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An Artist’s Afternoon
This post is sponsored by eBay.
I love reading style blogs. I love when they make collections. You’d think this is because I’m really into fashion and I want to stay up on all the latest trends but that’s not the case at all. I don’t give a flip about what they are wearing in Paris or what lipgloss has the best shine. I just like style blogs because they are visual. I love to look at pictures. I could look at pictures all day long. I’d say 80 percent of the blogs I read, I just scan photos and never read a line of text. Isn’t that weird? I guess everyone’s brain is made differently and we like what we like.
This got me thinking…maybe I should make a collection. I tried a little bit with my Paris Party Planning post but maybe I should stick to things I know. Like art supplies, perhaps? Oh yeah. You can talk about your Nars lip gloss and your booties that cost five hundred dollars and I’ll just glaze over but get me started on gel medium and glue guns, googlie eyes and glow-in-the-dark paint and I’ll talk you under the table. Or talk you into coming over to my house Friday night for crafts and drinks with the girls.
Here’s a little collection I put together on eBay called Artist Afternoon.
1. Mod Podge! If you’ve followed any of my craft posts over on Alphamom, you already know what a staple this is and you’ve already got five jars of it in your well-stocked craft cabinet in five different shades and weights. It’s not your mother’s decoupage goop, though you can certainly use it for decoupaging. It’s pretty much your average white glue that works on anything without the orange applicator cap that always gets stopped up anyway. If you don’t have a bottle of this on hand, you need one.
2. Small Watercolor Painting Tin Isn’t this cute? I’ve been thinking of making my own altoid tin version but I have to admit the tiny divider thing is a selling point for me. Especially if you use tube watercolor paint, which I don’t but I might try one of these days.
3.Gloss Gel Medium This stuff is the secret to not being a starving artist. You can add a tiny bit of paint to a big glob of gel and magically the pigment from your paint will color the entire glob without weakening the color at all. This is great when you discover that you are out of some important color and you really don’t want to run to the art store to stock up.
4. Washi Tape! There are so many uses for this stuff. Even if you aren’t the DIY type you need this around for taping small notes and wrapping packages. And also color coding your power cords.
5. Googlie eyes You already know how I feel about googlie eyes. I think everyone should have a very large collection. EBay is a great place to start.
6. Coveralls. I don’t have any but I’m thinking I need some. It could be like my super hero costume for crafting.
7. Glow in the Dark Paint! I’ve been perkolating a bunch of ideas with this stuff. I might even have to break it out for Halloween.
8. Sexy Boyfriend Jeans I live in these. Baggy, comfortable and NOT frumpy.
9. Liquitex Acrylic Paint A lot of people swear by other brands but I’m pretty loyal to Liquitex. I’ve been using them since forever.
10. Super Bonder glue gun This is not Glubert, my trusty glue gun, but if Glubert suddenly bit the dust, this is probably what I’d buy because it’s red and it’s SUPER. Super Bonder to the rescue!
If you like the above, there’s more here. I hope you enjoy my collection! Be sure to follow me on eBay to check out the rest of my shoppable collections. I’ve got a few that I think you will find very interesting…let’s just say I’m using my collections to inspire some fiction writing I might be doing. Stay tuned!
(My eBay Collections were curated as part of my collaboration with eBay #FOLLOWITFINDIT)
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Putting on a Festival, Painting Posters and a Near Trip to the ER
I’ve been doing a lot of artwork for the PTA at Bug’s school lately. I’m not complaining at all because they let me make pretty much whatever I want and they love everything I make. I swear, customers who get things for free are the best customers of all. They never complain about anything and they appreciate everything. Too bad they don’t pay the bills.
It’s been a blast. I’ve met a lot of new friends and I’m really feeling like I’m part of a community that could eventually lead to business contacts. In fact, several people have asked me about doing logos for them so maybe in the long run all my hard work might pay off.
We’ve been working on putting together a Family Fun Festival coming up this next Friday (hit me up if you are local, you have to come!) and it’s been crazy. There are going to be so many fun things at this festival. A live band, line dancing (!), face painting (by moi and a few others), carnival games, pie-eating contests etc etc etc… I feel like I’m back in time and we are going to a real country fair except there are only a few parents doing everything and we’re all kind of scared because we’ve never actually done anything like this by ourselves. AND!! It’s all free. It’s not even a fund-raising event, which is crazy if you ask me. But nobody asked me. The food will cost a minimal amount and you can bid on a silent auction (which you should for the summer camp deals alone) but everything else is FREE. FREE!!
Do you live in Orange County? Email me. I’ll give you the deets.
So yesterday me and a bunch of moms painted all the banners for this event. It was super fun. I love painting signs. We painted for hours.
The only problem was: each mom came with at least one kid and the kids ran rampant. It was crazytown. Like a birthday party with no grown-ups. The only adult supervision was busy painting and we were having such a blast, we may not have been paying close attention to what the kids were doing.
Dun duh, dun DUN!
Yeah.
Bug and several other kids decided it would be really fun to climb in and out of one of the mom’s cars, via the windows—sort of like the car was a giant jungle gym. All the windows were down and the doors were locked (or so we thought) and they were climbing in and out. I balked at first because my sister-in-law has this giant scar from a windshield-wiper-meets-shin incident when she was a kid and this has lead me to be of the absolutely-no-climbing-on-cars school of thought. But I’ve recently been thinking maybe I’m too uptight about things like this. The other moms were okay with it and the kids who had been whining for food were wonderfully occupied and happy with this new car-jungle-gym. So I let it go. Plus, we were right there in the open garage just feet away from the parked car.
I was painting happily away when suddenly, I heard blood-curdling screaming. I looked up and it was MY KID. I instantly turned into the hairiest, scariest Mama Bear you have ever scene. I think my paint brush went flying and I leaped over the still-wet posters in a single bound. Bug’s hand was in the door. I heard it close on her hand. It was a really tall car so she was hanging there by her hand and screaming. It was terrible!
I grabbed Bug and opened the door. I yelled, CAN YOU BEND YOUR FINGERS!! Through tears and screams she magically did. Her fingers all bent. Nothing was broken. I still cannot believe it. Every single finger was fine and could wiggle. How is this possible when her whole hand was in the door and I heard it close with that solid crunch sound that cars make when the door slams shut. It was a miracle.
We sat there for minutes just trying to figure out what happened. The only thing I can figure is that the car had a really big rubber lip and a pretty big cavity inside before the actual metal of the door met the inside of the door rim. Bug has some abrasions on her skin but no bruising, no breaking, not even any residual aching. She was shook up and crying a lot but she was fine.
We gave her some arnica and I let her sit and watch tv on my phone. She didn’t even want to go home, which was good because I still had three and a half posters to paint. Eventually she even went back to playing.
She’s my miracle kid.
Later that night, when she was in bed, she complained about growing pains, in HER LEGS.
Her hand is fine. Absolutely fine.
Phew.
