Over the past few months, I’ve been working quite a bit with both wood burning and stencils. So, I thought I would try to use them together and create a winter holiday sign for my home.
Stencils are such a great way to create designs for those that don’t feel they have the ability to draw. You can layer the stencils over each other to create new designs that you can then add on to. For this project, here are the supplies I used:
- Rustic wood plaque from Walnut Hollow®
- Creative Versa-Tool® from Walnut Hollow®
- Pencil
- Watercolors
- White acrylic paint
- Paint brush
- Modeling paste and palette knife
- Stencils: Mountain View, Evergreens and Love and Peace
I used the stencils as a guide to draw on the design outlines for my winter landscape with a pencil.
Using the tapered point of the wood burning tool, I traced over all of the outlines. You can see that I certainly wasn’t perfect with the tracing but wood burning is suppose to just enhance the rustic feel of the wood. All the imperfections just add to that!
When I was done with all the tracing, I had a landscape that resembled a simple coloring book design.
I then changed tips on the wood burning tool to the universal point and added shading to create depth in the landscape.
The next step was to add modeling paste snow on the evergreen trees, the mountain peaks and the edges of the letters with a palette knife. It is a bit like icing a cake!
I then decided to add some light washes of watercolor to the trees and sky to make the mountain range stand out a bit more. I used a pale blue for the sky, a couple of greens for the trees and darkened the letters with a bit of brown. You can certainly paint the watercolor on before the modeling paste if you like.
The final step was to dry brush white acrylic paint over the modeling paste to give the snow effect more depth. If you plan to hang the sign outside, I would suggest spraying it with a outdoor sealer. I’m going to display mine in my home, so I left it natural. I love that I have a pretty holiday sign that can be displayed through Christmas and on into the rest of the winter months!
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