I painted this Snowman Tealight Shade a couple weeks ago for my friend Beckie. What a treat to guest post on Infarrantly Creative! Beckie was my first bloggy friend and has been incredibly supportive and encouraging over the years. I’m thrilled to see how successful she’s become, yet still finds time to help all of us.
This is a darling little tealight made from watercolor paper, a wine goblet and a tealight, making it a very affordable gift.
Here are the supplies I used. If you don’t happen to have something on the list, get creative and come up with your own design for your tealight shade! I just happen to love snowmen.
- One sheet of watercolor paper 9” x 12”
- Shade template, provided below
- Acrylic paint – white, light blue, black & orange (you can add more colors too – have fun with decorating your snowmen!)
- Spouncers – not required, but they certainly speed up the painting
- Paintbrushes – I used a 3/4 flat, #6 flat and 10-0 liner, but use what you have on hand.
- Scissors
- Glue
- Wine Goblet – I get mine from the Dollar Store
- Tea light
Optional:
- fine tip sharpie, if you don’t want to paint small details
- scissors with scalloped edge
Here’s my fancy-schmancy tealight shade template. It measures approximately 13-1/2” wide by 4-3/4” tall. Depending upon the type of goblet you use, and the height, the overall size might need to be adjusted. Make a pattern out of scratch paper first to check your sizing before using your watercolor paper.
I have two different tutorials for you – a video and the written one. There are some slight variances between the two, but you’ll get a nice result following either one.
Written Tutorial –
When you have your size correct, trace the pattern onto watercolor paper. You can get a pad of watercolor paper at craft stores for under $3. It’s also great for greeting cards & other crafts too.
Don’t cut your watercolor paper yet! Wait until you’re done painting. Moisten your brush with water and dampen the paper, then stroke on a little light blue paint in the damp area.
Continue working in sections until you have the entire shade basecoated. Allow it to dry fully.
With a little white, paint loose strokes along the top 1/3 to 1/2 of the shade, where you want the sky to be.
This will be very faint, so don’t worry about it. It just adds a little background texture to your painting. I promise.
Now, paint the bottom with little mounds of of white – just little curves. You don’t have to fill them all the way in. Let some of the blue show thru.
Now for the fun part! The snowmen/family/people. (what do you call snow mommies & girls, anyway?)
If you have spouncers, great. If not, use a few bottle caps of different sizes and lightly trace your circles then fill in. Either way works, ok?
I use Martha Stewart foam spouncers. First, load one side of the largest with the same blue we used for the background. Pounce the bottoms of your mommy and daddy snowmen, er, people.
Then grab the middle sized spouncer and do the same thing. I used the medium size as the base for the kids. Then the smallest one for the parents’ heads. For the kids, just find a small circle – pencil erasers might work fine.
Now, let the blue paint dry. Foam spouncers create some texture so there’s more drying time. But . . . you can add a couple trees if you want.
You can! Just draw a trunk and little branches and at the end of the branches make a “Y”. Or two. Or three. With the blue paint. Simple! Try it! When the blue paint dries, topcoat the tree and branches with white.
So far we’ve just used two colors of paint. Pretty economical, huh?
When your snow family is dry, flip the spouncers over and dip them in white paint and cover up the blue.
Ok, so you won’t actually cover the blue paint. It’ll peek thru when the white dries. So, why bother? Because the blue adds some dimension, without a lotta effort. You wind up having “puffy” snowpeople, not just flat white ones.
Still with me? Good! Before you start shaking your head at this next section, lemme give you an escape hatch. . . sshhhh . . . you don’t have to paint the fine black details. You can just use a fine tip Sharpie.
But, hey, if you have a pad of watercolor paper, why not give it a try? You just might surprise yourself and have a lotta fun in the process.
Let’s start off with the faces. Black dots for the eyes and teensy-weensy dots for the mouths. Or a line – your choice.
A simple top hat for Dad and stick arms. Just like the trees with “Y’s” at the ends.
For Mom & the kids I used the same blue, again, painted simple hats and scarves and just a hint of black outlining. You could decorate them however you like with whatever colors you want.
Want some more ideas? I made these
snowmen magnetic paperdolls last year with all kinds of clothes.
You don’t even have to put clothes on them, if you don’t want to. They’d be cute just in all their snowiness.
Once all of your paint has dried it’s time to create the shade.
I cut it out first with regular straight scissors, then I use the scalloped ones. It’s up to you but I found it easier that way.
After it’s cut out, flip it over and dampen the backside of the shade with water again. Roll it into shape and fasten it with clothespins or paperclips until it dries.
Once it’s dried, overlap the edges a bit and glue them together. Any glue will work but if you use a liquid glue, fasten the shade with the clothespins again while it dries.
If you want, you can dress up your wine goblet too. Tie a pretty ribbon on it, stencil some snowflakes, whatever you want to do!
See how the snowpeople have a texture, even after the paint dries? that’s from the foam spouncers. And, see how you can’t really see the blue, yet there’s some dimension? It’s an extra step, but I think it adds a lot.
Here’s another shade where I used red accents. Fun, huh?
Make one in red and one in blue. That way you can keep one for yourself. Or have two presents!
Hey! Tomorrow is my 2nd Hangout & Paint! I hope you’ll drop by.
Hangout & Paint
Tuesday, November 27
6 pm PST/9 pm EST
Simple Holly & Berries
You can watch it here on the blog or click on my Google+. If you can’t make it at 6 pm, it’ll be on my YouTube Channel about 5 minutes after broadcast.
Colleen
What would you like to see demonstrated? If I can do it, I’ll show it!
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