The next step

I liked the way my design turned out on paper so I decided to make one of wood and as usual got distracted along the way and wound up with something different.

In the years that I've been painting horses no two seem to end up alike. I choose to think that's a good thing but sometimes I'm not sure.

Painted Design on a Greeting Card

Making Changes to Dala Horse Designs

Sometimes I'm not real happy with the way a horse turns out (this one had daisies around the top and saddle area) so I sanded it down and started over.

This time I decided to let my more traditional styled one influence the design but then put my own spin on it.

This turned out brighter and more fibrant so I thought it was a fun design to use on party goods at Zazzle.

Dala Horses and ornaments for sale

I've got a few horses and ornaments made and am considering selling some of them on etsy or ebay but haven't quite decided yet.

Three of my designs here are the basis for products in my Zazzle dalahorse store so how can I put a price on that?

The horse heads are another issue because I created them as design tools. They're painted differently on each side and on the sides all around are different borders. My idea at the time was that as I was designing horses I could hold them up to see what each design element would look like and make it easy to decide which sort of thing I wanted to use on the new horse.

The best bet would be to sell the brown horse with the pine cones on it because it would look great on someone's fireplace mantle.

In the meantime I'm just happy to have made a nice spot here to display and enjoy them. 

Getting Started

I'm so excited to be starting this blog and wish I'd thought of it years ago. I have another blog called paintersgarden that I had meant to be all about my garden and the way the things that I grow lead to the things I draw and paint.

 More and more in recent years it had become about learning to carve and paint Dala Horses.

I felt that they had become so important to me that they deserved a forum of their own and I've taken the opportunity to do that here.

As you can see getting started was difficult for me because I couldn't find much information anywhere on how to carve or paint them so a lot of it was guesses on my part.

I'd always been drawn to horses and remember as a child getting in trouble because whenever I found a horse in a coloring book I colored it red. 

I didn't know why but somehow I just felt they should be that way.

 Decades later the answer came when I was given a baby picture of myself playing with a dala horse. I hadn't remembered it but it must have made quite an impression on me. 

 This is the first Dala Horse that I painted. It was a gift for my Father who'd always been very proud of his Swedish heritage.