Deck the Walls

This is a Christmas present I made for a friend, and since it is a holiday decoration, I gave it to her early. Which means you get a holiday project post before the holiday.

The project was inspired by an episode of the Nate Show (is anybody else sad it isn't on the air anymore?) And inspired is a bit of an understatement. It is pretty much exactly what they did. I can't even take any credit. The women featured on the show have their own blog, so you can check that out here. The only difference is that I adapted it so that I didn't have to leave the house for any materials. (I swear I'm not a hermit, it's just that leaving the house with Bert to go to a craft store 40 minutes away still feels daunting. And without Keith along to entertain him, I usually can't concentrate to make any kind of decision.)

Ok, by now you are thinking, Get to it already. What did you make? Alright, alright. You have all the patience of Bert. I made a pair of reindeer silhouettes.

To start with, I had two canvases hanging around in the basement. I've had them for years and never done anything with them. They were 16" x 20" but you could use any size you like. We also had some red paint leftover from another project, so I opted to use that rather than go out and buy spray paint like they did on the Nate Show.

I found a photo of a reindeer in profile online (sorry, I didn't bookmark it so I don't know where it was now), then enlarged it in Illustrator and made an outline. I printed that on card stock, tiling it together and cutting it out with a craft knife to make a stencil. Then I lightly traced it on the canvas.

Bert came over to check up on me, making sure that if I wasn't playing with him, I was at least doing something remotely productive.

Once I had the reindeer traced on, I just started painting. You can see that one coat really shows the brushstrokes, so I ended up doing two coats. I tried to keep all the brushstrokes going the same direction, just to keep it a little more finished looking.

All told, it probably took me three hours to do the pair of silhouettes.

I wasn't sure if I was going to do one or two, and if I wanted to keep one for our house or give them both to my friend, but I really like them as a pair so I gave them both to her. This project is the one that really got me excited for the holidays and spurred me on to make the little reindeer pillow and another gift, which you'll get to see after it has been given!