After turning a color swatching exercise into striped dreidels, here, I just had to keep on going with some cozy striped sweaters! Are they "ugly" holiday sweaters, not in my book, because friends, when you mix your own paint colors using any red, yellow and blue, no matter what, the resulting colors will go together, like magic! Truly a wonderful realization, and a great way to minimize thinking too much about what colors to use, whether painting a painting or painting stripes on a mini holiday sweater! Yes, it is true these sweaters might look great with a star of David, or a dreidel, or a jelly doughnut on the front, but I think I'm going to leave them plain so I can enjoy them all winter and it won't look like I've yet to pack up my Chanukah decor! (Same goes for all the white pom poms I'm planning on hanging!) So friends, these "ugly" holiday sweaters are just beyond cute, and so simple to make, so let's get started!
Are you off and running to find a cereal box just yet? If not, now is the time, yes pin it, but please make it!
You'll Need:
- cardboard or cardstock, mine is cereal box cardboard
- paint, white, any red, any blue, any yellow, I used paints with fancy names: hansa yellow light, quinacridone magenta, ultramarine blue
- paint pens/sharpies optional, i used Posca paint pens in pink, peach and yellow, and white only on the sweaters, so you could also use a white gel pen
- a pencil and scissors
How To:
- Draw a sweater shape on a piece of cardboard and cut out to make a template. (Draw half a sweater shape, cut that out and flip it over to draw the second side, voila, a symmetrical sweater!)
- Trace around your sweater templates onto a piece of cereal box cardboard. Yes, silly the inside of the cereal box.
- Now it is time to have fun mixing colors. As you know, yellow and blue make green, but vary the amount of each and you'll get many varieties. Add white for lighter shades. Mix yellow and red for orange, peach, etc. Make pink by adding white to your red. My pinks looks so great because I didn't use red, but rather magenta as my "red" color. Have fun experimenting, and even keep track of all the colors you've mixed on a piece of paper or in a sketchbook.
- Now paint stripes on your sweaters, either straight stripes or curved ones depending on your sweater shape.
- After dry, cut out and decorate with paint pens and or sharpie markers if you wish. I actually love them plain other than defining the neck, sleeve seam and cuffs.
- If yours look great as painted, meaning stripes going over the edges looks like a chunky fluffy sweater, so cut them out leaving that "excess" intact, as I did for some.
Okay, that is it, now go make a bunch so you can hang them on a garland, make napkin rings (so fun!), gift tags, wall hangings or hang them on a "clothesline" with min clothespins! And of course, you could make large ones to cover more space, because festive is the key! Ah yes, good idea, I might just do that, of course with my inexpensive craft paint, not the high end colors I've used here.
