Thursday, January 24, 2013

Hand Painted Glass Ornaments




If you could not tell by the other posts on this blog, I really like to create original items for gifts for my family.  With that in mind, I made my parents hand painted Christmas ornaments a few years back.

To make both ornaments, I used acrylic enamel paints which are especially designed for glass and ceramics, and once they set (it takes 3 weeks at room temperature) the paint will stay attached to the glass.  When Painting glass, make sure to wipe the glass with rubbing alcohol and try not to touch it after that.  This will get rid of any oils on the glass and help the paint adhere better.

Saint Louis Skyline Ornament:

The first ornament I painted was of the St. Louis skyline.  I moved to Saint Louis for graduate school and when I decided to make ornaments for my parents for Christmas, I made him one of the Saint Louis arch with the buildings in the background.

photo credit: 
http://photos.igougo.com/pictures-photos-p70397-St_Louis_Skyline.html
When making this ornament, I referred to the picture of the skyline that I have posted below.  If you are a novice painter like myself, painting on glass is a little bit difficult, especially with the small brushes necessary for the details.  For both this ornament and the ornament below, I had to ignore my natural tendency to be a perfectionist and just let the paint do what it wanted, with a little bit of guidance from me.

For the Saint Louis ornament, I first sponged on a blue background for the sky behind the buildings and painted some or the same color blue below what would be the future water line for the Mississippi.  I then painted the buildings and the building shadows on the river in black.  As the second to last step, I added the arch in silver (it turned out a bit thick, but still okay).  Last, I added on the "water line" in silver and lightly brushed some silver over the Mississipi to make it look more like a river.


Burano glass ornament:

A few years ago, my mom and I travelled to Europe.  We went to Greece, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany.  One of our favorite stops Burano, a small island near Venice.  This island is known for its lace making, but when we got there, we were in for a sight.  Every building was painted a different vibrant color.  The houses all had white windowsills and black shutters.  It was extremely pretty and quaint.

To commemorate our trip and turn my memories into something permanent, I decided to make my mother's ornament to look like a canal in Burano. Similar to the Saint Louis ornament, I first started by sponging on some light blue for the sky.

I then painted the blue canal and the grey ground and let those dry.  After this, I started with the houses, making each house a different color in rectangles and giving a few a third level for a window.  At this point, I had to just let go and know that everything was not going to look perfect and that my mom would like it no matter what.  :)  I painted white rectangles for doors and windows, let them dry, and then filled in the doors and windows with black.  I painted the roofs of the house varying shades from brown to brownish black.  I also docked some boats in the canal and added the church's bell tower (which turned out rather well, I must say :)).

The paint will dry to the touch in 1-2 hours.  For the enamel to permanently set, I let both ornaments dry for the required three weeks.  I think they were hits at Christmas that year.









Thursday, January 17, 2013

Happy Tree Painting

Inspiration: I moved into my apartment a couple of years ago and I decorated most of my walls with prints, paintings, and pictures.  However, my bedroom walls remained empty.  I never found anything on my student's budget that I wanted to look at every morning when I woke up and every night before I went to bed.  Then one day, I saw a painting of a tree online.  The background of the tree was four different panels of canvas, each painted in a gradient of a different color.  I thought to myself, I could totally look at something like that every night and each morning.  And so I set out to the craft store to buy some canvas panels, changed into my painting clothes, put on some painting music (I always at listen to Vincent by Don McLean, to try to channel the greats :)).  I was trying to think of something to name the painting, and decided to tribute Bob Ross and name the painting "Happy Tree."
Tree painting found on somewhere on the internet


Note: I have an image of the design I based my painting on to the right.  I think I found it somewhere while poking around facebook, but can't remember where it is and I could not find it tonight.  I apologize to the painter and the person who posted this picture for not giving the appropriate credit. I found something similar here.


How to:
First, buy the appropriate size canvases.  You can find canvases at pretty much any craft store, including Hobby Lobby, Joann's, and Michael's.  I bought five 8 inch by 24 inch canvases, but you could buy however many of whatever size you would like. I did get some funny looks in the store  as I was comparing different sizes by laying 5 canvases on the floor.  I put everything back, it was fine.  :)  You can also buy acrylic paints and brushes at the craft store, if you do not have those.



Then paint each panel in a gradient (lighter at one end, darker at the other).  I first mixed up my light color of paint, painted a few inches with it, and then added the darker shade into my paint mixture a little bit at a time while painting the rest of the canvas, until I got to the appropriate color by the other end.  You can see the colors I chose in the images on the left.

Once all the panels are painted and have dried, it is time to paint the tree.  I used a brown paint with a little black mixed in.  I added a little water to my paint to ensure that it spread easily.  I started with the tree trunk and then branched out.  I really like spirals so I made the ends of my branches spiral.  Along with the branches, I also added roots to the base of the tree.

Now it was decision time.  Part of me really liked the simplicity of the painting as is with just the background panels and the tree "skeleton" in the foreground.  It was really pretty.  However, I did not want to "leaf" anything out and the painting just felt incomplete.  So I decided to take the plunge and add the leaves.

On the green and blue panels, I added green and blue leaves.  I tried to make a gradient-like swirl for each leaf, to give it a bit of dimension.  I did that by dabbing a light color and a dark color side by side and dipping the brush into both colors.  Then I painted them by moving my brush in a circle.  I did this until I was happy with the amount and colors on the blue and green panels.  I also added some leaves on the "ground."

I moved onto the orange panel (far right) and pink panel (far left).  For these, I used the warm colors of orange, red, and yellow for the leaves.  Finally, I had one last decision, what colors to make the leaves in the middle purple panel.  I decided to use every leaf color I used on the other panels in the middle.  It made me happy to be so colorful!

I love the final result and cannot wait to hang it up in my bedroom.  Hopefully it will make me happy for years to come, and I hope if you attempt to recreate this, that it makes you happy too!  After all, as Bob Ross said, "Every day is a good day when you paint!"  And finally, I am going to include a video of Bob Ross for inspiration!

"Happy Tree" - the final product

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Bird Dog Hunting Hat


Inspiration
:
I made this hat for my dad.  My dad really likes to hunt and thankfully he lives in rural Iowa and has plenty of ground to hunt on.  Deer hunting is his favorite and you can find him hunting most weekends in the fall - well, actually, you probably cannot find him, because he is somewhere deep in the timber immersing himself in nature and waiting for that next trophy buck to come along.  I thought about putting a big buck on a knitting hat, but even with my creativity, putting antlers on a hat was somewhat difficult (and who knows if you would even be able to tell they were antlers after the hat was made?).  Wow, typing this out, I just had an idea of how to make a deer with antlers...maybe next Christmas...
   
Anyway, back to the hat.  Dad also likes to hunt pheasants (although there are not many left where he lives) and I think he used to do some duck hunting in his younger days as well.  I designed Dad a hat with dog pointing at three flying ducks.  This hat reminded me of a painting we used to have in our basement and the bird dogs we had as children.  I am proud of my original design and I hope my dad likes it.


Making the hat:  I don't think I am going to write up a pattern for this hat, because it was pretty intricate and there are a lot of things I would do differently a second time around.  First off, there were several rows where I was constantly carrying the black yarn under the hat.  And as a rookie mistake, I did not wrap the yarn around the working yarn often enough, making the hat very tight when I was done.  I ended up having to cut the yarn behind the hat in some places and tie it together so that the hat would stretch and fit my dad's head.  That is why the hat is kind of bobbly in some places with the blue.  If I were doing this again, I would make the birds lower (maybe flying out of the grass) so that I wouldn't have to carry the black yarn so far without using it.  Also, the dog (while it looked like a dog when I charted the design) ended up with a longer neck than anticipated and I would fix that should I make this design again.  If you would like me to type a pattern of the hat, please submit a comment, and I will consider typing my notes into a pattern.
The Four "Thanksmas" Hats of 2012:
Knit Cat Hat for my niece
Football Fan Hat for my brother-in-law
 Pottery Knit Hat for my brother
 Bird Dog Hat for my dad

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Pottery Knit Hat





The inspiration: 
My brother Dan is a high school art teacher.  One of his favorite hobbies is making some awesome pottery.  He even has his own pottery wheel in his garage and makes a lot of creative designs.  Check out the picture below featuring some of my favorite pottery that he has made.  He  also makes some amazing jewelry made out of shed deer antler beads.  Check out his Etsy account by clicking here - sorry for the shameless plug, but the jewelry really is very beautiful.

To celebrate my brother's artistic talents I decided to make him a unique hat with various pottery designs for Christmas this year.

The design:  This hat was made with brown yarn and I used a variegated yarn for the pots.  I was hoping the yarn would make a striped pattern, but instead it ended up making the pattern you see on the hat.  Even though it did not end up being striped, I still like the vase designs.  I hope my brother liked it too!  The pattern can be found here and more information about the pattern can be found on ravelry.com here.

My brother made some geometric pottery this past summer - he is very talented!  Check out his facebook page here.