Thursday-8:15am

Last night I finally finished the ice cream pails! These are the two for inside--didn't paint the bottoms.

These are the two for outside--painted bottoms for the hanging plants. Then coated with a clear polyurethane to help protect them against the weather.

They are getting a good dry before I start putting plant pots inside of them. This entire experiment might not even work at all. Might look really awful--who knows? And, then again, I might not really care--they're bound to look better than the ugly pots, after all--hehe!

I had to bend the corner of the newspaper under. The wind came and flapped the paper up onto the side of the pail when I had been painting them--made a mess of it. So much for the weathermen saying there was absolutely no wind for once in Fargo last night--hehe! There's always at least a little breeze up here. :)

It is morning, the sun is shining, and I am about ready to go to bed here pretty soon. Yup--my days and nights are still totally flip-flopped. Living the crazy, wild life over here, eh? (I think the fumes from the polyurethane are getting to me--chuckle!)

When the pails are good and dry I can get them off the table--then, whether I finish my big organization project right away or not, I can set up again to paint, to draw, or to do something creative. If my OCD tendencies can be held at bay, that is, and I can ignore the mess. Hummmm??? That is a big question....

I have been spending some time snooping around on YouTube--looking for painting demos (of several kinds) and searching for demos on bookbinding. When I am searching around on the computer, I can use up all my good hours pretty quickly--and I don't even get to all my emals! It is amazing to me how fast time disappears at the computer! :)

I was looking for a demo on coptic stitching for book binding. Leah has these leather scraps she got at a fair--the scraps aren't very large--so we'd have to make smaller books (~3-4" by 4-5"). I'd love to try to make a little sketchbook with watercolor paper! I found one demo that had enough of the actual sewing that if I find the instructions in one of my books (no, I haven't looked yet--duh!)--now I could probably figure it out. Cool!! Another little project I've had on the back burner. I had a short bookbinding class for two days within an art class at college. It was a voluntary thing--I jumped at the chance! Have been collecting supplies since then, but haven't actually made any books--yet!

I do have quite a few of the supplies: davy board, specialty papers, awls, waxed threads, glue, and I think I have needles, too? When I saw Leah's thick pieces of leather--just looked like they'd be really cool for a rough looking book cover. Leah agreed and wants to go for it! Hope it works! :) Leah also got a bag of thinner leather scraps. Not sure if they're large enough to cover a piece of davy board or cardboard--even if it is small--because that actually takes a larger piece of leather, of course. I'll have to really go thru them and see what is actually there. They've been shoved into two plastic bags for quite a while--accidentally came over here a year or so ago with the beading supplies, but I never took them out to look at them. Time to come out and say hello, eh?

Well, hopefully next time I can show you what at least one plant looks like parked in a painted ice cream pail--ROFL!! Have a great day! :)