Blue & White Hand-Painted Nutcracker Inspiration

I bought an unpainted nutcracker piece last year, but didn’t get around to painting it. You can see in the image below that there are some balls missing from the crown, which I’ll have to try and find and replace. Anyway, I decided to tackle this project this year and it was pretty involved! It was challenging to paint around all the tight cracks and assembled pieces, but I finally did it! Complete with mistakes and quirks and flaws–just like life. This was my last big holiday project for the year. Here are some images of the process:

If you’re looking to paint something similar, I got this piece at Hobby Lobby (and I am not an affiliate, I just shop there a lot for craft supplies).