Halloween in August: Painting

Our studio table has been cleared of all our clay tools so we can make room for our favorite part of the process ... the painting!

We choose to create the ornaments using the white clay because we really want to have total control of the colors we choose to paint the designs, for example...


For this design above, to create this striking green background we mixed anywhere from 3-4 different shades of green and yellows with a generous amount of water to give the design a watercolor effect. We very rarely use paint color straight from the tube. We even will mix a little purple in to the black to give it a little more something rather then straight black. The tricky part of doing it like this is trying to re-create the colors if they dry up or if we need to create more ornaments.






A few years ago we created this chart to keep track of our acrylic paints because every time we would go to the craft store to pick up or check out the paints we could never seem to remember which colors we had. The manufacturers are always adding new names and colors to their lines we could never keep up with all the new colors. Our sign might be a little large and we do get a few odd looks but hey it's better then having 10 bottles of Prairie Green #2310.


We are very happy with how our fall ornaments came as well. This ornament has a full palette of autumn colors.


This spooky little ghost peaking out the window was painted using a glow-in-the-dark paint.
It's a fun element added to our Halloween collection.


Here is our new mini swirly scarecrow wind catcher drying on top of a paint tube.


And what is fall without lots of mini pumpkin wind catchers.




Another paint technique we are experimenting is this one-step crackle effect. You paint this crackle paint over your painted ornament and it cracks giving it an aged look. You brush a lighter color over the crackles and wipe away the excess paint and it will make the cracks more pronounced.




pretty creepy!


Perfect for the Halloween season don't you agree.

~ Up next we'll share the final steps to make this collection complete!