I really love the way these Santa hooked rug pillows turned out but I wondered if there was a way to make Santa’s cheeks a bit rosy. In the past, I have used make-up blush to add a bit of a glow to the cheeks of sewn things but I didn’t want to use blush on these pillows. I was afraid the blush would rub off onto the furniture or someone’s clothes. So I decided to try using some watercolors to paint the hooked rugs.
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Experimenting with the Water Colors:
Before I started painting on Santa’s face, I hooked some sample swatches to experiment with. If you are going to try painting on your hooked rug, I would highly recommend doing some test painting first!
Since I was experimenting, I decided to try painting on multiple colors of wool. I hooked some pink, blue, grey, and natural colored swatches to try.
I used a stiff paintbrush and some watercolor paint. For this initial experiment, I used RoseArt water color paint (what I had on hand). The set I have only has 8 colors so I tried red. I brushed the watercolor paint onto the wool and allowed it to dry.
The red really shows up on the natural and pink wools. It made a slight difference in color on the grey wool and gave the blue wool a bit of a purple cast.
Blushing Santa’s Cheeks with Paint:
My mom had a watercolor set with a pink in it so we experimented a bit more with the pink and decided to use it for blushing Santa’s cheeks.
We brushed it on with a stiff brush and then wiped off excess with a rag.
Now he has rosy cheeks!
I would not try this painting method on something that needs crisp lines, but I think it would be fun to try it to make some puffy clouds, smoke coming from a chimney, or other wispy items.
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