2022 Christmas Collection
Almost wasn’t.
A wee bit of a heart-to-heart here, I almost didn’t do a Christmas release this year.
Toddler life has transformed into “we have something every day” and I just really struggled to find time. Time to plan, time to paint, time to work.
Such a big part of the creative process is on the front end (for me). I work on sketches, color palettes, “the vibe” - you know, how I feel about the work, how it makes someone else feel. I’m sure on the outside it looks more like “umm, you literally paint flowers 80% of the time. How much sketching needs to happen?” If I’m not excited about it, it’s not going to happen. I will find every excuse under the sun to avoid the work, dedicate the time elsewhere and I think in addition to schedule chaos it’s what pushed my work timeline this year to be later than my comfort zone allows.
The fact that I’m releasing all these designs on Shop Small Saturday again this year is a miracle. Legit, miracle. I only locked down the collection details and got excited about the direction mid October. The concept sketches, color palette explorations and THEN work came well into Halloween/start of November time!
The vibe.
It all started at the Presley farm this year. We had taken the kids out to do a “camping” sleepover (which, if you know me, *I* didn’t sleep outside). The schedule of a Christmas release was starting to bear down on me and I was quickly running out of time. The start of November was already here and, to be honest, this was the prettiest Fall I remember in a while. After a hot-hot-hot summer I was afraid all the trees would just dry up and kick off their leaves as fast as possible, but that ended up not being the case at all.
Sitting at the farm I was sipping a hot cup of coffee and feeling the cool breeze and noticed the insane amount of color in the trees. It looked like a Thomas Kinkade puzzle (that I love to keep halfway completed on my dining room table). The wind picked up for a second and carried leaves across the landscape like snow. Beautiful, warm colored snow.
It was the vibe.
I got out of the chair, went inside and fetched my watercolor sketchbook and paints and proceeded to portion out little squares for quick landscape watercolors. All the warm colors of browns and oranges, reds and greens - I’m not a landscape painter (I absolutely LOVE buying landscapes from literally anyone else), but this was so peaceful.
I really love the Christmas cards and ornaments process, and I wanted to keep this mindset through all the designs for 2022. A warm, country, almost vintage-Dickens feel. The mood board was born.
Sketches upon sketches, I started exploring adding fruit, greenery, some monochromatic approaches. I have been toying with the idea of adding line work to my watercolors. It’s something I’ve seen a few artist do for children’s book illustration and I absolutely adore it - but I’ve never seen it for more sophisticated design. Truth, it ended up being my very favorite part of all the work.
Collection
I decided to split the collection into 3 parts:
Lemons
Oranges
Pears
The cards.
Designing Christmas cards is a bit of a labor of love. All cards need to house photos, but not knowing what colors/compositions the photos are, it’s quite difficult to come up with a universal design that will show off all photo options!
Each card front has a watercolor wreath adorned with fruit and lush greenery and a customizable watercolor monogram (vintage style). The message option below, and a single photo. The back photo is adorned with a symmetrical garland with greenery and fruit.
P.S. all the Christmas card orders (for any design - including previous years!) include return address printing on the back flap. Woohoo!
The ornaments.
Oye, the ornaments. The most laborious of all the things but, alas, the most rewarding. I still love the physical act of painting them. They get a base coat(s), then the watercolor, assembly with the hanger and ribbon - it’s a process! I was especially excited to score an ornament shape this year that I’ve been coveting for years but couldn’t actually get in stock.
The ornament collection is all within the cottagecore color palette, but some feature lemons, pears, oranges, some are just greenery, some are all a warm monochromatic design - there’s a full variety in design but all fit the mood board.
In addition to painting the designs to fit the inspiration, this year’s collection are all tied with a ribbed fabric like a cozy sweater rather than the usual vibrant velvet.
I hope you love this year’s 2022 Christmas collection as much as I have loved creating them this year! Off to a rocky start, but ended up being one of my favorites to date.
And if you’ve gotten this far and you’re still reading this, I don’t know why you would have read this, but thanks!