Treecember Paint Day

We've been getting together for paint day since last year and this was the mother of all paint days...well at least I'd like to think it was since we were putting LED lights into the canvas.  I invited several people who were interested a few weeks ago to the paint page on Facebook.  So far I got my mom, grandma and Trish to say they wanted to come join in.  I couldn't get Erika to commit even though she would have had fun doing it too.

I told everyone they would have to bring their own drinks and a snack to share with everyone.  At the last minute Trish couldn't go and I was so excited for her to come.  Apparently her stupid niece tried to blow her house and had her two kids taken away.  They came to live with Trish until further notice.  I was so bummed out for her because I knew there was going to be a lot of drama.

I had mom and grandma meet me at my house so we could car pool to Nicole's.  The less cars in her driveway the better.  I brought an extra table and chairs because we would be having more than the normal show up since this was a special paint day.  I grabbed my goodies and we piled in the Escape and headed over to Nicole's.  I tried to leave a little early so we could be there first to set up the table and chairs.

We arrived and brought everything into the house and set up the table and chairs.  Everyone started to arrive.  It was me, Nicole, Barb, Sue, grandma Karen, Sarah, Lindsay, Lacey and Cheyanne (she worked on a separate project) so far the biggest turn out since we've been doing this paint day.  We all got settled in, got our snacks and drinks and found a place to sit with a canvas.  We followed the tutorial and Nicole stopped a few times to help people if they had questions.

We got the base color painted on and waited for it to dry.

Then we put the illusion of trees in the background and started in on our Christmas tree.

Next, we started adding the actual tree with our warm and cold colors with downward strokes to give it an evergreen look.  Lots of browns, greens, yellows and blues.

After getting some fullness into the tree and the glow on the snow underneath it we added some side limbs to give it a "peering into the forest at a tree look."

We finished up the tree with some more embellishments to make it look like a Christmas tree out in the forest and then came the slitting the canvas to install the LED lights.  I was really nervous cutting holes into my canvas because I didn't want to cut the holes too large and the lights didn't fit or were droopy.  It was hard trying to figure out where to put the lights so you had a good balance of lights on your tree.  You didn't want to do too many at the bottom so you didn't have enough for the top and vice versa.  I thought I did a good job of balancing my lights.  I taped down the battery pack and called it a masterpiece!

I didn't forget to sign my name at the bottom either.

We took some group pictures when we were all done.

Cheyanne's painting was a Godzilla with a Seattle skyline and LED stars.  She painted it as a gift for her nephew.

We helped Nicole clean up, I broke down my tables and chairs and grabbed our snack leftovers.  We headed home.  Next paint day was going to be a winter-ish outdoor scene.  We would have to vote on it.

Next Adventure:  Sunday Night Football:  Eagles vs. Seahawks