What you need:

• Slices of dry wood. I bought them but you can make them yourself too.
• Acrylic paint and brushes. I used rather fine tips to get a bit of detail in the portraits.
• Tracing paper if you don’t want to draw directly on the wood
• sandpaper to make to wood as smooth as possible. It helps with the details and with painting.
• a drill and/or screw eye pins.
• yarn.
• Varnish.

In step one I printed a drawing that I already made of my 3 dogs and transferred the design with the use of tracing paper onto the wood that I already prepared with a layer of primer.

After transferring the design and adjusting some details, I started painting. When this was all dry, I put on 2 layers of varnish to protect the painting. On the back, I’l write the year.

This was just before the varnish and tye eye pins but I’ll create another photo of the end result!

Extra tips:
– The simpler the design, the easier it is to paint.
– If you don’t have the eye pins, you can just drill a hole through the wood. I like the eye pin because it allows them to hang face forward in the tree.
– For this kind of tiny work (at least compared to how I normally paint) I find watercolor brushes easier than the rougher brushes I normally use for acrylics.
– If you use new brushes, wash them first to get possible glue and loose hairs out.
-If you prefer colored pencils instead, make the surface even smoother with the sandpaper and maybe use a roller to get a very even layer of primer, which will make it easier to draw on. As a varnish, a spray will work better than the kind you have to apply with a brush.

You can see the final result: here.