How to Make a Picture Book Ornament

If you’re a book-loving parent, there’s a chance that you’ve seen the same Instagram reel that the algorithm feeds me throughout the holiday season for two years now: a mom who paints ornaments featuring the cover of her child’s favorite picture book of the year.

If you want to try making it for yourself, but doubt your artistic ability, OR if you’re artsy like me, but you need to sketch forever before you can get an accurate drawing, here’s my time-saving, low-stress solution.

What You’ll Need

A digital image: take a picture of the thing you want to paint, or Google it
Canva
Printer
Pencil
Flat ornament – a circle shaped wood slice or a laser cut wood piece will be easiest

Steps

tl;dr – here’s my video tutorial from Instagram:

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Open up an 8.5x11in document on Canva (or whatever size paper you print on).
Go to “Elements,” then “Frames.” Choose the circle frame.
Measure the diameter of your ornament. Play with the dimensions of your Canva circle frame until it matches the diameter of your actual ornament.
Go to “Uploads” and upload the digital image you want for your ornament painting.
Drag the uploaded image into the frame. Adjust the image until it fits your frame the way you want it to look on the ornament.
I also make a circle outline over the frame so that the next step can be a little easier.
Print a PDF of your image. Cut out the circle. It should line up perfectly.
Flip the paper over. Rub pencil all over the back. You want to get enough graphite to where it’ll rub off for the next steps.
Flip the paper back over and line it up on your ornament. Using a ballpoint pen or a pencil (I prefer pencil), trace just the outline of your image. Your goal is to make a line drawing that gets the basic image down.
Lift up your paper. You should have a pencil line drawing on your ornament. From here, you’ve got to know how to paint, and have some tiny detail brushes. Good luck!

I’ve made some amazing pieces using this hack. For the record, I *can* draw it all myself. Here are samples:

…but that takes me a long time. I am such a perfectionist that I get stuck at sketching for a long time. And I don’t have the time for that during the Christmas rush. So now I use my digital tools so I can get to painting much faster. Here are pieces I’ve done with the hack: (also these were done 2 years after the above paintings, so my skills improved a lot in that time)