Week 49: Watercolor Ornaments

I’ve been wanting to try out these watercolor Christmas ornaments for a while. But when I first saw them, it was too early for Christmas ornaments. If Christmas ornaments aren’t your thing, I’ve also used the technique to make hearts for Valentines at the library where I work. Instead of something round as I use in this week’s video, shorten a toilet-paper tube and bend it into the shape of a heart. I also filmed a practice run of bubbles that I never put in a video. They had come out rather dark and I had other ideas that grabbed my attention so didn’t get back to filming a second round. But we’re experimenting with watercolor again this 49th week of the 52-Week Art Journal Journey. Welcome! I’m Melinda, and I’m here to encourage you to reclaim your creativity and practice creative self-care with my simple form of art journaling.

As mentioned, you’ll need something round to apply your paint. I’m trying out a small canning jar and one of my old juice bottle caps. You may notice some designs on its top. Hot glue. I made it into a stamp, and use if for creating collage papers. As usual, I’m using an inexpensive set of watercolors from a local dollar-ish store. Because it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money to reclaim your creativity. You’ll also need a small soft paintbrush. And a paper towel, cotton swab, or something else small and absorbent.

The first steps are to choose a color, and wet it (several if you’re making bubbles), then, instead of applying the wet paint to your paper with your brush, use your brush to coat the mouth of your jar or edge of your other round object.

Stamp the color onto your paper.

Use your brush wet to pull the paint into the heart of your ornament or bubble. You don’t want the color too even, and you don’t want to make your ornament or bubble too dark and opaque by adding more color.

You can add highlights to mimic reflected light by lifting away some paint with a small piece of paper towel, or a cotton swab.

It turned out the micron pen I grabbed to make toppers and hangers for my ornaments, so they weren’t just floating in space, was mostly dead. I thought maybe that would give them a light look that would complement the translucence, but, well, no, it just looked like I was using a dying pen. I have no idea where my silver Sharpies have vanished to, but I did find a cheap silver paint pen. It worked pretty well, at least for the tops of my ornaments. It was a little heavy for the hanging strings.

Wrapping it up

It’s hard to believe that there are only three 52-Week Art Journal Journey prompts left! I don’t know about you, but I can’t just let this go. There will be some tweaks in 2024, and a new theme, but I’ll be back with art prompts.

If you’d like to be among the first to know more about our next journey, as well as be invited to my private Facebook group of others who need to make art to feel our best, click here to sign up for my email.

If you decide to share your small art on Instagram to encourage others to reclaim their creativity and practice creative self-care, tag me. My newer Instagram is Better with Art, because we ARE better with art. It’s focused on creative self-care: @better.with.art. I’ll still be active on @melindavanry with art inspiration and my art, my art jewelry and other items I’ll be offering for sale. And I invite you to follow both.

Not on Instagram, but on Facebook? You can find me here.

I’ll be back next week with one of the last few 52-Week Art Journal Journey prompts. In the meantime enjoy experimenting with watercolor. You can also click here to check out past prompts for more art inspiration.