It is not the fanciest painting you ever did see, but it’s festive, fun and fairly simple to create.

Have you seen those places where you get to drink wine with your girlfriends while creating a fabulous painting? I’ve always wanted to go. Unfortunately, I have not.

I have especially wanted to take my 10 year old son to such a place, minus the wine, of course. I don’t, however, want to spend $50+ for the 2 of us to create the same painting. So, I came up with a painting we can all do. It’s simple enough for the kids. It’s also fun enough to be part of a girls wine drinking paint party.

My goal was to create a painting that was cute and something I’d actually want to display in my home, as well as be cost effective. I also wanted it to be doable for all artist levels.

12 Days of December

December 7th: Easy Christmas Tree Canvas Painting Tutorial

Items You Will Need

• Canvas – I used 11″ x 14″ canvas panels. The canvas panels are slightly cheaper than the wood framed canvas. During a holiday sale, I was able to get a 3 pack at Joann’s for $4.80.
• Paint – I’ve used both tempera and acrylic paints for this project. Both work fine. I prefer acrylic, though. In the following instructional steps I list the colors I used for reference purposes only. Feel free to use whatever colors you have on hand. And, don’t be afraid to mix your own colors if you don’t have quite the variety you would like.
• Paintbrushes – As much as I like painting with the “nice” brushes, I paint a lot with the kids, so I most often use the cost effective 5 pack of Crayola paint brushes. They are usually priced around $5 and will often be on sale for less. That set of brushes works perfectly for this project. I did, however, use a wider brush for the background.
• Palette – You just need something to hold your paint. It can be an actual palette, cardboard, or a paper plate. My favorite is the cardboard from a frozen pizza. It’s silly, but I like it because of the round shape.
• Table Cover or Easel – If you have an easel, that’s fantastic. Use it. Around here, though, we don’t have enough easels for the number of painters. So, I put white butcher paper on our kitchen table and we paint away. Newspaper would work fine, too.

Step 1: Paint the Background

• For the kids I used tempera paints in black, purple, blue, and red. The adults used acrylic paint.
• I also mixed in glitter. This is not a necessary step. I just like glitter.
• The kids used a foam brush to paint the background. Adults used a 1″ paint brush. Again, either one works fine. Use whatever you have.
• The trick to this background is not mixing the colors before applying the paint to the canvas. I squeeze blobs of paint onto the palette. Then brush them onto the canvas, blending them here and there. But, allowing the individual color to show through as well.

Step 2: Outline the Tree

• Using a light green acrylic paint, I painted an outline of the tree. You could draw it in pencil first, if you would like. But, I didn’t.

Step 3: Fill in the Tree

• Using the same light green paint, fill in the entire tree area.
• I used mostly downward strokes, resembling tree branches. No moving my brush horizontally.

Step 4: Adding Snow to the Background

• I mixed together white acrylic paint and pearl it medium from Crayola for the snow. The mixing medium isn’t necessary. I just have it, so I used it.
• Painting circles is super simple. Flip your brush over. The end of your paintbrush is now the brush you are using. Dip the end in white paint and dab onto the canvas for snow. Using different brushes will give you a variety of circle sizes.

Step 5: Adding Detail to the Tree

• Using a variety of paints (Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow, Light Green, Deep Green, & Phthalo Blue) I created depth to the tree. I used mostly a dry brush technique, but also blended colors right on the canvas.
• Again, I used vertical or sweeping strokes. No horizontal painting.
• The deep green, phthalo blue, and cadmium red were used where I wanted shadows. The cadmium yellow was painted where I wanted a highlight.

Step 6: Outline the Tree

• Using black acrylic paint, I outlined the tree.

Step 7: Painting the Star Glow

• I used lemon yellow acrylic paint and pearl it medium for the glow effect. White paint mixed with a dab of yellow would work as well.
• I used a dry brush technique. Each stroke began in the center and then pulled out.

Step 8: Adding Lights to the Tree

• Using the same technique as the snow, paint the lights using the end of the paintbrush.
• My paint colors were: Deep Magenta, Cadmium Yellow, Phthalo Blue, Cerulean Blue, and Cadmium Red

Step 9: Painting the Star

• Using Cadmium Yellow paint a star at the top of the tree.
• Allow the yellow paint to dry a smidge, then outline the star in black paint.

Step 10: Enjoy your Festive Painting

For a quickie version of the steps, print the jpg below.

Please enjoy this tutorial! However, do not sell or share the images as your own. Please link back to this original post.

All 12 Days of December:

December 1st: Hot Drinks Bar Party Kit • Printable
December 2nd: Warm Up Here Burlap & Canvas • DIY
December 3rd: Photo Booth Backdrop • DIY
December 4th: Snowman Photo Booth Props • Printable
December 5th: Let it Snow Gift Card Holders • Printable
December 6th: Christmas Gift Box • Printable
December 7th: Christmas Tree Canvas Painting • Tutorial {you’re already here}
December 8th: Hot Drink Pouch • Printable
December 9th: Build Your Own Snowman Gift Tags • Printable
December 10th: Let it Snow Gift Tags • Printable
December 11th: Christmas Word Search • Printable
December 12th: Let it Snow • Printable

I would love to see how you used these 12 Days projects. Please share your creation(s) with us here.

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Our oldest is raising 2 pigs to earn money for the laptop he’s been wanting. Although he’s been doing most of the feeding & watering, we’re all learning a little about pigs.

THE FIRST COUPLE MONTHS

Back in September, the day they came to live with us.

They always came to say hi when I walked by. I’m sure they were hoping for food. Whatever the reason, it was super cute.

They liked to nibble on our shoes. It didn’t seem as if it was meant to be mean. Maybe they were hoping they would taste good?

WATERING

We use a bucket with watering nipples for our thirsty chickens The goats have a bucket. Neither of these methods were going to work for getting water to the pigs. We tried buckets and shallow containers. They stepped in them & spilled them every time.

So, Farmer John went to the feed store and came back with this. It works well as a constant source of water… in warm weather. Once the temperature started freezing, though, he had to unscrew the hose. Which, of course, meant no water.

The pigs then got upgraded to the container we use as a brooder for our chicks. They’ve had this for awhile and seems to work fine.

FEEDING

We had the same problem with a feeding bucket as we did the water. They dumped over every container they were given.

They have moved on to eating from this metal container we once used for our dogs.

SHELTER

We talked about getting pigs and Farmer John started a shelter. But, the day came sooner than we were thinking. We had 2 pigs, but no home for them.

The pigs moved into what we call “The Duck Pen.” It was originally built for ducks. But, ducks, chickens, quail, turkeys & goats have all resided in this pen. It was empty at the time, so the pigs moved in. Straw bales were lined against the chicken wire to keep them from pushing under the fence. This worked for awhile until they were big enough to break the bales.

Sleeping in their cozy duck house. We had a light on them for awhile. But, don’t anymore.

Their current home is a mix of materials we had on hand. Their pen is set up inside the fenced area for the goats. Cattle panels were attached to the beginnings of the structure Farmer John originally started for the pigs. Their house is a hoop house we’ve used for gardening projects and housing chickens.

GETTING BIG

The pigs are definitely growing. I don’t know how much they weigh, but they outweigh our son. They are getting a bit aggressive. They are no longer the cutie patootie piggly wigglies

Resting in the hoop house.

They still come up to me at the fence.

I have no idea what the goats and pigs think about each other. But, with the fence between them, there doesn’t seem to be any problems.

It didn’t take them long to turn their living space into a soupy, sloppy, mucked up mess.

Rootin’ for something

So far our pig raising experience is going well. We’ve had a few minor issues with figuring out the best way to feed and water them. They escaped once. Farm Kid1 has had to figure out how to get them their food without the goats jumping all over him and without the pigs trompling him. But, he’s figuring it out.

They probably have about 2 more months until they reach butcher weight. Until then we will enjoy them.

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Over the summer, the kids created fun butterfly paintings. I gave them the same step by step instructions, yet all 3 of their paintings are original. I absolutely love that!

Supplies

• Canvas, we used 11″ x 14″ canvas panels
• Paint, acrylic or tempera – red, yellow, green, blue, white, and black
• Paintbrushes and/or sponge
• Pipe cleaner
• Sequins & Glitter Paint
• Misc pieces of cardboard
• Glue Gun

Step 1: Paint Background Blue

Step 2: Add Details to Sky

Farm Girl chose to paint the more typical clouds & sun.
Farm Kid2 went with an abstract look.

To make the rays of the sun, Farm Girl dipped the edge of a cardboard piece in a mix of yellow, orange & red paint then pressed the edge on her painting.

Step 3: Creating Grass

The kids created grass using the same method Farm Girl used for her sun’s rays.

I like mixing a variety of colors together – but, not blending them completely together. The base color was green right from the bottle. But, we also mixed in varying amounts of yellow, blue, red & white.

Step 4: Adding Flowers

Farm Girl glued flower sequins in her grass.

Farm Kid1 & Farm Kid2 painted their flowers.

Step 5: Painting the Butterfly

I cut butterfly shapes from cardboard and the kids painted them. They painted the entire butterfly. But instead, you could paint only one side of the wings, then squish it over onto the other side to make a perfect reverse copy of it.

The kids formed the body & antennae from a pipe cleaner. I used a glue gun to attach the pipe cleaner to the butterfly, then to attach the butterfly to the painted canvas.

Finished Masterpieces

I love that this project was simple, yet had great results.

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This spring the kids & I tried out a new activity: letterboxing. I had vaguely heard about it and decided to look more into it.

Well, it’s a treasure hunt similar to geocaching, involves rubber stamps & takes us to new places. Win, win, win!

JOURNALS

The first thing we did was make journals. The letterbox treasure is a rubber stamp to ink in your journal.

STAMPS

We also carved our own stamps. We use these stamps to ink in the log found at the letterbox. You can choose to make just one stamp for your family. You can also choose to use a store bought stamp. Or, you can do what we do, which is have one stamp for each kid. Whichever kids are with me stamp their image in the logbook we find.

SLEUTHING

We had our equipment, now it was time to find those letterboxes. We use both Letterboxing.org & Atlas Quest to search for clues.

Top: Farm Kid1 grabbing our first letterbox find.
Bottom Right: That first letterbox was Benny Beaver at the Oregon Garden.
Bottom Left: The Benny Beaver logbook was full, but they had a second logbook available. So, we stamped in that one.

Be sure to bring your own ink pad, as many letterboxes don’t have them.

I will admit, it is a bit of a process getting our 4 logbooks stamped & the kids 3 stamps in the found logbook.

Four of the letterbox stamps we have found. I typically add the name of the letterbox & the date we found it to my journal. I have seen others add info about who they were with or what they were doing. I kinda like that; maybe I’ll start including more to my journal.

My children enjoy letterboxing, but I’m afraid I might enjoy it even more. I like adding a treasure hunt to our outings & am usually impressed at the quality of stamps we find.

The only downside is that we get skunked often. We don’t find the letterbox we’re searching for about half the time. It’s frustrating, but then it makes the ones we do find that much more special. I think it’s a combination of our sleuthing skills needing improvement, as well as the websites not keeping up to date on missing letterboxes. It seems not near as many people log letterboxes as geocaches, so there just isn’t much info out there about a particular letterbox. Also, as of today, there is not an app for my droid phone. This makes it trickier to double check certain things while out searching.

That being said, I still enjoy this activity very much and hope to add many more stamps to my journal.

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Throughout the year we learned a little bit about a few different Native American tribes. When we were studying the Sioux of the Great Plains the boys made teepees out of paper bags.

This project was completed in one sitting & made a great visual when learning about the Sioux. We learned that the teepees were positioned so the door flaps opened to the east, the direction of the rising sun. We learned that the designs painted or embroidered on the outside represented something significant about the family living in the teepee. They had fires & cooked in their teepees. This, of course, created smoke. The hole & flaps at the top of the teepee were there to let the smoke escape.

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I used the tipi project from this Indians of the Great Plains stencil book as a guide for our teepees.

It seems so simple, which really it was. But, it still took a little trial & error to get the template just right for the boys to trace. It’s basically a half circle with wings at the top to create smoke flaps.

The boys cut open a paper grocery bag & traced around my template onto the bag. Then they used oil pastels to decorate their teepee. Both boys chose to use one stencil from the book, as well as add a few other design elements

The boys used tape to fasten the paper bag into a cone shape. We found we needed to add tape to both the inside & outside of the teepee to keep it together. Then they taped 6 skewers on the inside to act as the long poles holding up the teepee.

Left: They folded out the smoke flaps.
Right: And, they folded out the door flaps.
They also added toothpicks to act as pins holding the teepee together.

Farm Kid1 chose to add long poles (aka skewers) to the back of his teepee through the smoke flaps. Farm Kid2 chose not to add these poles.

Farm Kid1’s teepee

Farm Kid2’s teepee. The symbols on his smoke flap represent 3 days & 3 nights.

This was definitely a fun project. I had fun seeing what designs the boys came up with. They turned out so well I currently have them displayed on our mantel.

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May is busy, busy, busy – mostly prepping the gardens for summer. We also have been busy with the aquaponics, installing a pond & keeping critters.

Gardening for Food

There has been lots of weed pullin’, ground tillin’ & seed plantin’ this month.

Making rows for herb seeds.

Typically Farmer John does the food type gardening, while I do the flowers. This year, though, I planted one row in the garden. It’s mostly herbs that I hope to cook with & share with the chickens.

We planted a ton of squash, gourds & pumpkins this year.

Flower Beds

The flowers are blooming & the bees and wasps are loving it.

Aquaponics

The Aquaponics system is coming along, but not quite yet at its full potential.

Farmer John plumbed the entire system, ran it for a couple weeks, then redid it all.

We received our tiny tilapia. Yippey!

Goats

I love, love watching the kids play with the goats. There are lots of laughs.

Oh Sven! Apparently creeping phlox is yummy to goats. I put him back in his fenced area right after taking this pic.

Ducks

We moved the ducks out of the garden & into the goats fenced area. I also got them a new pool to swim in.

Unfortunately, they squeeze out of the goat fence & prefer to swim in the pond.

Quail

Our quail are very low maintenance – until one day Mr. Quail got out. He had gone to a place where I couldn’t reach him to put him back. I recruited my boys to come help me, but they couldn’t reach Mr. Quail either. And, he didn’t like being out. He called & called for his lady friend. Eventually, he moved and we were able to grab him & reunite him with Mrs. Quail.

Chicken Keeping

Of all our critters, the chickens take the most time. I’m sure part of that is because of the amount of chickens we have & the number of coops. Most of the work I don’t mind doing & some of it I even enjoy – like collecting eggs. But, I don’t enjoy cleaning coops. Does anyone enjoy that chore?

More chicks hatched this month.

New Pond

I spent a bit of time in the mornings & a bit of time at night completing the new pond in the Bird Village.

Random Pic of Good Ol’ Country Living

Summer, here we come!

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With letterboxing in our future, I wanted the kids to create their own stamps.

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There are only 2 things needed to carve a stamp: a carving tool & the material to carve. Forever ago I had to buy the carving tool for a college art class. I’ve never used it since, but for some crazy reason I still have the tool. I ordered the carving block from Amazon.

TRANSFERRING THE DESIGN

We were studying Japan at the time, so I chose to carve Japanese symbols for my sample stamps.

I printed symbols from the internet. Then, with the printed side facing a window, I traced the backside of the print with thick pencil lines.

I cut a piece of the carving block slightly larger than the symbol. Then placed the cut block up to a window. On top of the block I placed the paper, printed side facing me. Then, I traced the symbol with a pencil. The pencil lead on the other side of the paper transferred to the carving block where I traced.

The finished stamp needs to be a reverse of what you want the actual inked print to be. Keep this in mind when determining which side of the paper gets transferred onto the carving block.

The kids skipped this step & drew their designs right on the the carving block.

CARVING THE STAMP

Grab your carving tool & start getting rid of the areas you don’t want in your printed design. For me, this was everything outside of the pencil line.

My carving tool has a couple different sized tips. On my first stamp I used the broader tip first. I later realized it was easier to use this tip last.

Bottom Left: The smaller tip. I used this to carve the details. It seemed easier to carve the details first, then get rid of all the extra stuff with the broad tip.
Middle Right: The larger tip.
Bottom Right: My first stamp almost complete.

I prefer a polished look, so I was hoping to leave my stamp in its square shape. I quickly realized that just wasn’t going to work. All the extra stuff kept wanting to print even though I carved it away. So, I cut off the excess part of the block.

The stamp also printed much better once I mounted it to a small piece of foam core.

KIDS CAN DO IT, TOO

Top Left: I gave the kids a small piece to practice on first.
Right: Then they drew their design on the carving block & got to carving.
Bottom Left: We all jabbed ourselves with the carving tips. They are sharp. It’s a no brainer to realize you shouldn’t carve toward your fingers. But, somehow we all did it.

Left: Farm Girl’s finished star stamp. She chose to leave many of the lines outside the star.
Right: Farm Kid1 chose to make a LEGO minifig head dreaming about lego bricks.

Left: It took a few tries to get rid of most of the extra lines on the outside of his design. He’d stamp, then carve a little, then cut off a bit, then stamp again, then carve more.
Right: Eventually, he decided he carved enough & had his finished product.

This was fun not only for the kids, but also for me. I know we all want to carve more stamps. And, we will – hopefully, sooner than later.

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To go along with our Native American studies the kids made these awesome symbols out of oil pastel. The Plains Indians used both naturalistic & geometric designs in their art. We made both.

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I picked this book up at a home school group book swap. It’s a Good Year Book titled Indians of the Great Plains & comes with stencils. I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed the book. It describes much about the life of Plains Indians, as well as tell a few legends. Each stencil has information about why that design was important. There are also a number of great projects in the back of the book. We made the teepee & parfleche bag.

When I saw an Indian symbols craft at Art Projects for Kids I knew it would be a perfect way to use the stencils.

Using a paper bag as their canvas, they traced a stencil with pencil.

Then, they went over their pencil lines with black oil pastel.

Next, they colored inside the black line.

And finally, they made a border around the outside of the black line with white oil pastel.

Native American men typically painted naturalistic images on their belongings, such as shields & teepees.

Women used porcupine quills or beads to create geometric designs.

Left: Naturalistic Designs: Elk, Buffalo & Horse
Right: Geometric Designs: Turtle, Spider & Dragonfly

I loved this project. The kids did a great job!

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On the 5th of May the kids did not work on their regular curriculum. Instead, we had a Mexican themed party day.

I took the items in the pocket chart out and replaced them with Mexico related things. My mom gave me the map with info on it, which was a placemat from a restaurant. The photos, money, and dress up dolls came out of our North American Continent Box.

I read Tomie dePaola’s Adelita to the kids. It is a Mexican Cinderella story.

As a comparison, I also read Cinders by Jan Brett. This book is a Chicken Cinderella story, which of course, we loved. We also discussed Disney’s version of Cinderella.

This was a win, win, win conversation. I love Jan Brett, I love Tomie dePaola, and I love Disney.

For lunch we had one of my favorite meals: chicken tacos, with Spanish rice and beans. I even pulled out the hand painted dishes we bought in Mexico many moons ago.

We ate homemade churros after lunch.

Spanish bingo has been a huge hit on our Mexico days, so we played it again. Bingo prizes were leftover pencils & erasers.

The kids also made a few crafts that day.

It’s a lot of work to put together a theme day, but they are so much fun.

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We’ve gone geocaching many times & decided it was time to try letterboxing.

The first thing we each needed for our letterboxing adventures were journals. Of course, there’s always the option of buying a journal. But I like the cost of making our own much better, so that’s what we did.

We used the instructions at Layers of Learning.

THE COVER

I tore paper bags into a rectangle shape. Then the kids crumpled the rectangle.

Next they rubbed crayons on the crumpled paper.

When they were done coloring their cover, I wet them just a bit & put them in the oven to melt the crayon wax. Honestly, melting the was didn’t work as well as I was hoping. Probably just doing the rubbing would have been good enough.

After the covers cooled we used stamps & oil pastels to decorate them.

For the most part, the kids went for an abstract look.

I opted for a minimalist approach.

THE PAGES

I used regular copy paper, folding 4 sheets in half & sewing a line on the crease. I made four sets of these for each journal.

Then I stacked the four paper sets together &, using a hammer, nailed a hole through the stacked paper. Each place I needed a hole for sewing the cover & paper together I used the hammer/nail technique. This section is described much better at Layers of Learning.

SEWING THE COVER & PAGES TOGETHER

Next, I played around with where exactly I wanted to place the paper on the cover. Once I figured that out I placed the paper on the cover. Then, came the hard part.

Why this was so difficult, I don’t know. It seems so simple. But, I had a heck of a time with it.

I liked the look of the binding on the example at Layers of Learning, so I wanted to replicate it.

I used embroidery thread and a needle to sew the cover & paper together. The outside turned out the way I wanted, but the first & last pages don’t look too tidy. The middle pages look ok, though.

Our completed journals.

I had originally thought I would sew buttons on the front cover to help hold the cover closed. But, after a couple days the journals quit trying to open on their own. So, I didn’t mess with it.

We’ve gone letterboxing a couple times & so far these journals are working out great.

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