DIY Christmas Friday #2 Hand Painted Ornament

Hey, Hey! You ready to get your jingle on? Well it’s DIY Christmas Friday #2. Every Friday from now until Christmas I will be sharing a DIY item that even a monkey could make. No offense to monkeys everywhere. I am so excited to share with you how to do a metal hand painted ornament.

You know me, I stalk Michael’s and Hob Lob. So on a recent “M” adventure I found a whole area devoted to metal ornaments. They come in a ton of sizes and shapes. I snapped up this large metal ornament, regularly $7.99 – less my 40% off coupon, of course.

I wanted the metal to show so instead of painting the whole thing one color I measured in 1 inch marked it and then connected the dots.

If you look really close you can see the outline for my painting area.

I gave it a base coat of white, which acts like a primer and keeps you from having to paint a thousand coats of your paint color so that the metal doesn’t show through your paint. Plus, call me crazy, but I think it makes the top paint coat a little brighter.

Follow the white up with your choice of paint color. Since I used red on this one I did two coats. Red is a beast to get good coverage!

Then just paint in your design! On this ornament I painted my last initial and green polka dots.

To get the initial transferred I simple used my computer to find the font I wanted and printed it off. I then colored over the back side of the initial with a pencil, then flipped it over and traced the outline of the letter onto my ornament. Then just paint. You could use the same method for the circles, but I just used a circle cut out I had.

Once it is dry, just add a bow.

It’s that easy.

Here’s another that I made for a client. On this one I used the same transfer method for the initial and colored it in with a paint pen. I freehanded the foliage with a white pencil and then painted it in.

These ornaments are the bomb diggity!

They have smaller ornaments in different shapes that I think would be awesome personalized and used as gift tags, hostess gifts, wine bottle jewelry, on the backs of your dining room chairs for placards or – wait for it – ornaments on your tree!

Don’t feel comfortable painting the design? Use vinyl lettering and cutouts.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve gotta go – I’ve got some more ornaments to paint!

Until next time…..

                         Tammy