Ballard Designs Inspired; Snowbirds & Blossoms Tutorial

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17.10.11

I thought it about time I shared a little art project I’ve been working on as a request from my sister. It’s a a certain painting she’s been drooling over from Ballard Designs for years now, every time she see it she mentions how I should paint it for her but inevitably one thing has led to the next and well I’ve been putting it off for years. Then I saw it Pinned it on Pinterest which meant the it was on like Donkey Kong. Finally it’s finished and ready to go.

It was a super simply Art project inspired by the Snowbirds and Blossom painting for sale on Ballard Designs website seen in the image below. It’s such and pretty painting and the background looks just like falling snow.

image via Ballard Designs

The  total price for the entire project was approximately  $35.00 using a 40% off coupon for the canvas at Michael’s. You can download a printable materials list here to paint your own Ballard Designs inspired Snowbirds and Blossoms painting.

Now let’s get to the fun part.

Paint the entire background of your canvas in 2 coats of silver paint and let dry. I used Liquitex Basics Acrylic paint in Silver which I had on hand but you could easily use regular silver craft paint.

Once dry click here to print the tree outline.  It’s sized to accommodate a 24 x 24 inch canvas and will print out on 9 sheets of regular paper. You can then piece together the sketch to transfer onto your canvas using your carbon transfer paper.

Starting with the gray and white and cream background. Use the eraser end of a new pencil and dip the eraser into a bit of Pewter Grey paintand randomly dot the entire background of the canvas using a straight up and down motion.

You may want to practice a couple time on the plate to get a feel for how much paint should be on the eraser to get the size dot you want. I just dipped and dotted a approximately 3  to 4 times before reloading the eraser.  It’s basically a process of dip, dot, dot dot, repeat. This will give an added dimension as each of the dots will be slightly different in size and opacity as the one before. Keep dipping and dotting until you have a random gray dots all over the background area of your canvas, don’t worry about completely covering the entire background with dots as this is only the first layer.

Next do the same thing all over again with Unbleached Titanium White filling in randomly the areas that don’t have coverage, then you’ll do the same with Butter Cream and finally a layer of Titanium White.  Once that is complete stand back and look to see how well the silver background has  been covered. You’ll want most of your silver background to be covered and you can go back and dot till your hearts content.

Once your happy with how it looks it is on to the leafy part of your tree…and you guessed it, more dots. The only difference between this part and the background is the center of the tree.  To give the tree depth use Christmas Green color only in the center portions as shown in the image above.

After the Christmas green color you add the Fresh Cut Grass, then the Kiwi and the Leaf Green in the same manner as the background was applied.  Dipping and dotting until your silver background is mostly covered. Then you’re ready for the tree truck which is dotted in the Dark Chocolate and the Coffee Latte.

 

Now this was a bit time consuming but super easy art project. I did it over the course of a number of nights watching some TV. I think it turned out just lovely and after all of that dotting I my sister has a beautiful Ballard Designs inspired hand painted painting for much less than the $449 retail price tag.

Shhh, don’t tell her but I almost want to keep it for myself.

 

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