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Stop Here, Santa! A Christmas Decorating Idea


We really love being creative with paints, colors, and various decorating materials, and fabrics. We did a wall plaque for the fall season, and we liked making it so much that we were inspired to do another one for the Christmas season.

The theme of this plaque was inspired by a gingerbread house that one of our nieces made at the ‘annual-family-Christmas-time-gingerbread-house-making-evening’ last year!

The plaque’s theme centers on a message to Santa Claus. We wanted to make it large enough so that the text of the message could be read from at least a few feet away. This routered edge plaque was about 12” x 9”. With so many shapes and sizes of wood plaques that you can choose from, it’s just a matter of preference and how big your image will be.

Lighting and time of day can change the colors of the object you are photographing. Of all the photos we took, this one shows the colors as close to how it was painted. The scene was at night, and the snow covered ground has a bluish hue.

 

 

We primed the board with a latex primer, so that the paint colors would read true. It’s sort of like starting with a white canvas, so to speak.

All the paints we used were acrylic, and are easy to find at craft stores like Hobby Lobby.

The house was sketched in perspective so that you’re looking down on it from the sky, as if you had the same view as Santa. Really, after seeing such an endearing message, how could he not stop?

 

 

If this project looks like one you liked to tackle, but you’re not sure what to draw or how to draw an object at a certain angle, you can get some helpful insight by looking at images on Christmas cards and wall calendars to see how the artist drew the image.

Once the board was primed, the image of the house was very lightly sketched in pencil onto the plaque before any paint was brushed on. The light pencil lines can be erased if you don’t like a certain line that you drew. You can lightly erase, and redraw it.

We really liked using the red raffia for hanging. This raffia has such a rich red hue, and it was another way to add more color to the mix. After all red is such a traditional color for Christmas. And for Santa!

 

 

To attach the raffia, we used 2 ring hangers on the back of the plaque, and the raffia was slipped through the holes and tied in a knot.

With the raffia, you could hang the plaque on the front door, or indoors on a hook. If you’d rather hang it like a picture frame, you could skip the raffia and use hardware for hanging picture frames, like the hook and wire, or a saw tooth hanger.

We gave the finished plaque to our niece whose gingerbread house inspired us. She just got married this summer, and she and her hubby are in the midst of decorating their new apartment. It’s always fun when you first start collecting Christmas decorations to deck the halls, and isn’t it amazing how many you do collect through the years?

 

Join the fun  – Metamorphosis Monday / Frugal Friday / Homespun Christmas

 

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