Crazy Labor Day with Lee

I hope that everyone had a great Labor Day weekend.  In the Southeastern US, it was turbulent.  Tropical Storm Lee invaded the area pouring rain and wind on us.  Luckily I live in the Piedmont of North Carolina, near Charlotte so we were on the outer edge of the storms.  Rain and wind off and on all day Sunday and Monday with more expected today therefore we did not get a lot of stuff done outside.  Many people suffered much worst than we have and my prayers are for those people.

The stormy weekend allowed me to catch up on some of my painting.  Yesterday, I woke up at 3:00 am and could not go back to sleep so I got up and started painting.  I knew that I had lots of china to paint but did not realize how much.  I cleaned out my storage area and discovered just how much I have in inventory that is unpainted, overwhelming...  So I brought some things upstairs and started washing them so I could get ready to paint.  I also found some things that I could use for displays and some things that need to be repainted...  Now I need to get all that painted, then photograph to put online at Etsy, Yardsellr and Zibbet then take some things to Heritage Mill Antique and Designer Mall.  Hopefully I can sell some items and decrease my inventory...along with making a little money.

For the first month since I have had a booth at Heritage Mill, I sold lots of hand painted stuff.  A woman came in and is redoing her kitchen using numerous pieces of my hand painted purple grapes.  Can't wait to get up there and see what she actually bought.  It was a good month in sales for me making up for some of those months where I sold nothing.

My husband is also in one of those moods where he wants to throw out everything!  So, I am having to rescue or defend anything that I really want to keep.  Very stressful but he is correct in some ways, I have too much stuff!

I was able to get some things painted this weekend.

• Two plastic cake covers, one is rose buds and the other is sunflowers.
• Green glass storage jar painted with sunflowers
• Two lotion dispensers, one is sunflowers and the other looks like a window with curtains and a window box with flowers.
• Three china baby shoes with birthday flowers.
• Two piggy banks.
• Eight wine glasses - purple grapes.
• Four china ring trees...I have about twelve left to paint.  I bought lots of these because we were selling them fast at festivals then we quite doing festivals.

Even with all this painted, I still have lots of painting to do.  Some of these items are very small and you would think that small is easy to paint, but not necessarily.  You must use smaller brushes and sometimes, it is difficult to show much detail.

I am teaching at Michaels in Gastonia this morning.  The class will be on painting trees. We will be practicing several different types of trees then create a simple landscape using some of those trees at the end of class.  I sent out emails to all my students so I hope to have several students for this class.