Somehow in the past couple of years while visiting with crafters and artists at Silver Dollar City’s Fall Harvest Festival, I missed meeting a delightful new friend. This year her booth was located right across from the stage venue where my husband performed each day with the Sons of the Silver Dollar. He knew from talking with her and her husband that I would enjoy connecting with her. So I finally made it out to the city and made a new friend. Her name is Karla Dornacher.
Her paintings are bright, colorful and filled with inspiration. Everyone who steps into her booth feels loved and welcomed and as she shares stories of her life, people want to open up and share stories from their lives. She always has words of encouragement and makes people glad they stopped by. While visiting with her a young teen stepped into the booth and shared that she had been inspired to start drawing after meeting Karla the year before. She showed us pictures of some of her drawings on her phone and we were both amazed. I made several trips out to visit Karla’s booth and listen to her inspiring stories.
As a child she loved to draw and doodle and even had opportunity to attend college to study art with a full scholarship. However, she switched paths before starting school when she fell in love with her soon to be husband. Her life as a wife and mom was still filled with creativity, just not in the direction she had first planned. She knew her talent was a gift from God after surrendering her life to Jesus Christ ten years after she married and wanted to use her creativity to honor the Lord. It wasn’t until her daughter was getting married that she began painting and hasn’t stopped.
She began her art business by holding home parties to sell her art prints. At the parties she would share the stories of each painting which was inspired by scriptures. Women attending the parties asked her to write down what she had shared about each painting because they wanted a reminder of the symbolism for encouragement in their lives. So she began writing the “story” of each painting and attaching it to the back of the prints. This writing eventually led to her writing and illustrating many gift books published through J.Countryman Publishing. Her works of art also were licensed for use in home decor and gift items. She loves to speak to women’s groups sharing about her life and challenging them in a closer walk with God. You can read more about Karla on her website.
Coloring books for grownups are all the rage these days and Karla has two coloring books of her beautiful drawings available for purchase.
I bought her books and was happy to learn that she gives permission to copy the pages for use with small group gatherings. A few weeks later I shared some of her coloring pages with a small womens fellowship at my church. Most of the ladies were skeptical when they first walked in and saw color crayons, pencils, markers, and watercolors sitting on the tables. They probably thought I had forgotten it was a ladies group and not kids night. I shared with them a bit about Karla and her work and how they could incorporate doodling and coloring into their time of Bible study and devotions.
Some of my sermon note doodles
They got excited and dove right into coloring. You can purchase Karla’s coloring books and other art here or here.
One of Karla’s coloring bookmarks
Karla also has available on her website coloring pages for kids you can download free. I printed off some of her Thanksgiving pages for the grandkids to color this week. Here’s the link. Print off some of her coloring pages for your kids to color this week at your Thanksgiving festivities.
