Arts and Crafts

9/1/2012

Arts and Crafts

For those of you who may read my scribblings early in the morning with coffee - I apologize.  I have the next 5 days off so guess who's not getting up at 5:00 AM - yep that would be me.

Jeff is in Georgia for the weekend so today I had a leisurely ladies day.  After getting all sparkly at the salon, I ran some quick errands and then drove over to Rio (shopping center for you out-of-towners) determined to do arts and crafts at a local studio.  First challenge was parking in a parking garage - I get the worst case of claustrophobia when I drive into a garage.  I'm sure there are mere inches between the top of my car and an insurance claim.  

Went into the wrong parking garage initially and then got all turned around and went the wrong way TWICE before finally exiting the building.  Whew.  I nearly gave up but if you allow fear to keep you from doing things then eventually you can do nothing.  I know all about this.

Second garage found a parking spot and went downstairs to brave the world of arts and crafts - neither of which are my speciality.   The store was packed with moms, dads and "stickies" (as my boss calls them).  Initial thought was to just turn around and exit - but I stood my ground.  They introduced me slowly to elementary glass fusing which really isn't very difficult.  You start with a base (mine is dark green) and then you set different shaped and colored pieces of glass on top.  If you want to cut a piece of glass you must first score it and then use some manly looking tool to snap it off.  Thanks to a combination of medicine I tend to shake so the scoring process was very hard for me.  I did finally manage to cut a few pieces and they even have a tool that helps make curves - and I found that tool a bit easier to use.

Once you arrange your little pieces of glass all over the base you add just a dot of glue to the underside to hold them in place while they go into the kiln.  I used bright orange, yellow, red and white pieces and then at the end you can add (and I did) some glittery beads (I chose amber).  I asked them to make the base tip up a bit at the ends and I have no idea how that's done.  I'm anxious to pick up my piece next week to see how I really did - bits and pieces of glass on top of glass it doesn't look like much.

The glass project didn't take a lot of time and since Christmas is just around the corner (as far as I'm concerned) I decided to paint a small bowl as a possible gift.  The employees gave me two different sized circles so when I finished putting on 3 coats of the background color I then dipped the circles in two different colored paints and marked the dish.  Ended up looking pretty good and I'm sure once it's fired and bright and shiny will be very nice.

If I'm looking for quiet time to paint or fuss with glass perhaps I should try coming at a different time, like after work when children are doing homework or playing soccer!

Even after 2 projects I didn't feel that I had appropriately used up my free day so I headed for Kohl's and of course was able to find clothes and a few that were actually on sale!

I am planning a double feature movie for this evening.  Diet coke is chilled and the popcorn bowl is ready to receive.  I'm going to start off with the lastest Twilight movie which I know Jeff has no interest in and follow it up with a true story about a basketball team coached by nuns.  Should be fun.

Hope you're enjoying your Saturday as much as I am mine.

P