Look At The Stars, See How They Shine For You

Hi Festive Friends!  Not long now but still time to sneak in another holiday themed post!  This is another gift i made for two of my animal loving friends – I even had to attempt to draw a dog!

There’s a bit of a story attached to this one as I had been looking at online classes during Black Friday and on the Willowing site, all their self-study classes were 50% so naturally I was looking at those and deciding which ones to buy.  There was a Winter Whimsy class from last Christmas, and looking at the photos of what was included, I saw this lovely little wood slice painting of a girl and a bear looking at a big spirit bear in the sky.  I thought it was beautiful so I purchased the class… only to discover that the spirit bear wood slice lesson was missing!  Turns out that the class was swapped out for a different class after the promotional photos were done.  Oh no!  The substituted class was also on a wood slice and lovely but what I loved about the original class was the colours.  So I went on a hunt to see if I could find out any more about it and there, after scrolling down the teacher’s IG feed, was the photo I was looking for!  And guess what, apparently this class was free when you signed up for her mailing list!  HA HA, could have saved myself some money there but no matter, since the classes in the Winter Whimsy class are great too.

As soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to make some as Christmas gifts for three of my friends (sadly one painting didn’t make the cut) so I set to tracking down some wood slices (amazon of course) and then covering them with gesso in prep for painting.

Here is the link to the original image and website where you can join the mailing list and get some free classes from Katrina Koltes.  This one is called A Winter’s Tale, and has a girl and a polar bear looking at a big spirit bear in the sky.  I made a lot of changes to mine because I wanted a cat on mine, and then my other friend has a dog so I had to try and work out what a dog looks like lol.  Clearly I need some practice at dogs as I couldn’t even remember a basic dog shape lol. Then my friend got a puppy and it was too late to add another dog to hers!  I didn’t add a big spirit animal in the sky, instead I added a silvery white moon and lots and lots of stars.

So you might have noticed there were three wood slices, well I kind of messed one up and because I needed to get things posted ASAP, there was no time to redo it, so I had to send her parcel off without the wood slice gift.  Here’s why I didn’t send it…  It’s the one on the left 🙁  I had a bit of an ink problem and it went a bit wrong, so now I will either have to paint over it, or start again or both!

Mr G is not impressed with my artwork lol

So these two made the cut and Mr G’s approval!  I wrote a little poem on the back, and then packaged them up together with the little easel stands.  Fingers crossed they like them!

Challenges

Country View Challenges – December Challenge – Anything Christmas
Funkie Junkie – December Challenge – Deck the Halls Challenge Funkie Junkie’s current challenge set by Sara Emily is for Christmas Decorations so I hope these fit the bill.

Ingredients

wood slice, gesso, acrylic paint, acrylic ink, paint pens, metallic paint, iridescent medium, satin varnish

You might also like . . .

Tis The Season Christmas Card

The Meaning Of… Christmas Vacation

Winter Fairy Christmas Cards and Stash Busting Gift Making