My little helper

How about a few of the "out takes" from yesterday's tutorial.

As I was preparing to set up the tutorial I made yesterday, I did a bit of "behind the scenes" prep work. I began by washing the table and stacking the chairs out of camera range. Then I removed the umbrella from the table and looked up to see my little helper had already staked out his spot in order to oversee the project.

Of course it didn't take long and the desire to preen and clean replaced the desire to supervise. Thankfully it was still relatively cool when I started, so all went well. However, it didn't take long for the sun to rise in the sky, especially as I completed the first project, which included all that wax linen thread wrapping and unwrapping.

Although I hadn't noticed when Bleubeard left his perch on the chairs, as I was unwrapping the thread from the first project, I felt a stirring under my feet. He would never have wakened, had I not started tugging on the thread that had landed on his body.

Once again, my little helper was ready to become part of the action

and had a bit of playtime himself as I gathered the thread from under the table.

Apparently that was enough of an indignity (or exercise), because it wasn't long till he was back on his throne overseeing the project.

To answer a few of the questions I got from yesterday, the fabric I used was 100% cotton, not a cotton blend. However, that should make no difference. Remember, this is PAINT, not dye. The paint soaks into and penetrates the fibers. Any fabric, natural or synthetic, should work for this and I will try using some different fabrics in the days ahead.

I tried wetting a piece of the same cotton bed sheet, then spraying the fabric. The paint balled up and "sat" on top of the fabric. It took forever to seep into the fabric and never really penetrated like it was supposed to. Although I didn't take a photo of the finished piece after it dried, it had a mottled look and you could tell the paint color had been diluted. This may be a look you want for special effects, but wetting your fabric before spraying the paint is not the way to go.

To be honest with everyone, I wrote a tutorial, not a product review. That would have been a completely different post!

Today I'm featuring something off the beaten path, a bit like this post. The Bird Ecology Study Group is a bird group of the Nature Society located in Singapore. The study group (BESG) was founded in September. 2005. They study and photograph native birds and their breeding and other habits. Their blog, written by their members, has some gorgeous bird photos and some interesting information and videos. I hope you will check out the Bird Ecology Study Group's blog today.