Happy Rockin’ Birthday!

It has been too quiet around here and I’m sorry for that. I don’t like it. Especially the last couple of weeks when I actually have produced a few things, but haven’t had the opportunity to photograph them. It makes me nervous for how things are going to be when the new baby comes in a few weeks. Having done this three times before, I know that I’m going to be doing good just to stay afloat for a month or so before we all settle into a rhythm (full disclosure: I had to type that three times before hitting on the right spelling). Sigh. Them might just be the breaks, peeps.

But anyways…

Rana celebrated her 8th birthday this week! Granota was completely in awe of this milestone and repeatedly asked me if I could even believe that I had an 8 year old. As a sort of birthday present/sort of just because, I painted t-shirts for the girls (I know it always seems that Konik gets short shrift, but Michael’s didn’t have any t-shirts in his size; I’ll get him taken care of later). As might be expected if you know us at all, Axl Rose was the subject this time. Both girls had mentioned in the past wanting Guns N’ Roses shirts. Besides the fact that they generally don’t come in tiny sizes, they’d probably get sent home from school for wearing anything with a picture of a gun on it. A portait of Axl was the safer choice.

I used the same technique that I did on Rana’s bunny shirt, but the portraits were much more complicated than a simple little cartoon. There was a LOT of cutting involved with these and it kind of fried my brain. Once that was out of the way, I got to the fun part of painting. Again, three coats of paint seem to do the job. I applied each one in a different direction to be sure to cover any exposed fabric. And as you can see from the in-progress photos, I didn’t care one bit about painting “within the lines.”

After the girls were asleep, I put the finished shirts on their beds for them to find in the morning. That next morning I heard gasps and squealing and excited chatter. I always like that reaction.