Homemade Holidays 2024
My affinity for the holiday ebbs and flows from year to year. I tend not to travel during the holidays. I’m often the person who ends up working so that others can do the holiday thing. But I do enjoy decorating for the holidays. There is something about coming home from work when it is already dark and turning on the Christmas lights scattered around our apartment. Over the last few years, as my art practice has continued to grow, incorporating my artwork has become a part of my decorating process. Here are some of my favorite ways that I am sprinkling the holiday season around my home this year.
Bring Nature Inside
Occasionally we get a small tree for the holidays. And when I mean small, I mean those trees that already have the plastic water stand attached to them. The main requirement is that I can fit the tree in the backseat of my car. Since we have moved to Colorado, we have started to bring some of the things we scavenge on our hikes inside to serve as our decorations instead. My husband is usually in charge of collecting me various branches of different pine trees, interestingly shaped sticks, pinecones, rocks that I will scatter around our apartment around our plants, usually wherever we decide to have our lights up that year. This year, I also collected bunches of tall grasses. The contrast of the browns and greens bring a little bit more of the outdoors inside when daylight is so short.
Homemade Decorations
For 2024, I wanted to make some decorations. A neighbor in our apartment building fully decorated her door with spiders and bats for Halloween and it got me thinking about what I could do for our door for the holidays. I settled on painting some watercolor ornaments and it turned out to be a perfect opportunity to pull out my metallic watercolor paints. I love these metallics, but I do not use them very often. I created a set of round ornaments in various sizes on both my black watercolor paper and my regular white watercolor paper. To preserve them so that I could also use them next year if I wanted, I decided to laminate them. It gives them a bit of a shinier sheen than the matt finish they had before laminating, but I still really like them. And it was a relaxing activity to do in the evening after a long day of work.
Ornaments
2022 and 2023 Watercolor Ornaments
I started making handpainted and drawn ornaments in 2022. Each year they are a little bit different. In 2022, I wanted to create small circular paintings that I then mounted onto a series of wooden rounds. My husband scavenged the wood for me and made the rounds. I love these because each aspect is handmade and the paintings represent some of our travels from that year in Glacier National Park.
In 2023, I found these mini picture frames online and set out to create two small paintings. And I mean small, the artwork inside only measures 2.75 x 1.75 inches. What I love about these frames is that you can change out the artwork if you wanted to, or you could put two different pieces of art back to back. I created a smaller version of a painting from my Scotland series (where we visited that year) and then I made a tiny car portrait of my 2009 Toyota Yaris, Bubble, who I said goodbye to last year when I got my new car. It was a cute way to have a little memento of the first car I bought for myself.
2024 Ornaments
For 2024, I decided to continue with my current falling water idea. (You can learn more about that in my recent blog post Abstract Landscapes.) I cut out a series of four small pieces of paper that would fit inside the two remaining glass frames I have and created four pen drawings pulling on the abstract landscape ideas I have been playing with in my watercolor practice. They did not take very long to make, but I love them so much. They feel delicate and magical and I just want to step into them.
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Switching out Artwork
I discovered these magnetic acrylic frames when I was searching for ways to display the mini paintings I have been creating. One happy discovery is how easy it is to switch out the artwork inside. So I have gone around my apartment and switched out some of the fall paintings I had on display for wintery scenes. I feel like fall paintings are almost out of my system and I am itching to get up into the snowy mountains and start painting wintery landscapes. I feel like my abstract explorations are just getting started and I am interested to see how that translates into winter themes.
Bookmarks & Cards
The busy holiday season lends itself to small paintings and simpler subjects. I like to paint small series that feature holiday themes and colors that I can then use as postcards or gift-tags as needed. I also make little changes like switching out the bookmarks that I am using (I use paintings as bookmarks) and I prop-up cards on my shelves and windowsill to add additional pops of color to my decorations.
How do you get into the holiday season?
Do you decorate?
Do you like colored lights or white lights?
What homemade items do you make?