This Past Week - Watching Paint Dry

I'm still working on those (what I now consider stupid) shutters. I thought all I had left was to paint and hang them. It isn't all that easy to paint when the paint doesn't dry. And I didn't prime the shutters first and by the 3rd coat, I realized there are no short cuts here. One of the shutters I had tried to stain before deciding to paint them. That one shutter keeps having the stain bleed through. So I put on a quick coat of sander sealer shellac on all the shutters and repainted. So everything is looking nice now and all I have to do is wait for the paint to dry and then paint the other side.

So while I'm waiting for the paint to dry, I managed to get the weeds out of the garden and lawn and I have been prepping the ground for stone. I'll buy a few at a time and sooner or later we will have that stone patio I have always wanted. I added a few more landscape lights. One now spotlights the fountain I got cleaned and back up. It is so nice to hear the running water again.

I rescued an old window frame from the neighbor's garbage a few years ago and I leaned it up against my fence on the little potting table. The glass is out of it. The paint just fell off when we took it down from the garage attic this spring. I clear coated it the other day with exterior poly to hold the paint on. I decided to put a picture in it for the garden. I cut out a masonite board on my table saw the size of the opening of the window frame. I painted it with gesso and am going to make a forest scene that looks like it is stained glass. If it doesn't look good I can always paint over it. It should add a little color to the yard while we wait for the flowers to be in full bloom.

A wall sconce wasn't working for a few months now so this week we took a closer look at it. My husband was turning it on and off when it fell from the wall. One of the wires was hanging loose where it had burned through. We were extremely lucky. The house was rewired when we moved in but they only brought the new wires up to the light unit and then attached the wires from the sconces to the new wiring with wing nuts. So the wires in the fixtures (at least this one) was still the old wiring. We shut the power off and with a flashlight rewired the fixture with some new wire. It is all up and running and safe again. Today we went to Home Depot and bought some more wire and we will check each fixture to be sure they are safe. Boy, don't assume anything.

I bought some polymer clay today while I was at Michaels. I have never used it before but I want to fix some damage to a little antique picture frame I bought a while back. I need to match some of the intricate decoration and I will use it to make a mold casting for the matching pieces. I'll see how good this stuff works. I will have to do a little research on how to use it but it sounds like I just bake it in a toaster oven and voila! It's done! I have used plaster quite extensively making molds and casting porcelain years ago but if this stuff works it would be so much easier. I still have my porcelain kiln and sure would like to be able to find time to play with that again. I'd like to try and play with glass in it, too. Someday..

Well, I haven't even gone fly fishing yet. But today, when we were out, we bought our fishing licenses. Hooray!!! We will try and go out fishing tomorrow.