Seasonal, Holiday, Christmas Cards

 I'm giving up buying and sending out Christmas cards this year because like a lot of people, I simply can't afford it.

Instead I'm devoting my time to designing new ones for my zazzle stores so that I will be well prepared for next year.

The bright side of this is that once I submit the new designs to zazzle I can send the prototypes and mockups to some of the special people at the top of my Christmas List.

I'm just getting started with a warm holiday beverage.

I'm going to use the middle of this cup for holiday designs that I already have on zazzle. Which should save time and energy on drawing.

This image was cut out by hand and mounted on red construction paper to make my first card.

This second design never saw print. I wasn't quite satisfied with it so I just painted it up and mailed it.

Sorry friend, it doesn't mean that I love you any less, I'm just too thrifty to throw it away and I have to get back to work.

Christmas tree practice didn't go well so I'm off to zazzle to use the Christmas trees that I had drawn and painted in better days.

Wish Me Luck,

Julia

Painting holly and berries in watercolor

Scrap Crafted Cards

Believe it or not this is (or was) my living room. I just tell people "the creeping craft monster ate my house" and we all have a good laugh.

I'm making progress through that scrap pile and several of these will be going out in today's mail so that makes everyone happy...except of course my husband who is always tripping over my trails of paper bits and misc. craft supplies strung around the house.

Mulch ado about nothing

It's time to put my garden down for the winter and as usual I'm not getting around well enough to rake the leaves so I have a bit of fun just running them over with the lawnmower until they're cut up into a fine mulch that more or less disappears into the yard. Somehow it didn't inspire to to run into the house for the camera so there are no photos today either.
I mowed off the hosta around the trees too so it's looking a bit cleaner and neater out there.
There have been lots of birds at the feeders but I don't have any pictures of them either.
I'm waiting for the wind to die down a bit so I can finish the last of the projects that I want to spray paint this season.
In the meantime I'm moving cards from Zazzle.com/julia_art* into my card store Zazzle.com/PaperHugs* and stopping to re-design some of them along the way. There are 430 of them so that's going to take a while. When I'm not doing that I'm doing the research for that bulldog project and trying to get my studio space organized.
As I always say "my hobbies have hobbies, my projects have projects and my ideas have ideas"

Paint Yourself Happy,This Season and Always

 Well, this may be another lame post about painting greeting cards or just a chance to remind everyone how nice it is to get some practice painting while making people happy as you answer your mail.

 This is the corner of the envelope

This was the card

Other projects today

 Yes, there are always more cotton potholders to crochet and I keep it interesting by combining lots of different variegated yarns together to give the same type of charm as a rag rug, home spun and handcrafted. I love the way it looks and really enjoy having them around.

 I went back to work trying to paint poinsettia's on cards to answer today's mail with. Any of them that I really like may also get scanned and used on Zazzle.

I like the lighter approach I used this time-which one did you like best?

Are we there yet?

 I'm pretty happy about this envelope design except of course that some of the outlining strokes are a bit to wide. Thank goodness that can be corrected with the computer.

As far as the card goes I want to do a bit more shading on some of the beads and I'll add a bit of something spilling out of the top of the stocking on the card. We've scanned it here in case I overwork or spoil it somehow as I continue painting.

Christmas Watercolor Card and Envelope Set

 I had enjoyed working with this garland on the acrylic painting I did of it back in September so I thought I'd see how it would work out in watercolors. As always I started with the envelope first so I'd have some practice with the design before painting on the card itself.

 Here's the start of the design on the card.

 Here's a shot of the card in progress.

 It looks like the foot of the stocking came out too large because I hadn't sketched it in first. I also didn't make the whole image small enough to leave room for the sock monkey. Oh well, I may try it again...meanwhile, it's nice enough to toss in the mail.

Irises for Christmas

 I've been exploring different ways to celebrate all of our favorite things at Christmas.

 When I  finished the watercolor work I began to add waterproof ink to add more detail to the image. This shot really shows the difference between watercolor and mixed media work.

I liked the stained glass look on the finished piece but you'll find the image both ways on merchandise in my Iris store.

Sunflowers for Christmas

 The idea of sunflowers for Christmas sounds pretty crazy but I had just finished a big acrylic painting of sunflowers and was trying to switch gears and start designing some Christmas cards. These are watercolors and it's probably no surprise that as I began working the shape of the Christmas tree, I found myself continuing to paint sunflowers.

I kind of like the way it turned out but as you can see see I scanned it at a couple of different stages in case I overworked it. Scanning your project each step of the way is a great back up plan. I wish I'd thought of it years ago and it's the best tip I can give anyone to save them from frustration and disappointment.

Sock it to me. Sock Monkey and Granny Square Christmas Stocking

A few more steps

5. Feel free to turn your work to avoid touching areas of wet paint and to make it easier to paint in small details.

6. Keep inspiration handy so that you can see how well you've captured the item that you've decided to paint. As you can see here I've decided to use a black background and a small bristle brush (the coarser the better) to tap in Alizarin Crimson and Cad Red Medium to get the look of the old red wool stocking.

7. As long as you've got the reds laid out on your palette you might as well get out a small bit of white and add small dabs of the resulting pinks to the background that you're building. (With the price of good paints being what they are we don't want any of it to go to waste)

8. I've added the black to the are where the Granny Squares are going to be (I'm much more accustomed to crocheting them than painting them so this should be interesting). As there was a small amount of black left on the palette this was a good time to add the stitching details to the stocking as well.

Pencil Designs for Christmas Cards

The best place to start is with the things you have so I grabbed this Christmas stocking I made from a lot of scrap items that were given to me (and which hasn't sold on eBay or etsy) and then I started pulling other items out of boxes of old Christmas decorations and arranging them in different ways to get the creative process going. All you really need is a good idea so just jump in and try something. 

The next decision of course is which media and surface you're going to work on. I selected some 140 pound watercolor greeting cards with lighter weight envelopes and colored pencils. What you see here is the design for the corner of the envelope. The beauty of working this way is that even if I don't get a design that will work for publication or production, there's always someone special that will love a hand drawn card and envelope. Most of the people that I write to say they have great conversations with their mail carriers over my work and that adds even more fun to the experience.

Here's a close up of the envelope.

...and here's the start of my design for the card.

What I really like about this design idea is that it works in either a vertical or horizontal format and leaves lots of room for text boxes, calligraphy or any other way that I'd want to add a greeting to it.

Pinecone Projects

I've been receiving Christmas cards faster than I can paint replies so I started making cards out of photos of that pine cone I painted in watercolors. I mount it to green paper,trim that and then mount both to a blank card. I've been doing little pencil drawings on the corners of the envelopes which adds a personal touch and gives me lots of practice drawing. The postage stamps I've been buying lately also have pine cones on them so it works out real well.

Holiday Cards

I painted both of these today along with matching envelopes for them. I didn't scan the envelopes because I've already addressed them and they'll all go out in todays mail.