Practicing My Techniques

This turned out to be a great day, weather-wise. Clear, sunny, and pretty warm. Sharon and I were all set for yard sailing, but it was pretty much a bust. Perhaps it's too early in the season. The thing is, of the 3 places that were advertised, there were tons of cars and people looking to buy things, and there was nothing but junk. I mean, we do have our standards, even if we are yard sailing. Really!

Cathy's home! She and her family have returned from their trip to Florida, complete with a souvenir photo of them riding Segways. Those look like way too much fun! I hope some day I have a chance to give one a try. I know before they were allowed to take off on their Segways, they had an hour's worth of training and practice, complete with helmets.

I spent some time tonight doing more watercolor painting. This time I made about a dozen abstract bookmarks. They were colorful, and I liked most of them. I intend to mount them on some card stock and embellish them with embroidery floss and beaded tassels. I also practiced making red hats and fans for some bookmarks for the Red Hat Extravaganza. They turned out pretty well, but I'm going to try painting a variety of styles of hats. I embellished them with big feather plumes and even tried painting some veils using a brush technique. It was fun, and with a little more practice, I'll start actually painting the bookmarks themselves. For practicing, I just used discarded cut up pieces of manilla folders. But afterwards I decided I needed to keep those scraps so that I could refer to them next time. I'm developing a whole portfolio of things I should probably be throwing away, but I think I'll hang onto them for a little while, anyway.

PHOTO: A hat shop in Annapolis. Inspiration for my bookmarks!