How to Paint Nutcrackers

Instead of painting a traditional-looking nutcracker, feel free to experiment with different costumes or looks.

Nutcrackers, those holiday harbingers that let us know the Christmas season has arrived, come in many sizes and styles. What they all have in common is their tall Russian hats, military uniforms and big, nut-crunching teeth. While most nutcrackers have red coats and white pants, feel free to paint your nutcracker in any colors or style you like. If you decide to go with a variation of the traditional nutcracker, such as giving your nutcracker an Asian-inspired look, consider painting a modified costume, such as that of a Samurai warrior, to create a truly unique nutcracker.

Things You'll Need

• Wood primer
• Acrylic paints
• Paintbrushes, including a fine-tipped brush
• Lacquer or shellac

Instructions

1. Draw an outline of your nutcracker, then sketch in a basic design of how you want the nutcracker to look. You can use photographs of other nutcrackers to inspire you, or images from the many stories, movies and ballets based on the Nutcracker story. Another alternative is to look at military dress uniforms from the country of your preference. For example, instead of the red coat most nutcrackers wear, you might substitute the navy blue jacket of the U.S. Marines instead. You can make purely decorative symbols on the coat or use the proper ranking symbols of the military branch you are taking inspiration from. If you have a traditional nutcracker form but decide to make a modified version, you may need to find some way of altering the hat, either by sanding it down or painting something else on it.

2. Prepare your nutcracker. An easy way to do this is to paint the entire doll the color of the pants, although this works best if you want the pants to be white or a similar light shade. If you are painting dark pants, simply apply a wood-appropriate primer before applying your first coat of paint.

3. Transfer your design to the doll using a pencil and press lightly, since dark pencil marks may be hard to paint over.

4. Paint the doll one color at a time. Start with the jacket color (or whichever color the nutcracker's mouth will be) and carefully paint the moving chin section. This part usually takes up much of the chest and needs to remain movable, so use a small detail brush to paint this section, and avoid getting paint in the seams between the pieces of wood. Once you have finished painting the chin area, move on to the other major blocks of color: the pants, head, hat and shoes.

5. Add details using a fine-tipped brush and painting them on after the major sections have dried. Details include things like buttons, signs of ranks, shoe laces and pants pockets.

6. Finish by painting the face after everything else is dry. Use tiny brushes to make pink cheeks, mustaches, eyes, nose and brows. Instead of a mouth, focus on creating teeth slightly above and along the edge of the moving, nut-cracking part. Most nutcrackers have a wide, toothy grimace under a mustache in the area of the mouth, which is by necessity, distorted by the nutcracking mechanism.

7. Use a lacquer or shellac to protect the paint on the nutcracker. Use the same technique to paint the movable parts as you did earlier.

References

• Painting Folk Art Nutcrackers