Pictures, Projects, and Painting It Pretty

 Hello Internet People!  Long time no see!  Sorry about that, I have been working my little ass off for the past couple of weeks and haven't had the time or the energy to try to write anything.  Hopefully I am done with the work for a while and now I can get back to the important things in life, like writing and creating stuff.

I told you all in my last post that I would have lots of pretty pictures to share with you (which is part of why it took so long for me to get back here, I didn't take the pictures!).  So, here are the drawers of fabric I sorted last week:

Purples, Blacks & Greys

Reds, Pinks, Yellows, & Oranges

Greens

Blues

Whites, Beiges, & Browns

 The colors are a little washed out from the lighting in here, but you get the idea.  As I mentioned before, this does not include any of my hand dyed fabrics, they are still separate.  Its funny it doesn't look like nearly as much fabric in the pictures as there really is, those drawers are rather big, and it is squished in there pretty tightly.  Of course it is not nearly enough fabric, that is not possible, I always need more.

One of the projects I have been working on during my absence from the Blog has been to make myself a "printing pad" and a large ironing pad.  I managed to get the printing pad almost done before I ran out of duct tape, but I haven't started the other one yet (no duct tape).  So here is the printing pad that I made :

Yes, it is huge!  Just the way I wanted it!

I took a piece of particle board that was around 2' x 4' by 1/8" thick and layered two old towels under some cotton batting and covered it all with a piece of a new canvas drop cloth I happened to have sitting around.  I wrapped everything around to the back and taped it down tightly with duct tape.  I think I need another round of duct tape to hold it securely, but it works pretty darn well as it is.  

Just in case anyone is interested, I have a picture of the table that pad is sitting on.  I painted it myself 5 or 6 years ago and I still love it!  I moved it into the house from the storage room and now have it set up in my bedroom to work at.

        The colors are all distorted in this photo, the light colored squares are actually pink, but it was the best picture I could get.  The table originally had a sheet of that fake paper wood laminate on top, but it had cracked and peeled away to nothing, leaving the exposed particle board underneath.  I just marked it off and painted directly on the particle board, and then sealed it with a clear acrylic top coat (or three).  I have abused the hell out of this table, but the paint is still as fresh as the day I put it on.

Today is haircut day at Mother's house.  Father and the boys will be getting their usual crew cuts, courtesy of me, and I am really considering giving myself a crew cut as well.  I am sure I will talk myself out of it before the time comes, but I sure would love to get rid of all this annoying hair that drives me crazier every day!  I have been threatening to give myself a crew cut for probably 30 years, but I have never done it, yet.  I have always had a love/hate relationship with my hair.  I have a LOT of it, and have mostly worn it long, with occasional short cuts thrown in for some diversity.  It is both naturally curly and naturally wavy, in different sections, so when it cooperates it can look really nice, but it doesn't cooperate very often, and I just don't have the time or the energy to fuck with it that much anymore.  So, I will spend the rest of the morning talking myself out of shaving my damn head.    

I have a few more pictures to share with all of you, but I am going to save them for another Blog post.  I spent a couple of evenings playing with my "Shiva Paintstiks" last week, and I thought I would write a separate post all about that adventure a little later.  I don't know if I will get there today, or not, but be looking for that Post to show up soon.

Until next time ...