Christmas Countdown - Day 1 - Chalkboard Sled!

For the past few years, I've struggled to do an "Advent Calendar" for TroubleMaker. By struggle, I mean I see so many ideas that I want to employ, I wait until the last second to pick an idea and then play catch up all month trying to stuff, fill, colour, cut and figure out what to do.

But no more. This year, although I had several different ideas in mind and been inspired out the wazoo by Pinterest, I decided on a treatless, presentless countdown device. He doesn't need all the extra candy and because we made a resolution to not spoil him too much (my husband and I made this pact before we got pregnant), I didn't want to get him 25 little things!

I was inspired by a cheap snowman chalkboard in the Dollar store and when I couldn't find a snowman wood cutout at the craft store, I fell in love with a large wooden sled and decided that this would work even better! Using this picture as my inspiration, I started to work.

The runners were broad brushed on with a blend of gold and brown.

I blended four colours for the base coat wash (red, poppy red, gold, black and a colour extender) applied with a dampened sponge applicator.

Once it was dry, I applied a second coat with a dry sponge. I then dry brushed black all over the edges. Next, I lightly sanded the entire surface and wiped it clean with a dry towel. I blended a white acrylic paint with a silver acrylic paint to paint the snowman. I gave him three generous coats (as the red beneath showed through). His nose was orange and his buttons had a base of orange and I painted over it with the scarf colour (a blend of red, black and gold). The hat is pure black and the cloud was acrylic chalk board paint (3 coats). The snowflakes were applied using white acrylic paint on a rubber stamp and I had painted his name on the top.

I had planned on putting an acrylic sealer all over the piece (save for the chalkboard part) but I finished the sled at 9pm last night after a very long day... This morning, I added the string - which consisted of three pieces of jute twine with three bright red jingle bells.

He was so excited to see it this morning, he didn't even ask for a cheap chocolate advent calendar at the grocery store today! I, myself, am enormously proud of how well it turned out. It's been a many, many years since I've done any folk painting (I actually gave my sister all my paints a year or so ago as I hadn't used them in at least 3 years) so I think for being pretty rusty, the Christmas Countdown Sled turned out very well!

Thanks for stopping by! I'll be sharing a number of Christmas and holiday ideas between now and December 24th so I hope you'll stop back again soon.


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