Paint an America Mason Jar with Christie

Hey guys, it's Christie with The Social Easel, and I wanted to jump on really quick and do some painting with you guys today. But before we get started on that, I want to make sure that you know—

I'm gonna scoot over here just a little bit—

make sure you know about our newest July painting for the Painting of the Month Club. This is one of my most popular paintings by far, and it's what we're doing this month for the Painting of the Month Club in July. So if you're not familiar with that, this is a new membership that I started. We are in our third month now, and for only $20 a month, you get to be a member of this group and you get exclusive paintings that are not available anywhere else.

So for July, I can scoot this back just a little. I feel a little close to you guys. Give me just a second.

So for July, we are doing the truck with sunflowers. This one is so, so much fun. It's the only way— I have to duck down, this camera is, is at a weird angle this morning— but this is the only way that you're gonna get to learn to paint this. So I'm gonna kind of give you a quick overview of what this includes. $20 a month, that is automatic renewal until you cancel. So you can cancel anytime. If you don't, you'll just keep getting the new painting of the month each month. These are exclusive paintings that are only available through this membership. In addition to, you get a color list, you get the template.

I have got to angle this up.

I'm like ducking so I can see you guys. I think it's slowly moving. That's better. Is that good? You're gonna get a color list and template so you do not have to freehand this truck. And then obviously the video tutorials. This one, you guys get a little bit extra this month. So in addition to just the painting tutorial, the color list, and the template, which you get every month, you also get a bonus lesson on learning how to build your own palette board. So my husband builds these for me, or he used to. He doesn't anymore because we don't do paint nights anymore, but You're gonna learn how to make your own pallet board. Now, one of the number one questions that I get is, do I have to do it on a pallet board, or if I can't make them, can I buy them? First, you don't have to do it on a pallet board. This is an 18 by 18 size, so you can get that canvas, which I love painting on. If you've seen my farm animal series, those are all on 18 by 18s. Or you can shrink your template down and do a smaller square if you want to, or do a 16 by 20. This is very versatile, so you can do it on multiple surfaces. Surfaces. You can go to Hobby Lobby, Walmart, Michaels. They all have their own versions of palette boards.

There's not—

they're not as heavy-duty as this, but you can definitely do it on there. So you don't have to have a certain surface. You can paint it on anything, but you do get the bonus video that is included with the Painting of the Month Club this month that will show you how to do your palette board. So how many of you are excited? About the sunflowers. I'm gonna try to get to some of the comments. I usually have my iPad where I can see them a little bit bigger, and I don't have that close to me right now, so I'm gonna try to go back here. Thank you, Miss Janet. I love this painting too. It's so much fun. And I'm thinking we're gonna add— so we're doing today, we're doing a mason jar painting that I'm gonna start here in just a second. I'm gonna flip you guys around, but I'm thinking, should I add maybe a couple sunflowers into the mason jar? Maybe one sunflower. I'm thinking sunflowers and daisies and like a little American flag. So we'll play with that. But yeah, let me know if you're excited about this. All of this will be available.

This is—

I forgot to mention how this works. So you won't have this, these videos emailed to you. You will get a login for our membership hub. And so when you log in tomorrow morning, um, the paintings are released on the 1st of each month. So when you log in tomorrow morning, everything is going to be there for you. I already have the resources up, the template, all that stuff that you need. But tomorrow morning when you log on, all the videos to learn how to paint this are going to be there in the membership hub for you. And then on the 1st of August, your newest one will show up in your membership hub. So they're all in one spot and you can easily just go from month to month.

With that.

So Painting of the Month Club, Red Truck with Sunflowers, the only way you can get it, and it's only $20. So even if you just want this painting and you're not sure if you want to stay a member, you can sign up for $20 and then you can cancel before the next month if you're not sure that's what you want to do.

So it's a win-win.

All right, I am going to now swing you guys around here and we're gonna do a mason jar. How many of you did the last mason jar with me?

We did one— oops, sorry— we did one for Mother's Day and it had the— it had joy written on it. So this is gonna be similar, but we're gonna make it Americana. For the Fourth of July. Yeah, if you are a Tribe Sister, which is my VIP membership, um, you get the Painting of the Month Club as a bonus added to your membership, so you don't have to spend any extra. All right, so we're gonna do a little construction of our mason jar again today.

It's going to be very similar to last time, but this is like—

wouldn't this be fun to do for each season? So we did one for Mother's Day, we're doing one for Fourth. My next one should probably be fall, you think?

And then you guys will have one that you can do for each season.

I love mason jars. So we're just going to start.

I'm just using a Sharpie.

This is waterproof, so I know I can come back over it with my paint. So we're going to start with just a big wide parenthesis, and then we're gonna connect those lines. Now I am very, very sketchy with this. I don't mean sketchy in a bad way, I mean sketch-like. So I don't have strong, like, concrete lines. Everything has multiple lines to it. I just That's my preference. I just kind of like that look and the messiness of it. Okay, so now we're gonna come out just a little bit right here, short little line.

It's angled out.

You guys see that? And then straight down again. I have multiple lines here, and then I just want a slight curve.

I don't want a big you, but just a little bit.

This is gonna be a squattier mason jar today. What do you guys think? Not too hard of a shape, right? So then I want some some flowers coming out, and I'm probably going to roughly sketch this and then paint over top of it. I may let some of the lines show through. I may come back and add some lines. The first thing I want to do is add in— I want my little flag sticking out here. Now you could do this with just paint. You don't have to sketch it. You could just do paint instead of pin first. And we're just gonna have this flag just kind of angle down a little bit. It doesn't have to be perfect. Now this is just going to be very much just the idea of a flag. I'm not going to count the stripes out. I'm not going to count the stars out. it's just gonna be a pretty little interpretation.

So I was thinking maybe I want maybe like a sunflower over here.

What do you guys think? I'm thinking maybe sunflower. Maybe it's the Texas in me, like I want some little like bluebonnet colors kind of sticking out. And usually I do kind of like a see-through jar but I'm kind of envisioning this one like a cream color with a little bit of like aging around the sides, and then we could add a word on there. What word should we add? Freedom? Happy Fourth?

I don't know.

And I may come back— so when you're doing this kind of style, and obviously I'm just in my mixed media pad, but you can do this two different ways. You can kind of do a little bit of a sketch first or you can paint first and then come back and add black lines over the top of it. I'm really thinking I want, like, maybe a sunflower out this way. Maybe some little daisies. You guys know I love my little— I'm just gonna call them bluebonnets. They're all different things, those little ones that stick out. So you guys see how messy I'm doing this, just little scribble lines. Probably want a little bit of greenery in there. USA, peace. What are the other? Glory, that's good. Liberty. See, there's so many things you could do. Maybe like a big green leaf kind of hanging over here. Now you can see right now my lines are all overlapping and stuff, but I'm not going to water down my paint too much today. When I did the Mother's Day mason jar, um, I watered it down a little bit more and kind of had it act like watercolor. Um, today I'm probably going to stick with thicker, just regular acrylic paint. So let's start adding in some colors. I need some kind of maybe red flower in there too, don't I? Don't you think?

All right, this is Light Buttermilk from DecoArt.

This is Pebble. Let's just start with this. I'm just going to use my filbert brush here, so we're going to go a little darker around our edges. Pick up some more of that cream in the middle. And just keep in mind, if you— how many of you are completely new to acrylic paint? Let me know your experience here.

If you are completely new, The thing I love about acrylic is it's very forgiving.

So if you do something you don't like, you can paint right over top of it. So the key is learning to let that Type A perfectionist part of your personality— learning to let that go a little and reminding yourself you can change it. It's okay. To make mistakes. You learn from them. Sometimes they become those happy little accidents in your painting that you love that you don't plan for. Tamara said, can you use chalk paint with it? Yeah, you should be able to. It's just gonna have a different finish. So if you mix different types of finishes together, like gloss versus, you know, satin or matte, it's— it's— you're gonna have areas of your painting where it's gonna look different when the light hits it, but you can do it. So you can see I pretty much covered up my lines, and that's okay because I can come back and add those accent marks later. All right, I've still got a little black over here from the painting I was just teaching my tribe earlier, so I'm gonna grab a little bit of that and do some accent marks here. Whispy little lines. I'm using just a small round. Maybe even add a little bit of water to the black just to make it a little bit thinner. So yeah, if you're new, I like bright colors. I like whimsical. I love florals. I love painting flowers. Let me grab a little bit of brown here, just like a burnt umber. Umber. It's just a good basic brown. I'm probably gonna add a little bit of black to that. So you guys are painting this with me on a whim, like I haven't, you know, just kind of sketched out this idea in front of you. And we're just kind of going for it, so you may see me make some mistakes or some decisions or do something that I'm like, yeah, I'm not super crazy about that, and I may go back and change it. So you kind of just get to peek in on my process a little bit. The center of our sunflower here. I got so many colors we're gonna be using in this one. Okay, one of my favorite greens from DecoArt is this Desert Cactus. Let's add a little bit of greenery in here. I may want something a little bit darker, I'm not sure yet. This leaf is going to be kind of tucked behind our flag here, and I'm just going to kind of go in just put a little bit of green back here. This is not any particular shape— this guy is, but we're basically just wanting to fill in with a little bit of greenery here. It'll all make a little more sense when we start filling it in. Okay, so I'm gonna need— what do I want to do here? I'm gonna get darker blue and purple. Start with some of my background color first. I'm gonna be adding a little bit more darkness to this. It's a little bit lighter than I want it to be. I think I want a little bit of purple in there. I love purple and blue together. Look, isn't that pretty? So I'm just using a round brush and just kind of dabbing along here. I'm gonna have to add something in between here to break that up. So we don't have the blue on blue. It's really fun to just kind of build your own bouquets. They can be whatever you want them to be. All right, I'm gonna go add a little bit of black to my blue here. I want the navy and the flag to be a little bit darker. Now I do have a tendency to overdo it on my bouquets too, because I just have so much fun painting flowers. I just keep adding, so maybe a little crowded at the end, but that's just kind of what I tend to do. See how easily just adding a little bit of black to that completely changes the way that looks? We could even add a little bit in here for some more shading. And then the opposite of that, we could come in with a little bit of white. Okay, I need some good sunflower yellow color here. What do you guys think so far? You like the way it's coming along? We're gonna start with this. This is kind of muted. We're gonna see if we like it. I can always come back and add some brighter yellow to it. And I'm not worried about that jar showing through that petal. I know I'm going to be adding some more colors to it, and I'm also not worried about covering up that center of my sunflower. All things I can go back and change. So how many of you, this would totally freak you out that that just happened? You added some blue into your petal there? It's okay, because once it dries, we can paint right over top of it. I just want that there so I can go ahead and get my shape of my sunflower down. Then let's come back in the middle I forgot I need some red flowers in here. That's what's missing. Let's see, this isn't really true red, but I wonder if this is what I want to use. Oh, here's a cherry red, and I'm just going to make some very freestyle red flowers. They're not going to have a ton of form to them. I'm grabbing a filbert brush, just a small filbert, and I'm just going to kind of mush It's my technical word. Just kind of mush some little flowers around here. Maybe we'll come back and add something to the center of them, maybe not. I don't know yet. Maybe they're like little mini carnations sticking up. Okay, I'm gonna set that down for just a second. I'm gonna go in with some white here on my American flag, and I'm gonna pick up— because I want this to kind of have a little bit of age to it, I don't want it bright, bright white— I'm gonna pick up a little bit of this like buttercream color too. Are y'all excited about trying this on your own? I'm gonna go back with some of this buttercream too and kind of pull it in. To my sunflowers a little bit. I'm gonna be coming back over this with some more yellow too, so don't think I have a— I'm gonna have a white sunflower. We're not. Remember this little petal over here with that blue in it? Add a little white, a little bit more yellow, and it starts covering it up. Now I tend to jump all over my painting. My paintings kind of work a little bit like my office does. Everything's a little sporadic, all over the place. We got some funky little petals on the bottom of this sunflower right now, but I know I'll be able to go in and tweak it. Debbie, this is a mixed media pad. They're all the same. Let me check the front of it. I don't know if it says the weight or not. It's 98-pound. All right, we're gonna grab— I really want a bright yellow. Let me grab a brighter one. I need another little daisy, maybe a couple. Maybe I'll do— I'm gonna start pulling just a little bit of this brown. From the center of my sunflower. That seems pretty stark right now, but again, we're going to come back and add some layers to that to soften it and blend it with a little bit of our yellow. It may be a little tricky here getting these daisies to show up on this background. Probably should have thought about that. We're gonna add— let's take take just a tiny touch of that pebble and add that on. Or maybe I just don't like that and I will cover it up. I could always come in and change up my background a little. I think what I'm going to do here with these I'm not gonna leave them this color, but I'm gonna put this base color down, this little bit of a khaki-ish color, and then come back and put white over top of it, and it'll kind of create like a base, like a shadow filler there. Let's go back and add See how that red becomes like see-through? We're gonna go back and add a little bit to that. So now when we go back to do the red, you'll start seeing it show up a little bit more instead of how transparent it is right now. Betty said, what would be a good background color for painting this on canvas? You could do lots of things, maybe like a dark brown, like a wood color. Jamie says she's struggling with flowers but can paint birds really good. It's frustrating. Hey, dude, just keep practicing. The more you practice, the better you're gonna get at it. Watch videos again. Sometimes you catch things the second time around that you missed. The first go-round. Now I'm just going to grab a tiny bit of black, okay, and I'm going to mix that with my red and just get a more toned-down color here. I'm starting to like the way it's coming together. All right, I'm gonna switch back to my round, and I kind of liked this toned-down red here for my flag too. Maybe just a touch more black. And the thing I love about doing these flags that are kind of sideways like this, kind of draping down, is your lines don't have to be straight. They're going to have a little bit of wiggle to them. And this is not supposed to be a replica. Those of you saying I'm not gonna do 13 stripes, it's okay.

Representation of it.

I'm liking those colors. What do you guys think? So I think I just need to finish up my sunflower here and get it the way I want it, and then my daisies and some accent marks. Gotta add the stars. There's a few things left. I like to throw in a little bit of a reddish-orange color sometimes in my sunflowers too. So I'm just layering on a bunch of yellow right now, different shades. I kind of want it thick. I like that pop of that brighter yellow. Marsha said she painted the last mason jar in a birthday card for someone and they loved it. Awesome. Tamar said, is there a certain shade of yellow better to use for— honestly, no. I have so many shades of yellow. I just use like, like a cadmium yellow and like yellow ochre, just some toned down, some brighter. I just like to have a mix. I'm gonna take a little bit of brown with my yellow here, kind of tone down maybe this side just a little bit more. Okay, let's add some little stars up here. I'm just using a small little, like, liner round, and I'm not gonna do anything exact here. I'm just gonna throw in some little dots. Well, I just streaked some red into my flag that I didn't mean to do. That's okay. We'll just call that one of those happy little accidents. All right, I'm gonna switch back. Oh, that's the wrong brush. I'm gonna rinse my filbert really, really good. So I can come back and— still got red in it. That red paint is a booger. All right, so I'm just loading up this silver brush here. Probably should have thought that through a little bit more, doing it on a white background. I love this little flower. What do you guys think? All right, I'm gonna do some quick little accent marks in with my black. This is why it pays to have these liner brushes. You can get these super skinny lines. And you can decide how much, like, you want to have the black outlines. You may want it to just stay like this. I'm gonna go ahead and add some throughout just because I think it's gonna help the shape of everything show up a little bit more. Kind of adds to the style of the painting that we're doing today. Doesn't have to be around everything. Help those daisies stand out a little bit more. And I'm real loose with these. They don't even have to go right on the edge of my shapes. They can be a little on the outside, a little on the inside. Could even add some— maybe you want to add some little lines on the inside to give our little red flowers a little bit more shape. It's okay for some to be heavier, some to be lighter. Let's see what it does to this over here. Now, if you are worried about doing these skinny little lines that I'm doing, you can cheat.

Wait for everything to completely dry.

You can use a Sharpie, but my preference is a paint pen because it'll have the same finish as your paint. It won't look completely different. Thank you, guys. Judy said, is this the new painting for July for the monthly group?

No, this is just a freebie that I'm giving you guys.

I'm gonna go live each day this week. With a new painting. So today was our mason jar, Americana mason jar. Tomorrow's gonna be a gnome, and then Thursday is gonna be a rustic American flag. So I'm just doing some extra little bonus videos with you guys this week in celebration of the Fourth. Okay, I'm really digging it. What do you guys think? I just can't decide on the words, what I want to do. You know, it wouldn't be me if I didn't add my favorite gold paint pen to this. This is in my Amazon store too. This is DecoArt. Oh, you got to be careful with this too. You're not adding on wet paint. I just touched some wet there. All right, let's do USA on here. Now I'm going over with Sharpie first. Okay, let me see. Do I have a black paint pen over here? I'm gonna carefully lay— this is the Painting of the Month Club painting for July. It's one of my faves. Messy little sunflowers. No paint pen. I guess I'll have to paint it. I'm gonna water down my black again to get it nice and thin. For when I do this. Not too bad. I'm just craving a little bit of my Americana colors down here in my mason jar. I think I may add just a few accent marks. Oh, what do you guys think about that? I like the blue. And the red added. Okay, one last thing I'm going to do is just add a base. Now that I've got this much detail, I want to add a base to it. Always find a couple little things you miss here and there. Okay, I think I'll finally quit.

Hope you guys love it. Happy early Fourth. Had so much fun with you guys.

Thanks for hanging out with me, and I will be back tomorrow. Bye!