Since I opened my Etsy shop, I’ve been planning to make a set of Christmas cards. You just have to, when you’re a Christmas lover, like I am. But alas, the inspiration was far far away because I wanted to create something in my own style, something a little bit different from what you’re used to, but still very Christmassy. What to do?
I did do some sketches, but didn’t like them. I looked at all kinds of Christmas stuff on Pinterest to get an idea of what makes something look like Christmas – is it the color combinations or the motifs? I certainly didn’t feel like doing Santa’s in red or green Christmas trees.
I’ve always loved the graphic styles from the 50-70s, so I started a board of Christmas stuff from that time. And – hooray – christmas was in all colors back then; pink, orange, teal, brown, purple etc.
At the same time I did this grey and neon colored quote and I had a painted paper laying around, waiting for a quote. But then I saw a fox appearing from the marks. I started tracing it and more animals and trees came through. I filled the gaps with grey, outlined and doodled a little more. It was a lot of fun!
The last doodles I did, was the snowflakes and there it was – my new Christmas style, yeah!
Next step was painting a series of painted papers, making marks and finding the hidden Christmas motifs in them.
Out of the 10 paintings I chose the 4 I liked the best. They were scanned so I could do the finishing touches on my computer to get the ready for print.
Off to the printer they went and this is the final result, that quickly found their way to my Etsy shop.
Merry Christmas!
I am a maker by heart, and love to inspire crafty children and adults to cultivate their imagination and creative play. I create patterns and how-to’s to make it easy for you to create stuff and add your own touch to it.