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| Finished dala horse |
It's interesting how tastes change over a lifetime. I never used to like sauerkraut, but I just ordered a Rueben sandwich last night and the sauerkraut and rye bread were SO GOOD. I was never really interested in rosemaling, but we recently bought a cabin and we want to have some Scandinavian decorations in homage to the Snyder family cabin. This platter has been at the family cabin as long as anyone can remember. It's got "Solhaug" written on the back, which was the studio name for artist Eleanor Erickson in St Paul, who studied under prominent Norwegian rosemaling artist Per Lysne.
I have no experience in painting and find the idea intimidating. I found an artist, Lise Lorentzen, who has published a number of
instructional videos on YouTube and sells some pattern packets on Etsy. One of her consistent sayings is "don't worry, it's just paint" so I decided to give it a go. Since I had a quiet Saturday and it takes time for paint to dry between coats, before I knew it, I was rotating between painting 4 different projects- the dala horse, an old wooden fish I'd bought a while back on eBay and wasn't sure what to do with, a wooden birdhouse that I was making into another
license plate birdhouse, and the base coats on a 12" wood plate for which I'd purchased another
pattern packet and paints.
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| Rotating between 4 projects |
12" Dala Horse
Supplies:
I started by lightly sanding the horse and getting a couple of base coats on. Then I used transfer paper to transfer the design onto the horse and started painting. It turned out better than I thought it might, mostly because I'm following an experienced artist's painting suggestions with the transfer.
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Unpainted dala
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| 2 basecoats and glaze applied |
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| Held the pattern up to a window to trace a mirror image for the other side |
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| Transfer lines traced, starting to paint |
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| 2 coats of scrolls, will add some white in areas then detailing |
Birdhouse
Supplies:
- Acrylic paint, polyacrylic protective finish, old license plate, wire, old silver spoon (all from stash)
- Wood birdhouse- on sale for $5.40
One of Lise's tricks is to use a hairdryer to get the sticky label off of purchased wooden items- worked like a charm. After a couple of base coats (which take longer to apply because you have to rotate and paint different sides so it can dry properly) I decided to use a couple of the dala horse motifs on the bird house for fun.
Wood fish
I bought this old fish on eBay inspired by some of the painted fish I'd seen in Portugal, but I didn't really have an idea of how to paint it and it sat around for a couple of months. I decided on blue and yellow and gave a go at free-handing it. My c-strokes are a little paltry, but it came out alright.
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| As purchased |
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| Finished |
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| Finished for the weekend |
Rosemaling Class
In Jan 2025 I took a 4-hour rosemaling class taught by Julie Anderson at Wet Paint in St Paul, focused mostly on strokes.
12" Hallingdal-style plate
Supplies:
I got the base coats and glaze on. Painting the red rim was finicky and took several touch ups. I tried to do a
burled finish on the outer rim using a folded up plastic bag, but after all it's not really visible. This pattern is ambitious and I needed a bit of courage to start the design painting a few weeks later. This pattern called for 11 different paint colors, and I needed to blend my own blue out of a couple of colors. The actual design painting took about 8 hours, and then there was additional time for touch ups, glazing and applying multiple coats of polyurethane varnish.
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| Starting- you can see the transfer marks in faint white |
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| Making progress |
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| All done! |
14" Telemark-style plate
Supplies: 14" wood plate $7.19 on sale. Pattern free from rosemaling class instructor
This plate "fell" into my cart when I bought the other one- I couldn't seem to leave it behind. I didn't have a design plan for it when I bought it and it's hard to find patterns for this size. I asked the rosemaling class instructor about this size and she graciously emailed a pattern she created to me.
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| Progress with the center motif |
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| Finished |
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| Plates on top of the cabinet |
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