The Latest Finished Dala Horses by Julia

These were all hanging ornaments. I love to display them all year in various places but for most people they would be Christmas Ornaments.

 Here I wanted to see how similar designs would look in different colors. That's an easy way to expand the number of dala horse designs that you have.

 When I'm In the mood for something really different I just paint a lot of my favorite flowers.

 Other times I kick things up a notch by adding coma strokes in random locations to move the eye around and to accent colors

4 more Dala Horse Christmas Ornament Designs

I am finally on the last 5 wooden dala horse ornaments and am excited to show 4 of them to you.

After having designed nearly 400 Dala horses it's getting hard to keep each of them different.

After I get that final ornament done it will do me good to step away from it awhile.

Dala Horses for Christmas

I really enjoy my Dala Horses at Christmas. I give some for gifts, put any of the ornaments that didn't sell on my Christmas tree and use the few horses that I still own as part of my Holiday Decor.

What's your favorite thing to do with your horses this time of year?

I think they really add to the mood and the charm of the season, don't you?

 We decided to use an old fiber optic tree this year because there just isn't room for a real tree in a tiny house.

I try never to do any 2 horses the same. Mixing designs and pattern keeps things more interesting, don't you think so?

Most of my other decorations are just bits of paper and old photos. Not only is it inexpensive. They don't take any storage place as I just toss anything that didn't last well and put other ones up as I sort through my photos each year.

It gives me a chance to scan a lot of the older ones and use up any that I don't plan to keep.

Horse History

OK, it's not exactly painted like a dala horse. But I was less than a year old here and it seemed to impress me anyway. I've always been fond of horses and it feels really good to be designing them now.

 

 I'm making the last of these small ornaments in red to show up best against the Christmas Tree. They are done in variations of traditional styles.

This freestanding horse is something new I'm working on to represent Christmas tree branches and garlands.

Red Dala Horse Ornament Designs

I always try to design each red horse differently than the last one. Even when I'm using the same colors and brush strokes.

As you can imagine there are parts of these that I like better than others. These are the miniature horses so there is only so much detail that I can get on them.

On a full size ornament or larger horse you could expand on the design by adding more rows of comma strokes around the saddle and mane or more layers of colors in the dots across the chest and belly areas.

I finish these off with a screw eye and a piece of gold cord to hang them with.

I've still got one dozen unfinished wood blanks to carve and turn into more ornaments. Will I be able to come up with a dozen different designs to paint them with? Keep following this Blog and find out and as always, Keep painting and discover your own creative spirit.

Red Horses for Christmas

I'm keeping details to a minimum while designing the small ornaments, some of these are only about 2 inches tall and under 3 inches wide so very small brushes are required too.

As you can see the brush strokes are easy ones too.

This one is just dots, straight lines and comma strokes.

Dala Horse Christmas Ornaments

I'm working on a number of different styles and sizes of horses for the Christmas tree this year but thought I'd stick to red ones in some more or less traditional designs.

2 of these are ornaments and the larger wider horse is just free standing for a shelf or table. This time I decided to limit the colors used to just red, yellow green and white. I was pleased with the results and added them to my Christmas tree.

My tree will be all red horses but here's a picture of a tree done with other horses that I've done over the last 4 years that belongs to one of the people that collect them.