I Found a New Hobby

This hobby does not involve waiting for repair men to come and not fix my fridge. It also does not involve being snorted at by javelina on my morning run. I don't really enjoy either one of those.

And, actually, now that I think about it, what I'm about to tell you about isn't really a hobby, cause I don't envision myself doing (and enjoying) lots of it ever again.

A few years back James and I went to the Fourth Avenue Street Fair. It comes two times a year, and it involves quite the gathering of random, hodge-podge artists. We always, always, look for beagle items when we go to the street fair. On this particular visit to the street fair we found an amazing poster, with a dog on it that looks somewhat like a beagle, and a caption that says "Walter's frustration mounted as he was made to wait over an hour in the examination room with no pants on." We, of course, purchased it, because what could be funnier than a beagle, named Walter, waiting in the doctor's office with no pants on? Not much that I can think of. This was when our dream of having a dog themed bathroom started. And here we are, probably 3 years later, still dreaming of having a dog themed bathroom, only now it's a dog themed children's bathroom, since we have ourselves a child.

We've casually looked for fun dog items for this bathroom and haven't come up with much. We did see some super super cute signs for the bathroom in the Land of Nod catalog. But, since my salary as a stay-at-home mom consists of 7 goldfish, an empty sippy cup, and some stale Cheerios, these signs were very much out of our budget. So, [insert new hobby here] I decide to make my own! Only instead of saying "Wash your Hands" our sign will say "Wipe Your Paws". Perfect for our dog theme bathroom!!

I head to the craft store and buy all the supplies I think I will need for this project. I snatch up 2 canvases and the necessary paint. I bought oil paint, cause it just seemed like the right thing to do when you are planning on painting on a canvas.

Before I started on my project, I decided to do a little research about oil paints, cause I have absolutely no idea how to paint with them. Sure, I've seen the guy on PBS, with big hair, paint some happy little trees, but that was about the extent of my knowledge about oil painting. Through my quick google search, I learned that oil paint takes forever to dry. And by forever, I mean up to 2 weeks!! And, if you want to "cure" or put some magical substance on your painting, you should wait 6 months. As I'm reading this I'm getting nervous about my decision to buy oil paint, and thought that maybe I should have purchased acrylic paint. But, I wanted to get my project started, so, rather than returning the oil pants and purchasing something that would dry much quicker, and most likely be easier to work with, I went with the oil paints. Completely logical.

In the end, here's what I came up with.

(Wow, I'm not good at formatting pics in Blogger....)

I'm pretty excited for how well the brush your teeth one came out. Not quite as excited about the wipe your paws. I need to do some touch ups on that one, but I have to wait another week or so for the paint to be dry enough for my touch ups to be effective.

In the end, I don't think oil painting is going to be my new hobby. Here's a list of the pros/cons that I've come up with.

PROS-

-It takes forever to dry, allowing you to scrape layers of paint off the canvas, giving a fun, white effect (I used this for the words)

CONS-

-It takes forever to dry. I'm not a patient person, and I just want to hang my new art work up!

-Stanky! My kitchen stunk while I was working on this project.

-Paint thinner, which is needed to clean the paint brushes, will make your kitchen smell like a gas station.

-I'm not good at mixing colors. Or maybe my green was just too vibrant. Mixing a teensie bit of green with lot of yellow=light green. And by teensie bit I mean a dot on the end of a q-tip.

-Drawing on your canvas beforehand with pencil was recommended on a lot of websites, so I did this. Only problem is, the lead smeared when it oil paint came in contact with it. Not pretty, especially when it mixes with yellow paint.

So, since oil painting won't be my new hobby, I'm gonna try out fabric painting! As part of our dog theme bathroom, we decided a grass shower curtain would be perfect. Of course, we've been unsuccessful in finding one. So, Karen the Friendly Runner, has decided I will just paint grass onto a white shower curtain. Genius, pure genius.