Easy Snowflake Painting

I live in a little town called Placerville in Northern California, halfway between Lake Tahoe & Sacramento. The reason I bring it up is because we’ve had snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains recently.

I feel like I have the best of both worlds – I can see the beautiful ‘frosted’ mountains, but I don’t have to deal with the actual snow and all that it entails.

So before I dive into Christmas painting tutorials, I did this simple snowflake painting quick. Really quick. I’m not kidding either. The hardest part is waiting for the paint to dry in between layers.

Wanna see how easy it is?

Here’s what I used. I won’t call it a “supply list” because you don’t really need all of this. Use what you have on hand, k?

• Blank canvas (or paper, or apron, totebag or anything else ya got)
• Snowflake stencils (I used Martha’s. It’s an investment, but well worth it because there are so many other seasonal stencils included)
• Paint – white, medium blue, darker blue
• Foam Spouncer or stencil brush
• Paintbrushes – one to basecoat and a smaller one for dipdot ‘snow’

Basecoat you surface with your medium blue. I used FolkArt Hydrangea Blue, but any will work.

It wound up a little darker than I wanted so for my second coat I mixed a little white into the blue.

Not a pale blue, but lighter than before. Next . . .

With the same medium blue, paint some trees. Not a big deal – just a trunk, some branches and then little “Y”s. Remember you’re gonna cover the trees with snowflakes so they’re in the background.

Remind me to make a video showing how to paint trees, ok? In the meantime, you can look at this post here.

Grab your stencils & the darker blue paint. You can get away with using the basecoat color if you don’t have dark blue on hand. I just wanted a bit more contrast.

I’m not a great stenciler, ok? But this is pretty basic stuff. I just dab my foam spouncer into paint, then pounce it onto my foam plate to work the paint in and pounce it onto the stencil.

Simple. No pattern here. Just random snowflakes.

If you happen to get a little too . . . rambunctious with your pouncing and get some paint where it shouldn’t be, take a clean, damp paintbrush and stroke the oopsies off the canvas.

Not that I’d know anything about this, of course. Just trying to be helpful here.

Let the blue snowflakes dry. If you use foam spouncers it takes a little longer because your paint application will be thicker. If you’re like me, you just grab something else to paint.

I generally have 3-4 paint projects going in various stages.

Unfortunately some of them don’t reach the “finished” stage.

Then stencil white snowflakes. I had two packs of stencils – medium & small. If you don’t have the smaller stencils you can ‘fake’ some little snowflakes.

The smaller stencils are self-adhesive for glass by Martha. Again, each package has a lot of stencils so it’s worth the money, imo. (No, she’s not paying me to say this. I’m just telling you what I use & why.) You can use any kind of snowflake stencil though.

Now, for the highly technical & complex “dipdots”. Pay close attention so you don’t miss anything.

• Dip the end of your paintbrush in paint.
• Dot the end of your paintbrush onto your canvas.
• Stand back and admire your artistic prowess.

You know I’m kidding, don’t you? I hope so. I adore dipdots. Between circular spouncers & paintbrushes, there’s a ton of stuff we can paint. Believe me. I have a bunch of ‘tricks’ up my sleeve.

And you’re done! Quick.Simple.Snowflakes.

Don’t forget!

Tuesday, November 20 at 6 pm PST is my Live Hangout

I’ll show how to make fabric markers look like watercolors! I hope you’ll ‘tune in’. hahaha, that sounds so funny to me.

You can watch the Hangout here on my blog – hopefully I remember to embed the link. Or on my Google+ page. After the broadcast it’ll record to YouTube so it’s not like you have to be here at 6 pm.

(Although, you are more than welcome to join me in the Hangout. You don’t have to do anything, it’s up to you. If you want more info, email me at muralmaker1@gmail.com. I’d LOVE to have you!) 

Colleen

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