This is a little wooden box that I bought at Michaels for, I think, 99 cents.  The kids wanted to do woodburning, and once I got the tool heated up, it sounded like a fun thing for me to do too. 

My original plan was to put a wood veneer in the inset parts of the box, but I couldn’t find the veneer in my studio, so I put silver leaf on it instead.  By the time I found the veneer, I’d already painted adhesive on it.  The problem with silver leaf, and gold leaf, is that when you spray or paint any kind of sealer on it, it loses its sheen.  I thought with a spray sealer that wouldn’t be the case.  Perhaps if I had a gloss spray rather than matte it would work better.  I’m not terribly fond of leafing, because of this and because of the lack of control.  You can see in the picture that the leaf stuck to the oil paint as well as to the adhesive.

 The color is a wash of oil paint mixed liberally with linseed oil.  I wanted extra oil since the wood was completely unfinished.  It made the color bleed in parts, but it adds extra protection (not that I’m going to use the box for anything, as it’s only 2″x2″x3″)

All in all, this was a fun little project.  I can’t believe how cheap those little boxes are.  Tomorrow I’m thinking of heading to Michael’s to get more of them, because the kids like to paint them too.

Here’s what Jeremy and I did this weekend.  We installed a tile floor in the master bath.  When we first moved in, there was stained beige carpet in the bathroom that was so icky that I didn’t want to step on it.  The walls had beige-and-blue print wallpaper, and the bathroom vanity was original to the (1964) house.  It took several months to get the wallpaper off and repaint, but that’s as far as we got before summer plans got in the way.  I’m very excited about our new tile, and about the prospect of having our own bathroom again. 

 We tore out the carpet in May, and underneath the carpet was a thin sheet of waterproofing plastic which had not quite been sufficient to keep the wood from getting wet on occasion.  Under the plastic were thin vinyl tiles, which peeled up quite easily.  There was some damage to the wood, but we figured that we’d make it worse by trying to rip out the rot, so we left it.  We laid ‘hardibacker’ cement board on top of the plywood subfloor, using thinset and screws to hold it in place.  We caulked around the tub (just to be sure) before laying more thinset, and then the tiles.  It’s less than 60 square feet, but it took three hours because over half of the tiles had to be cut to fit.

Tomorrow I’ll remove the spacers and mix up the grout.  I grouted our kitchen in the old house, which was maybe five times the size, and it only took a day, so I think this will go quickly too.  Once the grout is cured (2-3 days, if I remember right) all we have to do is re-install the toilet and assemble the vanity and voila, a functioning bathroom.

Last night I got bored and decided to make a batch of henna.  I’ve experimented with a lot of different recipes, none of which have worked very well.  I think what I decided is that A. putting lemon and sugar on it after it starts to dry really does help, and B. adding a decent quantity of oil to the mix helps with the flow.  I used the thicker jaquard bottle tips, because I didn’t want to deal with clogging, but I think I could have gone one smaller.  Still, it was fun and it turned out reasonably dark.

Tiffany was kind enough to let me use her hands as a canvas.  I also did my own left hand, but the photo didn’t turn out well, so please just imagine that it looks fantastic and I’ll be sure not to dissuade you.

This is a tile mosaic that I created last year.  It’s based off a painting, whose name I have forgotten.  The words spell out a line from my novel Alternate Susan, which I edited out in the second draft.  I still like the cadence.

Girl with Scythe