Painting Up Sticks

Sometimes I work so hard on a painting

that my poor brain needs a break...but my hands

want to keep moving.  Times like that I tend to default to an

easy paint project that keeps my brushes moving while my 

brain goes on autopilot.  Here's a task for just that time.

For some reason painted sticks are all the rage now.  Just check out Pinterest (if you can open).  Or try a google search.  I am always coming home from a hike with interesting sticks (and stones) in my pockets so I decided that the next time I needed a low-impact job I would paint some sticks.

plain old sticks...but I did

learn that the wider the diameter, the easier to work with

some of the bark will flip off easily, some will need urging; 

where it won't budge just ease the transition with sandpaper

start going wild....I began really carefully attending to edges but soon

found that it really didn't matter.  I used acrylic paint but found my

leftover or sample wall paints really easy to put on; again, the skinny

sticks were a bit hard to add much decoration to

My grands are still a tad young to be trying this but I think it might be fun to do with kids, you could even do a hiking stick to use later on.  Other ideas are to "plant" in a potted plant for color, put in the garden as a marker or pile up in a glass jar just because.  I did it mostly for mental relaxation but here is what I ended up with:

poised in a kenyan they almost look like dancers

simple colors that might end up in my flower bed

these are my favorite

curtain call for the afternoon

So this gives me just one more reason to gather sticks, and I'm hunting some fatter ones so I can go crazy with designs.  Most likely these will end up in the garden as temporary decor while waiting for the flowers to bloom.  And the fact that they probably won't last will give me another reason to experiment again next spring.  

Whether you do this to make an orchid support, to entertain some young ones or just to occupy your hands: have fun.  There's no way to go wrong!

STICKING WITH COLOR,

Cindy