A great day to paint...

It has been a lazy weekend for me - grandchildren are home in the pool, husband is golfing, the weather is too hot to go out, so I just stayed in and painted - with a few breaks to read my favorite blogs. I will be heading to Houston this weekend for the Art Expo - so excited! My friend Sherry, had her husband make us a stand for the clipboards we keep our notes and pictures on during class. Being like most painters, I can't go to an Art Expo with a plain old clipboard - so I painted it!! I used Genesis paint - a heat set paint that does not dry until you heat set it with a embossing heat gun. I have not used these paints in four or five years so I struggled with them for a while but I like the way my rose turned out. The texture is like oil paint - but I still prefer oils over heat set paints.

A litte story - several years ago we had a terrible hurricane named Ivan. It destroyed about 80% of the building I worked in. During the reconstruction phase we had to wear hard hats to enter the building. There is nothing worse than a man handing you a hard hat that has been on someone's sweaty head! So I asked for my own hard hat which they graciously obliged. The very first day I had it one of the construction workers asked to borrow it - well, you know I didn't want it after he used it. Before handing him the hat I removed the foam so it would be easier to clean when I got it back. Then I brought it home and painted flowers on it. You know what, they didn't ask to borrow it again!! Can't imagine why, I thought it was quite pretty and the only one like it on the military base. And they let me keep it as a momento of the 18 months of fighting and stressing over getting the building put back together. Three months after re-opening, I retired! Here is a photo of the hat.