Imprisoned by accident

Dec 15, 2018
3 min read

So November is a crazy month for me. I am so busy creating new artwork for Christmas, then I have to get everything ready at the gallery and the display window on Monroe Street ready for Christmas, before the Christmas tree lighting the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Which I actually love because the crazy work is done and all the beautiful decorations are up and ready so I have a little more time to create new work for people to give for Christmas presents.

So one day in November Becca and I were complaining about decorating for Christmas and we were comparing ourselves to the beautiful perfect Pinterst homes, and listing the friends who are great at creating that in their own homes. Alyssa was with me and to her surprise I began to tell Becca how I used to have a different theme and color scheme for ever Christmas at my house, the bulbs, ribbons, wrapping paper, throw pillows and place mats all reflected my theme of the year, when Alyssa interrupted me with an excited interjection that we should do that again this year!

My first reaction was exhaustion, I already decorate the gallery, and the display window every year, and spend months creating new ornaments and decorations for this season. There is a reason why my home now looks like a crazy person decorated it. With all of my years of different themes I have fallen into the habit of bringing it all up from the basement and letting the kids pick through and decide where we are going to put almost everything...matching or not.

But here excitement tugged at my mom strings and I quickly pushed back the exhaustion and said Yes, we can totally have a them this year. What would you like the colors to be....and she says with the same excitement...Yellow and Purple.

We all cringed.

But I am a creative person and quickly the cringe was washed away with a waterfall of ideas. We found some mustard yellow canvas fabric, stripped it down into 2" strips and created a crinkle vintage inspired garland. We then bought yellow and purple warping paper and ribbon, yellow and purple bulbs, and some yellow flowers. We moved some yellow pottery and accents into the Christmas tree room but kept some of the staples, buffalo plaid throw blankets and pillows, and we used silver and red ornaments to mute the overwhelming yellow and purple contrast.

Fast forward two weeks, to my Christmas open house at the gallery when I realized I added yellow under-glaze or glaze to several pottery pieces. And it actually looked nice, and still in the Christmas spirit.

While I was looking at the adorable Ornaments I made for a give away I realized the main color was yellow. They are little white Christmas trees with a yellow star and little yellow spots all over it to imply lights. I realized how much Alyssa's color scheme had invaded my artwork. Then I realized what a perfect color yellow is for Christmas. Jesus is our light of the world. We celebrate his birth during the darkest season of the year and he fills our lives with light.

This year our adorable little Christmas trees were a give away for the opening night of our Christmas Show, but I will continue to create them every year and share with my customers why yellow is a great Christmas color.