Original Watercolor Christmas Cards 2022

Wishing all my friends, family and blog readers a very Merry Christmas!

One of my 2022 New Year's Resolutions was to grow my skill in watercolor.  I definitely accomplished that goal.  As evidenced here by a painting done early on (right side) and then the same painting later in the year (left side).

At some point, I decided I wanted to create a painting to become my Christmas cards - the perfect culmination of the year of work.  For all the rest of the year, I followed lessons in a book (The Joy of Watercolor) which really helped compose my drawings, as well as guided me on colors and techniques.  For my cards, I was starting from scratch.  I'm going to walk through my process, in case it's interesting to anyone!

1: The Idea

Probably from watching one of my favorite movies - The Holiday and one of my favorite TV shows - Ted Lasso - I came up with the idea of  "Christmas shops" or "storefronts".  Super charming and Christmasy!

2. Inspiration

I started gathering inspiration storefronts by following @shopfrontspoetry on Instagram and saving them to a collection.  Here is my general inspiration:

3. Drawing

Once I had my inspiration, I needed to lightly sketch it out.  Maybe the hardest step for me.  Drawing does NOT come naturally to me and I've found drawing architecture to be less forgiving than other subjects like flowers!  I ended up choosing these specific shops as inspiration - see if you can match them up to what I drew!

4. Color Mixing

I did a lot of mixing and testing before finally choosing a color and painting my drawing.

5. Watercolor Painting

Definitely a multi step, multi day project. 

6. Scan and Digital Design

I scanned it on a copier at work, using the highest resolution possible.  Then I cleaned up several things and added several things, using Canva.  Finally adding some meaningful "Easter eggs" for my family.  I named the far left store Kringle's Book Shop, as a nod to my Dad, who went home to heaven a few years ago, because he loved books, loved to read, played Santa in our small town and kept Christmas in his heart everyday.  Also to honor my Dad, a red cardinal perched on a windowsill of the building on the left.  The book shop door's kick plate says Schnelle, my family's last name.  The center shop is called The Shop Around the Corner, a favorite movie of my mom and I and the name we always talked about "if we ever got the chance to open a shop."  The image below is before any digital edits were made.

7. Have your cards printed!  I used VistaPrint - a horizontal folded card and chose "Upload Your Own."

Final Result:

To everyone seeing this - Merry Christmas and thank you!

XOXO 

Lyndi

Christmas Perler Bead Gift Tags

 This year my idea for gift embellishments was to make my own perler bead versions!  

I found patterns on Pinterest and invited several of my nieces and nephews to try making them with me.  None of the kids enjoyed it.  It requires really fine motor skills and patience, as well as engineering to plan out your pattern and conceptual thinking to visualize how your pixelated image will look.   My niece who is ten enjoyed it for a while, and then the slightest bump of her board knocked half her work off and she got frustrated with it.  So definitely for older kids or adults.  I had fun seeing my concepts come to life!  My theme for Christmas this year is vintage, colorful, fun - so I thought these went well.

This one is on sale right now and would be super fun to do over Christmas!

When I wrapped, there were some perler bead creations that still had holes that I could get a ribbon through and some I just taped or tied on to my gifts.