Happy Birthday to #2 Brother

Happy Saturday! Finishing up some housework around here, taking a little break. DH took the recycle off, so it's easier to do chores when he's not here. Not sure why that is, except perhaps that I see him kicked back in the recliner and it's not very motivating. Plus I can't run the vacuum or suchlike if he's resting. To keep this statement in perspective, do remember that for all of our working lives, we primarily worked different shifts - so retirement & constant togetherness takes a lot of adjustment- still!

Last week the Dick Blick order of Polychromos pencils arrived. I had called Blick, got one of their art tech reps and asked him "what makes these different from the Prismas, Derwents, etc. that I already have?" According to him, these are oil based pencils and will blend easier. I have blending issues. Tried them out the other night, and I think I am going to like these better. Prisma is fine, but I have a hard time blending if I don't use gamsol.

Anyhoo...#2 brother will be 84 on August 20th. He was born 30 minutes before our Dad's 23rd birthday...some birthday present, yes? As he's aging, he is beginning to look so much like Dad, even though he's blond, blue eyed. Dad was dark brown hair - dark brown eyes...like the other 5 of us. Our Granddad had blue eyes, dark hair and a red mustache, or so I've heard. I've also always heard that 2 brown eyed parents won't have a blue eyed child. Wrong. (and we know there was no MILKMAN either!). It's interesting to me to see that out of 6 siblings, 3 look very strongly like Dad, and 3 of us look like our Mom or people on her side of the family.

Here's the card I made for him.

- Hero Arts Palm die started off cut from the same white card stock it's been embedded back into. The leaf was sprayed with some of the new Lindy's Starburst sprays. I love these sprays, but they spray out in bursts of color, which I don't find easily controlled. You just have to go with the flow - not a bad thing for somebody like me. I do think the results look pretty...very sparkly although you can't really see that in the photo.  This die is tricky to place back properly in the negative space..there is double stick tape (Sookwang) behind it so the positive image will re-adhere.

- green mat is another sprayed piece. This one had combined Lindy's, some acrylic paint mixed with water and some tattered angels. Remember mention of a clogged nozzle from using the acrylic paint mixtures? I've found that removing the nozzle apparatus when the color spraying is done, plunging it into a bottle of plain water, and spraying until the spray is clear, seems to be helping with the clogging problem. Just FYI..if you want to try this with mixing your acrylic paints to make a spray.

- White card base scored and then die cut Elizabeth Craft sentiment from a snippet of the green mat.
Just need to do an insert, and this one's done & ready for Wednesday.

Tomorrow I will be working on my post for The Creative Blog Hop which will be posted on Monday. I do hope you'll find time to look in, maybe learn something about who I am (that you didn't already know!) and meet some bloggers that I admire and have tagged. Looking forward to seeing you then.

Have a wonderful weekend. God Bless.