Every year we face the same "problem" over again: What to get our loved ones for Christmas. These people often deserve something way more special than just a simple bath bomb from lush. If you're still desperately searching for a present don't worry cause I got you covered.

For the last few weeks we've been working on a painting in art class that could be the perfect Christmas present.
Our task was to paint a famous person we liked. But we had to do a colorful and rather rough-textured painting of them where you can still see the strokes of the paintbrush. I quite liked the idea because it seemed pretty simple to do. We painted over a printed photo so you just needed to colour the photo.

I chose to paint Adele cause her contour and eyeliner are always poppin' haha (so the shadows are seen better on the photo).


Since the painting is so easy to make and based on a photo you could print a photo of the person you want to give it to or paint their favorite artist or whatever you like.

How to do it step by step 

1. Print your photo on a rather thicker paper in black and white.
2. With a sponge soaked in water I moistened the photo on both sides to prevent it from curling up as soon as you start painting. Attach it to a board with tape on the sides and wait for it to dry.
3. Now you can start painting (I used acrylic paint). It's easiest to paint it on an easel but you can do it without one too. I first coloured the photo with the bright colours and then the dark ones. With the darker colours mixed with water I could paint over the hair for example.
4. After you've finished painting you can take off the tape and your Christmas gift is done! 

Here's the original photo I used

The painting in progress

I've also made the same thing with Marilyn Monroe. But instead of painting on a photo I painted on canvas:

The photo I used as inspiration

First I sketched onto the canvas



Then I've painted the rest with acrylic paint





Hopefully this post has helped you to find a Christmas gift idea for somebody!
-Love, Sophie :)

Normally I'm painting with my black and white pencils but some days ago the not-trying-new-stuff-me actually tried something else. I painted with watercolours on small canvases (20x20 cm). 

Because I'm a sucker for all things vintage I decided to paint vintage bicycles hooray! 

My first step was to paint the background with crosswise strokes in a brown colour (mixing green and red) to make it look kinda... vintage (I'm using that word too often).

  

I didn't actually copy the bikes from a photo like I usually would, instead I looked at many photos of vintage bikes on the internet and did this study thing art students do. So I made some sketched to get an idea of the proportions, details, reflections on the bike and other stuff like that (how professional huh? haha).

Here are some closer pictures of the paintings:

Everyday life can sometimes be bland and colourless. I like to put a personal twist on things in my daily life, just like I did it with my school planner.

Our school provides us with free school planners. But lemme tell you they are free for a reason: Every corner is filled with advertising... even the cover is a huge ad. I mean look at that (well I guess the inside doesn't look that bad but sometimes a whole page is just one big ad hehe).

Because I just couldn't live with this terrible terrible burden anymore I created my own cover and put it onto my planner.

With a laminating foil I've covered the drawings to protect them because I don't how to treat my school supplies carefully with love.

How do you make your everyday life more enjoyable? :)

-Sophie x

Autumn's finally here and I'm enjoying every second of it. I just love how the leaves turn yellow and red and the weather starts getting chilly.

To make my room cozier I decided to redecorate it and one of the easiest decorations is a garland with autumn themed pictures attached to it.

What you'll need:

So first I attached the cord to a wall in my bedroom:

To do that I tied a knot at each end of the cord and hammered a nail through the knots onto the wall.

Now comes the part where you can become creative!

You can either hang some photos onto the cord or (what I'm going to do) create some own drawings and other crafty autumn themed stuff.

Here are some of my paintings: