Paint a One-of-a-Kind Christmas Ornament in Textured Acrylic | Amie Murray | Skillshare
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Paint a One-of-a-Kind Christmas Ornament in Textured Acrylic

teacher avatar Amie Murray, Painter + Art Educator

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Welcome

      2:37

    • 2.

      Our Project: A Hand-Painted Ornament

      1:56

    • 3.

      Helpful Resources

      1:07

    • 4.

      Gather Your Supplies

      2:43

    • 5.

      Bonus Tips Before We Begin

      3:47

    • 6.

      Paint the Background

      5:42

    • 7.

      Paint the Branches

      5:34

    • 8.

      Paint the Stars

      5:10

    • 9.

      Pipe on the Winter Berries

      5:56

    • 10.

      Add the Leaves

      6:47

    • 11.

      Varnish Your Ornament and Add a RIbbon

      3:30

    • 12.

      12 Ornament FInal Thoughts

      1:44

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About This Class

In this class I will teach you how to use two acrylic painting techniques to create a truly one-of-a-kind Christmas ornament. And of course, we’ll use modeling paste to create some nice texture. 

Together we will paint a ceramic ornament inspired by the beautiful winter berries that pop up outside during this time of year. 

Two Texture Painting Techniques you will learn:

  • How to use a piping bag to create berry shapes.
  • How to create textured leaves using a pointed palette knife.

Who might enjoy this class:

  • Anyone who might want to create a one-of-a-kind ornament for their own tree.
  • Someone looking to make a special handmade gift
  • This class is great for all levels. Beginners are welcome, however some of the techniques might take a little practice.

I’ve included a few resources that might help you as you paint:

  1. A supply list so that you don’t need to write down each supply from the video. I’ve tried to include details on this list to help with any questions you might have.
  2. A bonus guide to packing and shipping your ornaments. This has been a process of trial and error for me and I’m giving you all my tips to make the process easier for you. 
  3. Access to my Texture Painting for Beginners class, which will introduce you to modeling paste options and several texture painting techniques.

To make your ornament, you’ll need these supplies:

  1. A plain ceramic ornament
  2. Acrylic paint
  3. Brushes
  4. A pointed palette knife
  5. Pretty ribbon
  6. Acrylic varnish
  7. A piping bag
  8. Modeling paste 

We’ll walk through each step together so that you feel confident with the process and excited to create more ornaments in your own style. You’ll end this class with a beautiful heirloom ornament to hang on your Christmas tree or give as a gift. 

Please keep in touch with me on Instagram (I love to see your projects there)! Or, by joining my email newsletter, where I offer a free monthly painting tutorial + project, and other monthly goodies. 

_______________________

Music found in this class: 

Winter by Roa Music | https://soundcloud.com/roa_music1031

Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com

Creative Commons / Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0)

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

Christmas Is Coming by MaxKoMusic | https://maxkomusic.com/

Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com

Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US

Sound Effect by Sergei Chetvertnykh from Pixabay

Sound Effect by UNIVERSFIELD from Pixabay

Sound Effect by Vincent from Pixabay

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Amie Murray

Painter + Art Educator

Teacher

I grew up in an art studio. My mom taught children’s art classes and we had a studio in our home - right off the kitchen. You could grab a snack and sit down to paint a few feet away. Art always felt totally natural and I loved it.

In 2010 I decided to take art from hobby to a full time career. Since then I’ve painted and shipped over 1200 original paintings all over the world, and am happy to share my creative process with you.

While I will always be a painter at heart, I’ve grown to enjoy Ipad art and surface design. I like the challenge of figuring out how to relate my traditional painting to new creations in digital art. I love color, thick texture, and often p... See full profile

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Transcripts

1. Welcome: It might look like we're getting ready to decorate a cake, but we're actually going to use this frosting like technique to create beautiful ornaments using acrylic paint. If you're looking for a unique gift or a fun project to do with your family during your holiday break, then this ornament painting class is for you. Hello, artists. I'm Amy Murray, a full time painter, Mom to three kids, a woodle and a little bird named Melody. I'm so happy you came here to paint today. And I wore my Christmas sweater just for this class. If you've taken any of my classes, you know that I love adding texture to my acrylic paint. Over the last decade, I've sold over 1,300 texture acrylic paintings using the same techniques that I'm going to teach you here today. In this class, we will focus on two texture painting techniques that will help you truly paint a one of a kind Christmas ornament. Together we will paint a ceramic ornament that is inspired by the beautiful winter berries that pop up outside this time of year. This class is great for artists of all levels. Beginners are welcome. However, some of the techniques we use might take a little bit of practice. To make your ornament, you'll need a few supplies. A plain ceramic ornament, acrylic paint brushes, a pointed palette knife, a pretty ribbon acrylic varnish, a piping bag, and of course, some modeling paste. I would love it if you decided to share a picture of your ornament. You can do that here on Skill Share by clicking on the Projects and Resources tab and uploading a picture there. Please visit my website, Alyn Murray.com for more artist resources. Every month, I send a quick free painting tutorial to all of my newsletter subscribers. For all of my class updates, please feel free to click the green follow button here on Skill Share. Now if you're ready to jump in and get started, let's talk a little bit more about our class project. 2. Our Project: A Hand-Painted Ornament: The project for this class is a ceramic ornament featuring beautiful three dimensional winter berries on a starry night sky. You are welcome to paint your ornament just like mine, but you don't have to. You can also take the techniques that we do together in this class and create an ornament that is totally unique to your own style. Here are just a few examples of ornaments that I've created using textured acrylic paint. You can choose your own colors and make your ornament as simple or complex as you would like. Please feel free to go with your own personal preference on these and don't worry. We will walk through every step of the process together. We'll gather our supplies. We'll paint the background of the ornament. We'll add branches and stars. Then we'll use our frosting bag to pipe on the berries. We will use our palette knife to add the chunky leaves. We'll finish the ornament with a nice coat of varnish to keep it protected. And finally, we'll add a really pretty ribbon to make it extra fancy. Here in the project section, you can post a photo of your ornament. You can also ask for advice or add photos of your projects along the way. You'll end this class with a lovely painted ornament that is perfect for gifting or hanging on your own Christmas tree. In my opinion, ornaments that are handmade are the most meaningful of all. Next, we will talk about some class resources that I have created to help you along. 3. Helpful Resources : I've included a few resources that you might find helpful in this class. Remember that to access and download the resources you'll need to open skill share in a browser instead of the app. First, you'll find a supply list so that you don't have to write down each supply. As I mentioned it in the video, I've tried to include details on this list to help with any questions you might have. Second, I've made a bonus guide to packing and shipping your ornaments. This has definitely been a process of trial and error for me. I'm giving you all my tips to make the process easier for you. If you have any questions, please feel free to post those in the discussion tab. I am more than happy to answer anything along the way. Next I will talk about the supplies that you need for this project. 4. Gather Your Supplies: To paint your ornament, you'll need several supplies. I will go over them briefly in this video, but I do encourage you to check out the supply list that I have provided in the resource section on that list. I give all of the specific colors, the brands I prefer, and all of the details so that you don't have to worry about writing everything down. As to paint your ornament, you will need a few supplies. A plain ornament. This one is made of ceramic bisque fired. It's not glossy and I just found it at a local craft store. Next, you'll need some paint. You're welcome to choose any colors you would like. If you want to know the specific colors I'm using, you can find that in the class resources. Third, you'll need some modeling paste. I will be using a light modeling paste, but you can use whatever you have on hand. Then you'll need a pastry bag or crossing bag that you can find typically in a bakery section of your store. We will be using that to load our modeling paste plus paint. And we will be piping on our berries. With that, you'll need a variety of paint brushes. Definitely a little thin liner brush and then maybe a couple square size brushes. Next, you'll need a palette knife. I definitely recommend having one with a pointy tip. Whether it's a larger size or smaller size, you can use either. I like to use this nice big round one just for mixing my paints. You'll need a ribbon. I'm using this red velvet ribbon, and it's about 14 to 16 " long, A pair of scissors to cut your ribbon. Last, you'll need some varnish to keep your ornament protected. I also recommend having water and a paper towel for clean up. That's it. Once you've gathered all of your supplies, you might be ready to jump into painting. But I do have a little bonus material for you before we start on that. I don't know if you can hear my bird. She talks every time I talk. 5. Bonus Tips Before We Begin: It might seem odd to give you bonus material before you get started. But trust me, you will be thankful for it, especially if you plan to make a lot of ornaments, Either to sell them or to give them as gifts. These are my three best tips that I've learned through a lot of trial and error, but I am giving them to you here to save you a ton of time. Top tip number one, use a pasta drying rack. Before the rack, I was finding little spots all over my house to hang my ornaments to dry. I was even getting creative and making places to hang these ornaments to dry. Then I remembered inside my pantry, I had this pasta drying rack. And let me tell you, I've only made pasta one time in my life. I got the rack out and I have it right here. And this thing is amazing for hanging ornaments to dry. When we use the modeling paste with the acrylic paint, it does take a full day to dry completely. You want a safe place to store your ornaments while they're drying. If you're just making one or two ornaments, you probably don't need the pasta rack. But if you're making a bunch of them, it is perfect. Second, I want to teach you how to save your paint inside your piping bag. I started my ornament making process by mixing small batches of paint every time I made a new group of ornaments. But over time, I learned how to just make a big batch and save it inside the piping bag so that it stays nice and soft. It's super simple and maybe seems obvious to you, but to save your paint inside your bag, just empty the tip of the bag by sliding any paint out of it or backwards. Then fold over the tip and secure it with tape or a paper clip. Your paint will stay soft until you're ready to use it again. My third tip, when you're painting the leaves, is to make a large batch of paint and save it forever, Or at least until you're ready to use it again. When I was painting the leaves on my ornaments, I was just mixing up small batches of green paints. And I kept finding that it would dry on my palette before I could use it up, or I would mix too much and it would go to waste when I was done. These empty paint tubes were the perfect solution. You can mix a batch of paint, load the tube, and squeeze it out little by little as you need it. This avoids both paint drying on your palette before you can use it and wasting paint. You don't need to do any of these things in order to take the. Please don't let any of these tips hold back your creativity. But if you find that any of this will make your process a little more efficient, please feel free to use these tips. Now we are finally ready to get started on our ornament. The first step is to paint the background. 6. Paint the Background: We are ready to get started. I have my plain ceramic ornament here. It came with this thin red ribbon and we're going to switch this out later for a much prettier one. But I like to leave it on while I'm painting, so I have a little something to hold on to. We are going to start by painting the background. I am three shades of blue. My darkest blue is going to be my predominant color. This is the exact shade that I am using. But I would say go with whatever you have in your paint box. Just load some on my brush and I do not remove this golden part. I've tried that and I found that it doesn't do good things for the integrity of the ornament. What I'm doing here is just working right around that top gold piece with a layer of my darkest blue. The string might feel like it's getting in the way a little bit, but trust me, you want to leave it so you can hang it to dry? I'm taking my darkest, darkest blue and just carefully working around in a circle. If you are not confident cutting in close to the golden piece here, you could tape it off with a little piece of tape so that you make sure you don't get any paint on it. We're just working our way around. I will go I guess till about halfway down. The ornament with the darkest color blue, If it does look a little bit translucent, that will depend on your paint. This is a heavy body acrylic. It is pretty thick and will cover just fine in one coat. If you're working with thinner acrylic paint, you might want to put two coats on before you move to the next color. I've got my dark blue all the way around, about halfway down the ornament. Then I'm going to switch to my next shade, it's slightly lighter, a light navy blue color. I'm going to work that around and I want to blend these. I found the easiest way to blend the light with the dark, if they start to dry a little bit on you, is just to put a tiny bit of water on your brush. And lightly brush that water over the two areas. And it will blend those two colors together here. I will do that again for you. I'm putting my Navy on there. Then I'm going to get a little bit of water on my brush, blend those two colors together. We are moving from at the top to light at the bottom. Now if you don't blend it perfectly, that is really fine because you're going to put branches and berries and leaves over the top. That will cover any blending issues that you might have in this step. Next, I'm going to take my lighter blue. This is a sky blue and I'm going to mix it in with my previous shade. Just come to the edge of that color that I just did. This is in between. This is a medium blue. In between navy shade and not quite your sky blue just yet. We are going to get that on there again. Feel free to go around each layer twice if you feel like your paint isn't covering like you'd want it to just work my way around the ornament. Blending those two layers together, none of this is a rule you have to follow, it's just how I'm painting my ornament. But you could do a gray background, you could do a purple background. Really, ever color you like maybe a dark green? It's completely up to you. I am just filling in the bottom with my lightest shade of blue. Putting a little water on my brush, and blending those two colors together. Now, one thing you might want to do is on this bottom part, do a nice light circle of blue just to add some good variety. I'm going to take a little water on my brush and blend that in there you have it. That's the background color for your ornament. And you can see it goes from super dark blue at the top of the ornament down to a lighter blue at the bottom. I'm going to let that dry completely and then the next thing we will do is add our branches. 7. Paint the Branches: This background is completely dry. Now we're going to start painting in the branches of our little winter berry plants. I just go for it and start painting. However, if you're not super confident about doing that, you're welcome to take a pencil and sketch in your branches before you start painting, I'm just using a white paint so that it has nice contrast on that blue background. Again, feel free to use any paint color that you would like. My goal here is to vary the height of the branches. I'm going to want some to be down lower, some up higher, some in the middle, so that there's just a nice variety as we move around the ornament. I like to start at the top of the branch, so that I know how high it's going to be. From the very start, I have to start with a Y and then add some branches coming out from there. Some larger ones, maybe they meet the stem together. You can have some shooting off to the side a little bit more. This little branch is going to end right at the bottom of that ornament. Now once I have the basic shape of this particular branch, then I'm going to add some little twigs sticking off those main branches. Maybe they'll be a larger one with some little guys here, maybe some extra small ones at the bottom. That is fine for this one. Too simple, not too complex. Remember, we're going to be putting berries and leaves on top of these branches. They don't have to be perfect, they just have to mark in the space. Now this one goes to the top. Then what I like to do when I make my next branch is make the height different. This one I will do a little bit shorter. He might be a little more simple, a small little branch, but they will meet near each other at the bottom of the ornament. Again, I'm just making the shape up as I go. That's the basic process of creating these branches. I'm going to finish my branches and speed up my camera so that you can see the whole process of painting. These one tip as you are painting these, especially if you are not confident in your branch painting skills or maybe you don't see yourself as a painter, but you want to be able to make something like this. Is just to focus on lines that are forming shapes over and over again. Here, I just made a shape on this branch. I'm making another shape. If you break down your full branch and just think of it as tiny Y shapes, it becomes a little bit less intimidating. You'll notice here I smudged my paint. I'm not going to fix it. I'm not even going to worry about it. I'm just going to come back to it and put a little berry or a leaf right on top and cover that right back up. I have a tendency to overdo things. Minimalism is not my strong point. I usually have to tell myself to stop painting the branches, but you can make it however you like it for you. I feel good about that. Our next step, now that we've painted all of our little branches, is to make the sky painted like a starry night sky. 8. Paint the Stars: To make our starry sky. We're going to use a technique where we build up a little space from darkest to lightest so that it actually looks like it's shining or glowing in the sky. To do this, you can start with a color that is almost as dark as the background and you'll just make a circle. I will do this one section so that you can see the technique and then I will probably speed up my camera while I do the rest of the sky. I'm just making tiny little circles in a variety of colors. Space them apart randomly, like the stars in the sky would be. You can see they don't even look like stars yet, right? They're just little circles that are almost as dark as that background color. You don't have to wait for that to dry. But you'll then take a little bit more of like a sky blue shade. We will just put a little bit of that on the inside of each of these little starry circles. With this color, I might even just add some tiny little background stars. Then we will take some of our sky blue. I'm taking this lighter blue here. Even adding that to the middle and you can see how it starts to glow a little bit from light in the middle to a faded blue on the outside. It just gives these stars that little halo effect. Now you'll notice some stars. I'm just going to leave as like a background darker colored star. Some stars are going to get this bright sky blue, dabbed in the middle of them. Now to make some of the stars really pop, I'm using just a bright white and I'm going to put a dot right in the middle. I'm not doing it on all of them, I'm just picking a few stars that I want to be the brightest in the sky. And you can see how those start to glow really brightly. But we still have our background stars to add depth to the sky. I might even take my white and add a few teeny tiny stars to the sky as well. Another thing I like to do, if you have any yellow on hand, is just pick a star or two that will have a little bit of a yellow tone to it, and it gives it that golden, glowing feeling to just a couple of the stars in the sky. Maybe we do a few background stars with that yellow color. That's the technique. And I'm just going to speed up my camera and work around the ornament. And fill in the sky all the way around. Again, it's important to remember that none of this has to be perfect. It's actually looks better if it's kind of random and we can see the little paint strokes and see that an artist created this. That's really the beauty of these handmade ornaments is they're not made in a factory or by a machine, and every single ornament is going to look different. You can see I once again speared my paint right there and I'm just not even going to worry about it. I'm going to come back and plop a little leaf right there and pretend it never happened, okay, good about my sky. The next step is super fun. We're going to add our textured berries and we are going to use a technique that is going to make you feel like you are decorating a cake. We'll let that dry, which really is just a couple minutes, and we will come back and add the berries. 9. Pipe on the Winter Berries: This is the most fun part of the project, in my opinion. We are ready to paint our berries. If you need to practice this on a different surface before going to your ornament, that is totally fine. Do all the practicing you need to. It is time to get out our modeling paste. I feel like we're always just waiting to get to this part because it is so much fun. I am using a light modeling paste, but you could also use a flexible modeling paste or whatever you might have available to you. I have a giant tub of it. Please know that you don't need a giant tub of modeling paste. You can buy these in teeny tiny jars. I think even as small as like 4 ounces or 8 ounces. I am just, so I would say, I don't know, a fourth of a cup here onto my palette. Just scooping it right out of my tub to my modeling paste, I'm going to add red paint. This is a cadmium red hue, but again, any red that you like will work just fine. This would also look really pretty if you did like a pink berry or something like fuchsia. I don't know the sky is the limit. You can make your berries any color you choose. I'm adding I guess I would say that was about a teaspoon of red paint to my modeling paste. And I'm just using any palette knife and I'm just mixing around my modeling paste and my paint. If you are new to modeling paste, I do have a number of classes that introduce you to this medium and we'll get you really comfortable with mixing it with your acrylics and using it in your projects. We are going to get out our pastry bag. I've inverted the bag and I'm just holding the very bottom part so that I can get my modeling paste close to the bottom so it's not just all over the bag here. What I'm going to do is just scoop this in there as if it were frosting. Truly, this is probably the same process you would use if you were going to decorate a cake or some cookies, except don't eat this, Inverting the bag, mostly towards the bottom here. Then I like to tie a knot in the back of the bag so it doesn't start squishing up the bath there. Now on this tip here, I am going to, let's see if we can see this here. I would say you want an opening that is about an eight to four of an inch, about the size that you want, your berry. You're just going to cut off a tiny bit of that tip. We're going to squeeze our modeling paste all the way down to the end of, I would try it out like on your palette or a spare piece of paper, whatever you might have lying around. Try it out, make sure you like the size that is going to come out. You're ready to go. When I make these berries, I actually like to start at the bottom and then move up towards the top. That's just because I need space to hold onto this ornament. I'm, I like to place my berries like at the end of a branch. I squeeze them out and just make a little berry shape. These are just my little winter berries and I'm moving on around this ornament, It does take a little trial and error where you're squeezing it out, making a circle shape, and finishing it off. Now it's good for these to be random and sometimes I like to put like a couple close together and then some far apart just so it doesn't look, you know, so uniform that, you know, they wouldn't really grow that way in nature. There's not really a science to this. You're just deciding where you want your berries, making them a little bit more dense. At the top, we are pretending we're decorating a cake here and we are piping on our little winter berries. I do like to go back through and if any of them have like a little point that it seems too pointy, I go back through with my finger and just kind of flatten the points I feel good about my berries. Let's hang this up to dry and we will come back tomorrow and add our leaves. 10. Add the Leaves: Once the berries have dried completely, it's time to put our leaves onto the ornament. The leaves are a little more time consuming than the berries, and this technique does take a bit of practice. Feel free to use a different surface or just a piece of paper to practice before you jump onto your ornament. My other tip is to not worry if your leaves are not perfect. Try to focus on the overall composition of leaves and the perfection of each individual one. We, of course, need to get the tub of modeling paste back out. And I'm going to mix together two green shades. I like a darker shade and I also like a lighter shade. One color I really like to use, this is an emerald green. It's a heavy body acrylic that I'm going to use as the main color for my leaves. To that I have another shade of green that I guess is a little more of like a dark lime green to tone down that bright emerald color. Just a little bit. For my lighter leaves, I just have this asparagus green, I guess I would say more of a spring muted spring green. Then if it seems too light, I might add in a little bit of the darker shade to tie the two together. I feel good about those two shades, but please feel free to mix greens that you like. This technique to make the leaves, in my opinion, is a little bit harder than making the berries. I do recommend that you practice either on your palette or a piece of paper, wherever you have some space to do that. We're going to use a palette knife to make these leaves. I scoop the paint on, but I don't want it like hanging over the edges like that. I scrape both sides. You can see it's just on the back of the palette knife. It's not globbing over or too big. Almost looks like a little triangle of paint. Then what I do, we'll find a clean spot here and I'm going to press a little pressure down and pull up towards the back of the leaf. This might take a little bit of practice. I do recommend just trying some out on a space that's not your ornament. I'll show you that technique one more time. This time you might not have a teeny tiny palette knife like this. This was actually my grandfather's palette knife. But say you only have a larger one that is okay and that can work too. This is a larger palette knife with a pointy tip. If I'm using a larger palette knife, just focus on only putting paint on the tip of that. You notice I did the same technique, scooped up the paint, and then I wiped both sides so that it's just evenly on the palette knife. Then I'll show you that technique one more time in a blank area here. Push the palette knife down and then gently release it at the back of the leaf. We are now going to put that onto the ornament. Again, you're going to make so many leaves on here that if they're not perfect, it is totally fine. I'm going to start by placing a leaf at the bottom there. I do like to cover up this area where all of the branches are joining together, Just so it all looks cohesive, like one large plant rather than a bunch of plants joining together at the bottom now you can see already I actually like my first leaf far better than my second leaf. But I'm not going to scrape it off, I'm not going to start over. I'm just going to let that leaf be and move on to the next one. I'm doing the same technique. I load it on, see how it's globby. It's like overflowing my palette knife way too much. I fix that by scraping it side to side. There you go. Now it's just a nice little triangle right there on the edge of the pallet knife, a leaf. This is not a quick process. If you start feeling a little fatigued from making every teeny tiny leaf, feel free to take a break and come back to it later. I'm going to speed up my camera, otherwise you would watch me make leafs for the next hour. You can see the process that I do. Okay, we are moving on to our lighter green. I feel good about the amount of leaves on my ornament. That process is definitely not quick and it's definitely not easy, but it looks so beautiful with all of that texture. When you're finished, I'm going to hang it up on my pasta rec and let it dry overnight again before we put a coat of varnish on to seal it up. 11. Varnish Your Ornament and Add a RIbbon: The good news is the hard part is over once your leaves have dried completely. The last step on your ornament is to pick out a pretty ribbon and apply a coat of varnish. And then that's it. After this step, your ornament will be completely finished. I've let my ornament dry overnight, so all of that textured acrylic paint quite dry. Now I have two more steps. Before my ornament is finished, I'm going to apply a coat of varnish. And I'm also going to switch out this ribbon. This little thin ribbon is just what came on the ornament. And I'm going to switch it out for this pretty red velvet ribbon, just to make it a little more special and fancy. You, of course, can use whatever ribbon you would like. I just slide it through the loop. Then I'm going to decide how big I want the loop to be, where you would put it on the branch. I like it about, oh, I don't know, that's like four or 5 " Enough to slide it over. A pretty significant branch on your Christmas tree and then I'm going to tie a double knot in that. Nothing fancy here. I'm going to tighten my knot then with the two pieces coming out the sides, I like to just jazz them up a little bit by cutting a little V shape, give it a little finished look like that. I'm going to do the other side here, eyeball it and make sure those are even. But again, it's a handmade ornament. Doesn't have to be perfectly even. Now my ribbon is attached and it's ready to hang on the tree. The last step is just to put a coat of varnish over my paint to keep it protected. I'm just using a Liquitex acrylic varnish. This is a matt varnish so it won't be super shiny. I've just poured a little bit of my varnish in this plastic container. This little lid that I found in my recycle bin actually, and I just painted on with varnish. You want to just do one quick coat and be done. If you go over the same spot over and over again as it's drying, the varnish will get a little bit chunky. You just want to pass over each area one time. Try to get in all those little nooks and crannies of your textured paint. I think that's good. The varnish will dry clear if you see it pooling just a bit in any of the tiny areas, don't worry about it. It will still dry completely clear. We're going to let that varnish dry for about a day and then this would be ready to gift or ship or just hang it straight on your tree. Hopefully you love your new ornament and you've made something that's truly one of a kind. 12. 12 Ornament FInal Thoughts: You made it. I hope that you have enjoyed creating your one of a kind ornament. And I hope that this class has inspired you to create more of these ornaments and really got your creative wheels turning. Just to recap the steps that we did together in this class, we painted the background, added the branches, painted the glowing stars, piped on the berries like a cake decorator added leaves, varnished the ornament, and finished it with a fancy ribbon. And now you have your own hand painted Christmas ornament ready to hang on your tree or give as a gift. If you enjoyed this process, I encourage you to check out my other three texture painting classes. Here on Skillshare. Together we paint quick, tiny texture landscapes, beautiful potted flowers, and abstract swirling florals, all using that magical modeling. Paste an acrylic paint. Please be sure to leave a review if you enjoyed this class. I love the feedback that students give me. Remember that you'll have to open your browser instead of the app to do that. I can't wait to see your project and keep in touch with you here on skill share or on Instagram. I believe that there is an artist in everyone and I'm so happy that you came here to paint today. See you next time. Bye.