thing. However, this time, this off to the side for a second, dipping into our hookers green. Let's go ahead and mix that up. We're gonna be using a little over excuse me. We're going to be using just a little bit of paint with the water, that broth consistency. We'll start with our light side. Just like we did when we were painting our Christmas card. Lots of water. Going to want to move quickly at this step. And I say that because you don't want to have as we, as we already practice too much structure in this part of the, the process and papers not gonna be as forgiving a ceramic is just not and because we don't have a solid background for ordinate or not, like painting it with acrylics. We're doing something more washy and loose. You want to make sure that you're moving those strokes around so they're not stagnant and you'll see what I mean. Hopefully if you did purchase an ornament, they come in dozens and they're not super expensive. So you'll have extras. You're going to need to probably ruin a couple of ornaments before you get going. And that's totally part of the process. Lean into that and embrace that. That's just that's just part of it. I do the same thing when I'm painting. It never changes. My results may be slightly, might my initial results may be slightly better than a beginner novices, but it's not, it's not what I would call my best or professional work. So just know that it happens to all of us. Okay. Let's go ahead and begin layering in that paint. You're going to pick up the water and just kinda continue moving it around. Picking up a little bit more. Again, this has to be our lighter background. Picking up more water, blending it in. You don't want strokes that are too stagnant and too small. I'm gonna do a nice big darker stroke here up at the top. So a little bit more in cough syrup consistency kinda like we did when we were, when I was painting this one. Just to provide a little bit of contrast, moving the water down the way. Cow. Then I'm going to plug in a stroke right here in the middle as I did here, using a little bit more of a cough syrup consistency. You can see I'm picking up on my brush and I'm going to create a nice dark stroke. Mary habit. I'm also going to do the same thing on the other side, but I'm just going to use the side of my brush to create something loose and light. This is just two. Again, create that foreground that feels just very airy and light. I'm gonna come up here on the edges a little bit and fill that in. Stroking in both directions, up and down. Heading in a little bit of a shadow here. Before we head in and add that darker shadow. Picking up a little bit more paint and just running stroke through there. Just a pretty area where the ribbons going to overlap. And there's just some pretty contrast darkening up that and that is where I would stop. You can go as far as you like. But to get that sort of loose light, you know, this is kinda the next step. The area or aspect I would stop right about there. What you can do now is take your brush and fill in the sides here. Be careful not to come over the edge here if you don't want to. I'm just going to use some really light light mostly paint water with a little bit of paint in there and nothing just too heavy. But you wanna make sure you paint the sides because it will show up when you're hanging it. Unless of course, you liked that division between sides. If you're trying to go for that, then you can leave them unpainted. Moving it around, don't worry about touching your ornament. That's the great thing about this kind of ceramic absorbs the paints so quickly that you don't need to worry about messing it up with your fingers. Moving that around, coming here up at the top. And there we go. Okay. Alright, put that brush off to the side. We're going to pick up our number six filbert. And we're going to use more of a cough syrup consistency for the initial shadowing of the sketching out of the pine tree. 9. Class Project Part 2: painting the trees: Alright, same first step here. We are going to deviate slightly to the left, but not so far that you're losing the height here. So right about here, I'm gonna begin plugging in that trunk. Don't go up too high because this is where your ribbon is. So always start a little lower than what you think you're going to use. And begin plugging in that trunk. Again, it doesn't need to be perfect because we're gonna be roughing that up anyway. Just a general shape here. Again, don't come up too close. Do you want room for that snow bank? And then we're gonna do the same thing here, little bit of distance, but you also want to be able to overlap and come up right about there. Just using the side of the brush here. Just like I did here. Come down a little bit more, just you can clearly see, okay, that's the length of these trees. Now we're gonna do the same thing using the side and the toe of the brush and create that shadow part of the tree. Again, you're using the side and the toe and you're coming in a downward direction, leaving a little bit of space in between your branches. You can hover over the trunk and even fill in that area. Don't worry where it's dark here. We're gonna go in with another layer, as we did when we were on paper, which will really pull out the shape or laying that groundwork. Keeping things loose. And finishing with a smaller branch. Come out a little further here just to fill up that space. Overlapping here. Coming up a little higher now. And I'm going to save that area for when I'm using my round brush, which is a little bit more delicate, this is so great because it forces you to be loose. You really cannot get that crisp, thin stroke with this brush unless you're supreme control of it. Okay, filling in this area a little bit where I want flocking to occur. That's something to think about too, as you're moving forward, think about, okay, I'm, and I'm eventually going to be moving in this direction. So I want it to have some dark areas where that whites really going to pop off. Some branches closer to each other and some with more distance is great to Christmas trees aren't perfect. So you wanna make sure you're being mindful of that. I need to put a little bit more green on my palette, so I'm gonna do that now and begin doing the same thing. There's tree is smaller, so I'm being mindful of that. That also utilizing the space coming up a little bit higher now, area that will, I will save for that round brush creating and leaving some whitespace that's important. If you've taken any of my water classes, watercolor classes, you'll know that whitespace is the most important thing when using watercolors because it gives the viewer that sense of negative space or light shining on an object without it, it all becomes very one-dimensional. Okay? So it may not look like it, but your canvas is moist, not to the point where things are going to release smudge. But if you look at your fingers, if you've been handling it, you probably believe in see a little bit of green on your fingers because it is in fact wet. It's wet as ceramic can be. What you may want it to be for this step is take a hairdryer and just makes sure that there's not much moisture in the trees because what will happen as we use our brush, it's going to end up spreading the paint is going to spread a little bit more. So you may not want that effect. We want something that's a little bit crisper. I'm kinda feeling it here and I think I'm gonna be okay. And you might do if you've moved slowly, it may be just fine. But it's something to consider. You may wanna do that with round to ornaments. Okay, so I'm going to start here at the top, again using the toe of the brush to create some of those really pretty delicate areas of the Christmas tree. And then I'm going to come under here to create shadows coming up against the trunk. As I move along. This is where you will really get the sense of the tree happening. I'm not going to be adding in that golden moon, at least not intentionally. And if you did, you'd obviously want to put it on this side where there's more room for it, but you could easily do that and that would be really beautiful. So if you're, if that's something you want to go for it, leave this space open for that, and then you can plug that in. It'll have a different result. Maybe I like to plan my classes with enough framework for me to talk to you comfortably about what it is I'm doing. But I also like to leave lots of room for, Hey, let's just roll with this. Let's go with this because that's the nature of art. We're not, we're not bringing surgeons. We have not practiced this hopefully thousands of times before we work on a real human being, we're rolling with the punches here and art is, is fluid and flexible. So maybe I will plug it in later. We'll see how everything comes together at the end. Not feeling like I have to do anything at this point other than just keep moving along. So use the toe of your brush to keep moving, creating those shadows. Making sure that there's enough of the other layers showing to get a sense of both layers. And staying mindful. Okay, this is a loose, loose tree, nothing to exact. Creating some framework within the trunk here, I like to kinda space that out because this is where there'll be flocking to cover that up. And let's move on to the next one. Again, starting here at the top. Overlapping these branches doesn't have to be perfect. You don't need to go so far over. Just a sense of them nestling up against each other is plenty. You're intimidating at what it is that you would see through that fog you windshield. So just enough to get a sense like okay, there's definitely a tree happening there. This area might be darker. And then we'll play with the snow around here too. You don't want to have snow that's just kinda going straight across these trees. You want to be able to break that up and see some whitespace and background poking through to give your trees that sense of them coming through. And you can see here, this one is slightly darker than this one. Again, every time you do this will be a different result because you're either using more water or less water and more paint or less paint. I think that's the fun part. When I created my Christmas collection, I had so much fun working on ceramics, lots of different kinds of ceramics. And even though I did multiples of some, Each one was an original because there's little aspects and details about the individual ornament that made it its own. So that's just really special. Okay. I like where that's at. I'm going to leave it there and I'm going to pick up my sixth filbert brush. I'm going to make sure I am wiping off all of the excess paint. You can see I have a little rag here. This is my favorite. I love using a little cotton or linen towel. It makes it really great backdrop to for, for photographs. Alright, let's turn this palette around. And let's begin. You can see the paint is dry now this is kinda where I like it. It's in that sweet spot between just sort of stiff with a little bit of moisture left into it. 10. Class Project Part 3: flocking the trees: So let's go ahead and start here on the left. And delicately begin plugging in that snow. Using the side of the brush coming up against the trunk, you can see it's going to stand out really well against this dark area. Don't be afraid to really pilot on there. You just want to make sure it's intentional. You can skip that first layer and really just head in with a lot of the gouache. Or you can just do it really slowly one step at a time. I'm just kinda going for it here. If you feel confident you can do the same. If you would rather move in little bite-sized stages, you can do that slowly. You want that snow just appearing as though it's just kinda laying on top of the branches is not too structured, leaving some whitespace in-between. So it's evidenced that these branches are not on top of each other. Unless of course, that is the look that you're going for. All I need to do with any of my classes is just sort of poke your creativity. You're going to come up with other things that I either left out intentionally or didn't think of that are gonna be so great to add to this, if you wanted to put red berries into the tree, like I did with my ornaments, or if you wanted to add a bot, there's so many different things you could do to just sort of spruce things up. You get it spruce because Bruce is a type of tree. No. Yeah, I went there. Alright, moving on to the next tree. Be careful when you get down here. Like I said, you don't want snow just coming straight across. So be mindful of that. I'm going to put a little bit more gouache on my plate. It's going to be moist, so I'm going to have to re-calibrate, adjust my approach because it's gonna be very wet now. Again, you can take a hairdryer, make it a little more solid, and that's where I'm gonna stop the snow. I want it to be very clear that okay. This is the snow on this tree. And I'm just going to pile it on a little bit more while I'm over here with the fresh squash. And do the same over here, coming up against the trunk. Here we go. Standing back for a minute, looking at things. Okay. I like where this is at. What I'm gonna do now is pick up my round brush dipping into that undersea green and the sepia to cough syrup consistency. And I'm going to plug in a little bit more of a trunk here, darkening of the areas that I've intentionally left open, that off to the side coming back in with gouache. Is there any area where I feel like okay, this could benefit from a little more then also knowing okay, That's when to stop. Okay? So what we're gonna do now is create that snow bank. So you're gonna be using the side of the brush in those circular motions. It can start anywhere and just began kind of gently applying that snow bank. Bring it up as far as you like. Can layer it on nice and heavy and you're going to want to go over the edge. At least. That's how I like. That's no vague to look. You can turn your ornament like this to do so. Or you can just kinda move under it. Moving up a little higher. Kinda get the feel like okay, the snow is moving around the tree. There's like gusts of wind happening. That's the intent and purpose behind this loose Canvas is you're getting that sense of like, okay, yes, there's still objects but they're in motion. And that's what I think when people comment on my work, they always talk about the motion infused in the painting. I get looks as though the flowers are blowing and the leaves are, are shaking or trembling. And that's something that's, That's very intentional. That's a nod to nature. And I like to be able to include that in my work so that you get that sense of like, oh, I feel like I'm there, I can feel the snow drifts moving around me as I look at these trees. You can come in heavier here. If you want to really create some pretty areas of snow. 11. Class Project Part 4: adding golden snowfall: Okay, We're going to pick up our pilot Goldmark or go ahead and give it a good shake off to the side here. And then you want to test it on a scrap piece of paper, making sure it's behaving it looks like it is. Now. You know how to depress it and make sure the ink is flowing and we're going to begin adding the embellishments. My favorite part. You'll see things react a little bit differently, but not too much. Again, you can wait until things are dry or you can go over them with a hair brush. But pretty much the same results. So I'm just crowding them in certain areas and then leaving some open space elsewhere. This part's fun because I really feel like you just kinda get to stand back, see what you've done and then fill in those spots. I think before. I like to just move my way around. And you'll notice too, if the ceramic is still quite wet, they will pull a little bit. So your snow, snowfall will it will bleed a little bit. So you may want to make sure things are very dry before you head in. Or if you like that look you like the variation between dry and wet, then you can you can keep the canvas wet for a different result. So it's really up to you and how you want to move things along. I like putting it over the dark green because it really shows up very well. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll know that green and gold is my jam. I have green and gold all throughout my home. It shows up in my art. I just think it's, it's just one of the most elegant color combinations. So this was super exciting to be able to do with you. And take a look, stand back, kinda just admire your handiwork, how beautiful it is. See if you need to add more. You can always click on the actual snow if you wanted to plug a couple in there, or you can leave it as is simplicity, I think, especially in nature is always best rather than overworking it. We're going to it'll be class project part two. We'll flip this ornament over. We'll do these things again using darker washes and you'll see how the design is enhanced or just modified using that approach instead. 12. Class Project Part 5: painting the background & trees: So you want MIT should be completely dry by now, but you may want to take a finger and just gently tap the areas and make sure that there's no moisture left on the ornament before you flip it over. So we are going to be using the darker versions of our consistencies to create something with just a little bit more depth and more of a moody feel versus our lighter and more airy look. So let's go ahead and begin by using your size six filbert brush and the Umbria series and mix that paint to cough syrup consistency. Then we're going to set that off to the side, just loading that brush, having it prepared. And then we're gonna do the same thing we did initially. We're going to use our size ten flat brush or anything with a large, large tip here. So it can be a filbert, just something to cover a lot of groundwork and began applying the water onto the ornament. Again, use copious amounts here. Don't really worry about having too much. I'm just submerging the bristles in the water and letting it settle on the ceramic. It's clay, so it really does absorb quite well. Couple more quotes here just to make sure everything is evenly dispersed. And now, as with before, this part can be a little tricky. You want to move quickly, laying down some even strokes. Moving in those circular, circular strokes. It's okay if you're building up the layers, you just want to make sure that you're not creating too much structure here at this point. Creating that darker background. I'm going to add a little bit up here at the tip, just like I did with the last one, just to give some shadowy areas here and do the same along the edges, not leaving any white spots. That doesn't want to come up. So we'll be ended. It will end up covering any of those kind of things. Those are just marks within the clay. Like I said, it has a front and a back. This is the quote unquote, back of the ornament. I'm feeling pretty good about where everything is at. Not too much structure, but we clearly have something darker than what we began with here. So the next step is going to be to pick up your size six filbert brush within the Velvet Touch series, make sure you have rinsed it off thoroughly. I still had a bit of the white gouache on there, so it'll be a little bit more minty if they're still white on that brush. Or in previous classes we like to double up on brushes so you can always have an extra filbert on hands so that you're not having to wipe the excess color off of the brush. Okay. Go ahead and mix. A little heavier than the last paint consistency. So it's still what I would consider cough syrup consistency. You're just adding maybe 10% more paint. Just because we're going darker on this one, I'm gonna go ahead and add a little bit more. I used quite a bit there. That clay really does like to absorb all the paint and water. Okay. Then I'm going to pull it off to the side here and just make sure I'm not going in too dark. Initially. We don't want it to appear black. I'm going to begin just as I did yesterday, coming up here, deviating to the left. Starting with that line right here. You can see there's moisture in the ornaments still, it is not fully dry. The paint is spreading a little bit more, but that's okay because we're going to end up covering all of this anyway. Stopping right about there. And then I'm gonna do the same over here. This one ended up being my shorter tree and this one might taller tree. We can try that this time too. We'll make this one the taller one, right about there. Just for a little something different. Stopped being right about there. Then I'm going ahead and adding that groundwork. Brushing off a little bit of paint. I don't want it quite that dark, so I'm going to pull another pile off to the side of the palette here. And just make sure I'm coming in light enough. Girl. Picking up a little bit more paint now, making sure I'm leaving some open space between these branches, covering up the trunk a bit and finishing off here at the bottom with a shorter branch. Filling in the areas. Now, the little bit more pick up a little bit more paint. Coming in here under this is not quite our darkest layer, but I want it a little bit more contrast because we have such a dark color as our wash. Really want it to show up. Using the toe and the tip of the brush here. Going a little bit cocky, I'm noticing. So I'm just going to straighten things out a tiny little bit here by redoing the trunk, making sure I'm coming down straight and adding in a little bit more branch area. I'm going to do the same thing over here. I'll leave that area open so that I can add some tip and just began laying in the paint. Really playing with the strokes here. Moving my brush all around. It's okay if your branches are running into each other as they should. Sometimes I like to begin with the framework and then I'll head back in and fill it up. Okay, we have two trees that are very centered on our ornament, which is what we want. We can now add if we like, a second layer of color before we head in with that darkest layer coming up in here under the branches. I'm going to put a little bit more paint on my palette here because I'm gonna be using that. There we go. Okay, I'm going to take a quick pause here. I'm going to run the hairdryer over the ornament to ensure that it's nice and dry. Before we add in that final layer, you may want to do the same or just, you know, take a break and let the ornament dry naturally. 13. Class Project Part 6: flocking the tree & adding golden snowfall: Alright, moving my palette and round so you can see as I mixed up the Daniel Smith undersea green along with the sepia to create a nice rich, thick consistency. Mixing that properly with my size six Aqua Elite round brush. And then I'm going to begin placing those pine needles and the shadowy areas. Start up here at the tip and just begin to work our way down. Coming up against our trunk here, filling in those gaps. And just staying mindful that we're going to be flocking the tree and that we want some really nice rich dark areas. So we can pour that snow right on top. Really having a light hand here. Try not to overthink this step. Staying loose and gestural with your strokes. And coming down my trunk here. And we'll move over to the other tree now. Starting up here at the tip and working our way down. The ornament, even with a little bit of blow drying, is still a bit moist. So you can always wait a bit before you add this step. If you want something that ornament was a little bit drier when I was working here. And so you're getting more of those sharp lines in this ornament. Here. They're just sort of blending more width. The tree that they're the shadows that we put in initially, which I like it. I think it's just different. Not going to do too much work over here. I don't want to crowd this area where we have some really nice open space happening here. Coming up against the trunk and filling in that area. And coming down. Finish that trunk can always add a little more, a little bit more detail if you like little more structure here or you can just keep it simple dotting to imply that there is a trunk happening. Okay? So I like where we're at with this and just sort of standing back, Noticing, seeing what's going on, I'm going to fill in that just a tiny bit more. I want empty space, but I don't want so much that it looks like I was overthinking the empty space. Oh, cover that. They're a pop in. Some embellishments there to kind of fill in, make things not necessarily symmetrical but balanced are always looking for balance within a composition. It's important that we take those steps, lining things up, and giving ourselves the best probability of creating something that just feels balanced at the beginning. It can be tricky to fix that within a painting if you end up crunching up to close to the sides or to the top of the bottom, unless you are able to scrub things out and start again. It can it can be a bit of a process trying to correct that. I'm going to wipe the excess green off of my size six. Filbert, brush, the one that we will use for our flocking. And I'm going to head into my white gouache, which is a has been drying slightly so it's. At that sweet spot, and I'm just gonna begin plugging it in. This part is so fun and sometimes I get so excited to get to this part that I don't take as much time as I maybe should do the other steps. I'm sure you as artists know nothing about that. Rushing the process. Okay, Ms. Squeeze out a little bit more. It's trying on my palette. And a little quickly. Here we go. Coming up against the trunk, a little bit. Subtle snowy trunk. Really letting that white settle on top of the green, where it's going to be most dramatic. And moving over, right? To do the same. Careful not to blot out all of those details at the top there. Want to see a little bit of the branches poking through. Continuing these short scrubby strokes and continuing to make my way down the tree. Can use the side of your brush as well. For some lighter stroking. If you don't like the, the clumpy look or you just want to have some different effects going on, head back in and use the very tip of the brush to finish that off. Okay, so now we will move into creating our snow bank, picking up a little bit more white. And we're going to begin with those circular motions. Heading up the tree over the edge here, coming into the trunk and really laying it on thick. In certain areas, we'd like the snow to appear concentrated as it might in real life and then be other areas where it's a little bit more sparse so you know where nature is making its way through the ground. Okay. Again, you can head up even further if you like, with that snow, you can even carry it all the way up into here. If you like Dustin, the background with a bit. It's completely up to you how far you'd like to take it. I'm going to stop right about there before it gets totally overworked and put the brush down. That's always, I always say that in my class has put the brush down. Sometimes stepping away is not enough. Sometimes you actually physically have to put it down, give it a minute, go get some water, come back with fresh eyes, fresh perspective and see like, Oh, okay, it really is done. Alright. I'm gonna be shaking our pen. If it's been sitting for a while. Get out your scrap piece of paper. And let's be sure it's behaving. Begin plugging in our golden snowfall. Just taking little moments to pause. Again. As with the snowfall concentrated areas where it's a little bit more prominent. And then areas where it's sparse really helps to just balance out the feel of the ornament. I'm so excited to see these pop up on Instagram as you create them and share them. I know so many of you have been eager to create your own handmade ornaments, either for yourself or as gifts. And I'm just so delighted to be able to provide an option. I like where I'm at there. Again, putting the pen down, you can always add more. So I like where we're at. Maybe you do the same ticket, take a beat and just decide whether or not it needs something else, needs more embellishments or if it's done. And then we will move on to spring our ornament and finishing it off with a ribbon. 14. Class Projext Part 7: sealing the ornament: When it comes time to steal your ornaments, you're going to want to go somewhere outside with plenty of ventilation. You're going to want nothing around you. So find an area that is not going to be damaged or harmed by the sealant that you're going to put on? This is the sealant that I use. It's mod podge. It's a clear acrylic sealer. It's fantastic. It does have a glossy finish, which I use for some of my ornaments. And it's fantastic. You can do several coats, I typically do too. And I timed them 15 min apart. If I have multiple ornaments which I wanted to also share my setup with you. Another big tip. This is something that I use for all sorts of things. I balance my Easter eggs on here. I turn my ornaments upside down and I placed them on the nails. It's basically just a two-by-four that's been cut. And nails have been hammered in here and it prevents things from sticky when they're drying and holds them up safely. So obviously this is a DYI makeshift drying station. We're not fancy over here. We're just looking for something to get the job done and it does it beautifully. So the way I would like you to spray this is you're going to want to stand Probably about 12 to 18 " away. You're going to shake the can thoroughly before you spray and you're going to angle down and you're going to go back and forth dispersing the aerosol evenly. You don't want to concentrate on one area because it will glug up. You want to be very careful during this process to move back and forth evenly. You don't need to do it for very long. I'd say somewhere 2-4 s is ideal. And this will get the job done very nicely. So I'm going to go ahead and shake one more time. Going to stand back. And then I'm gonna come in and spray up. And off to the front. Here we go. So that's the first coat. We're going to come back in about 15 min, do it again. And then I won't walk you through flipping it over because it's the same thing, but you will need to do that two more times for the other side as well. But we'll come back in 15 min, see how these look and do our second code. Okay, So it's been about 15 min. So let's take a look. And can definitely refocusing here. Can definitely see there's a little bit of a sheen, but not too much. It's still pretty Matt at this point. So we're gonna go ahead and add one more coat. Again, shaking rigorously. Focus in here on the ornaments. And one more time. So that will be enough. I haven't noticed that it changes. The color of the paint is fantastic with color preservation and also makes it extremely durable, meaning that it doesn't chip off. And like I said, it has a really beautiful glossy finish. So you're going to need to do the same thing to the other side, waiting 15 min in-between. And then once your ornaments are fully dry, I would give it at least an hour or two. If it's cold, you may want to give it longer than you can bring them inside and dress them up with urban. So we're gonna head there and just a little bit. Okay, my friends, we have arrived at the finale. Your ornaments should be fully dry and they should have a nice sheen to them. Each side looking good. Okay. So it should look like that. It should not have any tax at all. So if you feel like it's sticky at all, go put it back outside and let it dry for a little bit longer. So once things are completely dry, now is the fun part. You get to pick out a ribbon. So I typically get my ribbons either from Etsy sellers or sometimes on Amazon. There are so many different options. I'm not going to tell you which we're going to use. There is silk chiffon, there's cotton ribbon, there's twine, There's so many different ways that you can style your ornaments. So I'm just gonna give you a couple of different colors here. Obviously, you could go with a festive read or even a black. Anything really goes because this is a neutral palettes. So I'm going to chop off a little bit of a linen ribbon here. I'm going to show you my trick to getting the ribbon into the little tiny ornament whole. I have this little I guess it's a long toothpick. It's not a shisha kebab stick. It's like this little long toothpick. And so I line it up over the ornament. Then I just push the ribbon through. I don't cut it first because I want to see exactly how it's going to fit on the ornament. So I just kinda get it all the way through first and then I'm going to eyeball it. Because what we're gonna do is we're going to tie it first and then we'll tie a bow. So you want to make sure you have quite a bit of ribbon here, right about there. I would say that's probably, maybe six to 8 " is going to be good and then shrink it a little bit. Don't need quite that much. Yeah, 8 " is probably pushing that. I'm thinking probably six is good. And then we'll cut it there and go ahead and tie it. So we're going to tie it once, just like so. And then we will tie it again. This way. You can hang it on the tree and it's facing the correct way. Through. A little bit of the end showing here. You have a really beautiful ornament. What do you think? I hope you love it. I hope you love it as much as I enjoyed showing you how to do this because honestly, this has been in my plans for so long. I cannot tell you how many how many messages, emails, and requests I receive every year for a class on Ordinance. So it's so good to be able to finally offer this and to show you a little bit of my process, let xi into it and explore your own creativity. So I'm gonna go ahead and I'm going to pop the grain and now making sure that everything is lined up. And just like before tying it and tying it again one more time. And it is officially ready to be on your tree or to be gifted to someone. I want to thank you so much for joining me today. I really do hope you had a great time. I had a great time with you. And I look forward to our next class together. Alright, have a wonderful week and I will see you soon.