Designing Baby outfits

Growing Girl Garden Bodysuit
by baby_art
Oops! I meant to put this one on my gardening blog.

Dark Dala Baby Bodysuit
by dalahorse
Back to designing dala horses. This one started with a drawing.

Baby Blue Dala Horse Body Suit Baby Bodysuit

by dalahorse

This one was especially fun. I shot a lot of photos of one of the horses that I had designed, carved and painting and combined 3 of the views here.

Back to the Sketchbook

As the New Year begins I've gone back to my sketchbook and some of my previous work and have been thinking about what I'd like to be doing with Dala Horses this year.

I paint flowers a lot...on everything. I'm not sure whether I want to go down that road again.

There are a lot of other designs I could be working on. Other ideas I'm considering are designing a set of "how tos" that could be used as the basis for a book or a class sometime in the future.

Before attempting that I'll be doing a set of simple drawings that can be used on some rubber stamps in my zazzle store.

I 'm enjoying looking through my photos of horses that I've done in the last few years and may work some of them into a book.

Soooo many choices that choosing one may be a challenge. I'll keep you posted as I work.

I made this boxed set of ornaments about five years ago and it may be time to try a project like this again. My Designs have improved a lot since then and this time I can order a nice box from Zazzle with one of my horse  designs on a ceramic tile on the lid. I'm looking forward to seeing how that will turn out.

Yes, the possibilities really are endless and I can't wait to get started!

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.

Inspiration, Junk Mail and Design Ideas

I discovered a plate that I liked in a cooking catalog and put the clipping in a little design notebook that I've started. The features that I liked best were the combination of colors and the idea of layering the flower shapes to fill a larger space.

I experimented with changes in both the flowers and leaves and decided that I liked the light blue the way it was in the catalog better. It was easy to add it inside the darker blue that I had painted and that seemed to improve it a bit.

The design on the plate was outlined which gives it quite a different look which I like but wouldn't find practical for the deck spindles I'm practicing on or to adapt and paint much smaller on Dala Horses.

I tried painting variations of some of the designs as I considered what I might use them for in the future but for now they just continue to make my house look interesting.