Handmade Gifts: My 2025 Watercolor Ornaments
2025
Each holiday season, I get the urge to create something new to add to my holiday decorations. In previous years I have painted holiday cards and winter scenes as a seasonal way to replace the art around my apartment. I have created Christmas-themed bookmarks featuring metallic paints. Most special though, has been my annual watercolor ornaments project, which is now in its fourth year. (Keep reading to see ornaments from previous years.)
2023 Cards
2024 Bookmarks
2025 Holiday Trees
Making My 2025 Ornaments
For 2025, I wanted to capitalize on the momentum I am starting to feel working with my graphite Gansai Tambi Watercolors. I have been experimenting with these paints since early October and have loved creating loose watercolor abstracts. I have started sharing some behind-the-scenes looks over on Instagram, but it feels a bit too early to share here on the blog. If you don’t want to miss when those paintings when they make their way into my shop be sure to join my newsletter list.
I know I will continue exploring these paints and loose landscapes in 2026, and they seemed like the perfect medium for my 2025 ornaments. My favorite style for watercolor ornaments at the moment is the double glass frame. These are often marketed for pressed flowers, but I have come to really love them for small artworks. They come in a variety of sizes, but the ones I have are only 2 x 3 inches, which feels like a perfect ornament size. The challenge is painting on such a small scale. While the size of the ornament itself is a “reasonable” size at 2 x 3 inches, in reality that means that your paper is only about 1.75 x 2.75, to make sure that it fits inside the case. I adore small paintings though and these did not disappoint.
I love how these tiny pieces capture all of my favorite aspects of watercolor. Wet-on-wet techniques create beautiful effects and color blends, while watercolor’s transparency lets you build layers and depth. Using a dry brush, you can create so many different details and textures despite working in such a small space. Even in a tiny painting, you can discover so many little details.
Below you’ll be able to see how these ornaments have evolved over the years and I honestly cannot believe that it is now year four of this project. It is fun to look back at each of these ornaments to see how much my style and interests have changed, but also how they have stayed the same. The outdoors and traveling are still my favorite ways to gather inspiration and each set of ornaments is a little snapshot in time of my creative journey.
Hand-painted Wooden Rounds: The 2022 Ornaments
In 2022, I made my very first watercolor ornaments. I set out to create ornaments to commemorate special events, such as a friend’s purchase of their first home and the trip that Vasya and I took to Glacier National Park for the first time. These ornaments were created through a multi-step process where a watercolor painting is affixed to a wooden round. Wooden rounds can be purchased online or at a local craft store. They come in a variety of sizes, types of wood, and finishes. For my watercolor ornaments, I went even more DIY and used a log that my husband collected on a hike. It was a bit more labor intensive to cut and sand the rounds (done by my husband), but the overall aesthetic was worth it. While I worried at the time about whether these ornaments would stand the test of time, four years later, they still look good as new.
Original Painted
Painted mounted onto wooden round.
Tiny Framed Watercolors: The 2023 Ornaments
For my 2023 ornaments, I wanted to commemorate two important milestones I celebrated that year. The first was bidding farewell to my very first car. His name was Bubble and he was a 2009 Toyota Yaris that I purchased when I was still in college. That car got me through so much, including my cross country move to Colorado. In 2023, I bid him farewell for the last time, but I have this cute ornament to remember him by. The second was to commemorate our 2023 trip to Scotland with my parents. This was a once in a lifetime trip and an amazing experience to share with my parents and husband. This painting was based on a photograph I took in the Glencoe valley of the famous white house.
2022 and 2023 Ornaments Together
2023 Glencoe Scotland Ornament
Pen & Ink Abstract Landscape: The 2024 Ornaments
Towards the end of 2024 I was in the middle of an experimental abstract landscape phase. I was primarily working in watercolor. One idea I kept returning to was water in the alpine environment. One thing I love about summer in Colorado is taking time to hike in the alpine. I love how you can hike for miles and find beautiful alpine lakes, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The concept of falling water came from the idea of taking an alpine hike, where you might walk uphill for miles passing a series of lakes along the way. I was experimenting with ways to translate that visually. For my ornaments, I wanted to explore this same concept but in pen. My favorite part of these ornaments was their simplicity. Looking back, the creation of these ornaments played an important role in the development of my 100 Day Project of tiny pen drawings that I started on January 1, 2025. (Read more about my 100 Day project in this blog post.)
How do you get into the holiday season?
Do you decorate?
Do you like colored lights or white lights?
What homemade items do you make?
Looking for more inspiration? Check out these out:
My Etsy shop for original artwork.
Floating Mountain No. 3 (2024)
Exploding Sunset (2025)
My Spoonflower shop for fabric and home decor items. I love the tea towels and reusable napkins.
Tea Towel
Cocktail Napkins
Over on the Blog: