Countdown to Christmas Ornament: Good Morning Christmas!

Ready for the next movie in Hallmark Channel’s 2020 Countdown to Christmas? Alison Sweeney and Mark Blucas star in Good Morning Christmas!, the story of two squabbling television hosts who are sent to a festive small town for the holidays to cover the local festive traditions. As they pretend to get along to put on a good show, they find that there’s more to the other person than they originally thought. (Find more info on the movie here!)

The talk show that the main characters Melissa and Brian host together is called Bright & Merry, and they are sent on assignment to the town of Mistletoe. So, I thought it would be fun to combine those two things to create the ornament for this movie.

HAND LETTERED MISTLETOE ORNAMENT

You’ll need:

large wood slice ornament

acrylic/multi-surface paint (I used three shades of green, plus white and red)

fine-tip black paint marker or permanent marker

pencil and eraser

small paint brushes

Step 1: Paint your mistletoe.

In the upper center of the ornament, use green paint to create a bunch of mistletoe. The leaves are just long ovals coming off a center stem. I used two different colors of light green to differentiate the leaves a bit, then outlined them with a darker green. If you’re feeling nervous about free-handing this, use a pencil to sketch the shape first, then fill it in with paint. There are tons of mistletoe images you can look at online for inspiration.

Step 2: Add details.

First, your mistletoe will need berries. I dipped the non-brush end of my paintbrush into my white paint, then touched it to the ornament to create perfect circles. Although sometimes you may see it represented differently, real mistletoe berries are white, not red! Red berries are holly or other plants. After adding berries, I also painted a little bow at the top of my mistletoe. Bows are just two sideways teardrop shapes and two lines.

Step 3: Pencil in your words.

I like to do this first so that I know my spacing will be correct. It’s helpful to start with your center letter or character, then move out to the right and the left.

Step 4: Trace your words with permanent marker or paint pen.

I used a Tombow MonoTwin marker. Since it doesn’t have a brush tip, we have to do Faux Calligraphy to get that gorgeous Brush Script look. That means the first step is just to write the words in cursive, as shown below.

Step 5: Thicken the downstrokes.

To get that gorgeous hand lettered look, we have to find the downstrokes in each letter, which is a fancy way of talking about every part of the letter where your pen was moving in a downward motion while you were writing. Draw a second line next to each downstroke, then color in between the two lines to create a line that looks thicker than the rest of the letter. For more information and practice on this technique, check out my super-simple Faux Calligraphy post! Once your marker is dry, erase any pencil lines you can still see.

Step 6: Add hearts.

To symbolize the love that grows between Melissa and Brian throughout the movie, I added a tiny red heart on each end of the phrase using acrylic paint.

That’s all there is to it! Of course, you could always make this a more general Christmas ornament by flipping the words to say “merry and bright” or by using your loved ones’ names, etc. as the hand lettered text. If you create your own version of this mistletoe ornament, I’d love to see! Be sure to share your holiday (and other) projects in the Amy Latta & Friends Facebook Group so we can all be inspired. See you there!

Don’t miss these other ornaments for the rest of the movies in Hallmark Channel’s Countdown to Christmas.

JINGLE BELL BRIDE   CHATEAU CHRISTMAS

ONE ROYAL HOLIDAY   ON THE 12TH DATE OF CHRISTMAS

NEVER KISS A MAN IN A CHRISTMAS SWEATER

CHRISTMAS WITH THE DARLINGS   CHRISTMAS IN VIENNA

A TIMELESS CHRISTMAS  A NASHVILLE CHRISTMAS CAROL

THE CHRISTMAS HOUSE   HEART OF THE HOLIDAYS

A CHRISTMAS TREE GROWS IN COLORADO

CHRISTMAS BY STARLIGHT

FIVE STAR CHRISTMAS  CHRISTMAS WALTZ  IF I ONLY HAD CHRISTMAS

CHRISTMAS IN EVERGREEN: BELLS ARE RINGING

CHRISTMAS SHE WROTE   LOVE, LIGHTS, HANUKKAH   

CHRISTMAS COMES TWICE  A CHRISTMAS CAROUSEL