Christmas Art Countdown

Happy New Year!

| Gina Lento

The last sketch of the holiday season and the last stamp carving for the Carve December Challenge. Stamps also seem to be ‘on the menu.” The full pile created this month…

I used the stamp in the sketch.

Sleigh

| Gina Lento

What’s better than a sleigh with 8 reindeer? A sleigh with 8 cats! Santa’s annual run was over. He’s looking forward to a long rest. This year was stressful. The reindeer went AWOL so Santa had to use the barn cats. The elves all got sick. There was a blizzard over most of North America. He found out he’s gluten intolerant and can’t eat most cookies anymore. He did discover oat milk and the kids have been leaving out almond milk and coconut milk instead of cow’s milk so he felt much better this year.

It’s time to feed the cats a nice juicy meal for helping him out. He checked in the elves who seem to be feeling better. The local ranger found the reindeer scarfing up hay at a local dairy barn and is returning them in the morning. Time for a glass of wine and a book by the fire. But he may decide to watch the Mandalorian instead.

And today’s stamp.

Piñata

| Gina Lento

The prompt for today is piñata. I chose to do this one in my sketchbook instead of the iPad. I winged this one with materials that I had on hand and used what I had in my sketch bag. Sometimes having your options limited is a good thing.

Today’s stamp carving is also an exercise out of Carve, Stamp, Play, though not carved exactly the same, but I made it my own. I added the test print to the page with the two borders.

Cookies

| Gina Lento

I didn’t bake butter cookies yet this year. I say yet because I still may bake them this week. We’ll see. In the meantime, enjoy my visual version.

Also, I was at at loss of what to carve as a stamp today, so I flipped open Julie Balzer’s “Carve, Stamp, Play.” I can always use another border. I highly recommend Julie’s book.

Mug

| Gina Lento

There is nothing like a nice hot mug of coffee, tea or cocoa or a cold winter evening.

And today’s carved stamp….I am really excited about this stamp that I can use as a border!

Merry Christmas

| Gina Lento

Merry Christmas! The day is finally here. Just when you think you won’t get everything finished on time, it all falls in place.

Played with the brush markers this morning and decided to do a tree. It feels good to play with the materials for the fun of it. It’s not perfect, but trees are not perfect, are they? And they are beautiful for all their imperfections.

I also added today and yesterday’s carved stamps below.

I wish everyone a very Merry and loving Christmas. Hug people today just because you can. Love everyone. That’s what today is about.

Simple Wreath

| Gina Lento

Today I made two loaves of cranberry bread, a holiday cake, carved my stamp, did chores, and made a lasagna for tomorrow evening. John made his sauce, I added the ground sausage after it was finished for the lasagna.

I finally sat down to do my holiday sketch and with a tad of holiday stress, decided that I needed to play with traditional art supplies for therapy. It was very soothing.

One of the December prompts is wreath and although I carved one as a stamp, I wanted to do another for the challenge. I used brush pens, charcoal pencil and paint pens for this wreath.

The stamp today is an abstract design that I did spontaneously. I like experimenting with random designs.