YouTube has a “black hole” effect, where you go there to watch one video, then three hours later you realize you’ve just watched your 27th consecutive cat video.  Don’t feel bad, we’ve all done it.  For me, there’s the same effect when looking at craft supply sites.  I was shopping for a specific kind of art paint, and more links came up than I was expecting, so I did what seemed right at the time.  I looked at about 30 of them, just to see what they offered.  About halfway in, I found this paint that I’ve never seen before.  It’s not applied with a brush, instead, its put on with a dropper until there’s a puddle. As it dries, something happens and the “stuff” in the paint starts to change shapes and you end up with something that looks like the stuff in the bottom of the culture dishes back in biology class.  Cool!  Better yet, it comes in different colors and the “stuff” coagulates into different effects.  15 sites later, I found a place that was running a sale and 1/2 off shipping, so I bought a bottle in each color they had:  pink, light blue, darker blue, and purple.

To use the stuff, there had to be a surface where the paint could puddle.  I made this bowl, but left a wide, flat rim, with a channel around it to hold the paint.  Since the wood was pretty ugly and had a couple of huge cracks in the side, I spray painted the outside, then dipped it in pink, white, silver, and black paint, thinking that would go well with the “bio-culture paint” that I was putting on the rim.  If I was wrong, I could always put it back on the lathe and take the paint away.

I got the paint I had bought, poured it along the top, mixing the colors a little bit and set it to dry over night.  The next morning, my eyes reinforced what my brain had already know for some time:  People lie!  Maybe the paint did what it was supposed to, but if it did, I think you’d need a magnifying glass to see it.  All I saw was a bowl that could have been pretty, but instead was just a mess of color.  The only thing I could think to do was put it back on the lathe, turn away all the paint, and leave it with the natural wood sticking out.

Here’s the final product.  My initial thought was to make a lid for it, something with a tall, black finial, but now, I only see one option.  I figure if I stuff it full of newspaper, then soak the newspaper in charcoal lighter fluid, it should burn hot enough and long enough to get a nice fire going…

The woodturning club I’m in is still making wig stands for cancer patients, distributing them through the Susan G. Komen breast cancer centers.  (Really sad that as many as we donate, they’re gone to new patients immediately.)  They don’t take very long to make and I’m pretty sure those with cancer appreciate them, so at the last meeting, I picked up 4 kits.   One is walnut, which I haven’t decided what I want to make out of it.  I’m pretty sure there are specific laws against painting walnut, or at least there should be.  The other three were maple and birch.  Pretty boring wood, that would end up looking brown and round.  I decided to dip them, just to add some color and some texture.  If anyone’s done the hydro-dipping with spray paint, I will warn you again it is s sloppy, gloppy mess!  I like the results, but wear gloves, do it somewhere that a splatter zone won’t cause problems, take care the over-spray doesn’t paint things you don’t want painted, and be careful not to breathe in the paint as it hits the water and bounces off.  Huffing paint is still illegal and unhealthy.

Here are the finished products.

Hopefully, whoever gets them will appreciate the work.  More so, that they get through the treatments and live a long and fulfilled life.