...10.12...W.I.P. Wednesday...

...first of all let me say that the google/blogger/recaptcha problems continue...so if you're missing comments from me...it's because I can't post them...I'm definitely still reading your blog...(ツ)

...we took Kitten for a visit with Mom...of course...and she flopped right down and made herself right at home...

...one of Mom's Birthday presents was this super soft pink sweatshirt that says Cat Mom on it...and she got it the day after her beloved Twighlight died...she...like our Jack Jack was over 17 years old...

...so...it seemed like it was no longer appropriate...but I asked Mom if she wanted me to put a halo on it...and she thought that was a nice idea...

...y'all have probably seen me do a freezer paper stencil more often than necessary...so I made one of those...

...and ironed it in place over the kitty-cat's ears...

...at a jaunty little angle...

...and started painting with the gold fabric paint...the first coat you could barely see...but if you remember way back when we lived in West Virginia...and I did the WV shirt (also pink) with the silver fabric paint...I remembered that it took a lot of coats...

...and then we moved on to other crafty projects that Mom wanted to accomplish while I was there...

...Mom already had a bunch of craft paints...so I just chose a nice bright green to paint this frog...

...and then I mixed that with some yellow to make a different colour for his belly and spots...and I painted his straw hat brown and the turtle's underside an olive-y green/brown...I'll come back after it dries and paint the face details on both...

...and then she also had this greenish-gold smaller turtle that had gotten his face chipped...so I painted his face and legs/paws/feet the same green as the other turtle...but left the shell it's original gold colour...

...and then we took a break for a nice lunch of leftovers...with some corn on the cob added...and we set up a card table in the living room in front of the picture window for the gorgeous view of the fall foliage...

...and then we were back at it...haha...Mom had a sort of large Black Bear...that held a WELCOME sign...and it had gotten faded and worn over the years...so she wanted to refurbish it...

...and I started with the Welcome sign...it was stenciled on plain wood and you could still see the outline of the original letters...sorry I didn't take a photo of what I did with it...but basically I took a ball point pen and kind of engraved around the letters...because...the board needs to be sanded so that Mom can put some poly on it...and I didn't want to sand off the letters...so here it is...slightly embossed and ready for sanding...

...Mom painted the entire Bear black and it was already dry...

...and we rummaged around in the barn and found an old-old-old can of dark brown paint...and I mixed it to make it sort of bear-paw-coloured...and painted his paws, face, and ears with that...

..and left that to dry outside on a gorgeous day...

...and then using the indentions made with the ball point pen...I painted one coat of bright red on the WELCOME sign...

...and then we decided that it would stand out better if we outlined each letter with a thin line of black...so we did that and added a second coat of the bright red...

...went back and painted the face on the frog and turtle...

...and also on the little turtle...just with black...

...you can still see his kind of smushed face...but it looks better than it did...

...here he is on the (now covered) porch...

...with his friends...

...so...now...back to the bear...I painted his nose and toenails black...and his eyes got brown irises...

...and finally a fleck of white highlight in each eye...

...tried out the sign...and we really liked the effect...

...after about FIVE coats of the gold fabric paint we removed the stencil to reveal the cute little gold halo...I think it looks super cute...and like it was just always there...

...and finally Mom spray painted the sign with a clear coat (also found in the barn - and probably 30 years old)...but it worked fine and I think the refurbished bear looks great on the back porch now...

...we had a great time crafting together...

...so...what's in your workbasket this week?...

~Have a lovely day!