I plan on being creative today. I managed to squeeze in a little bit of creative time, yesterday, but it just didn’t feel like enough. We spent the day looking for a new vehicle since I sold the Jeep (finally!) the day before. The upside to not getting to spend more time being creative yesterday is we actually found a vehicle that will work for us for everything but driving for Uber. Here it is:
1999 Subaru Legacy
This car is rated to get an average of 22mpg in the city and 29mpg on the highway. Since the vehicle is almost 20 years old, I’m going to guess that the average mpg is more along the lines of 18-20 in the city and around 25 on the freeway. Not bad at all. Much more efficient than the Jeep, though there is a little sadness over the Jeep being gone. I really did love that vehicle. Oh well. Onward and upward, right?
I mentioned that I had gotten to pick up some planting pots and some yard art at the job Lance was on last week. I decided everything needs to have some…freshening up done to it. So, I headed over to Home Depot for some super fine sanding paper, a sanding sponge, and some spray paint.
Once back home, I grabbed my sanding sponge and started sanding down the bees.
My cute little bees before…
Sorry about the fuzziness of the photo. I didn’t clean of the lens on my phone.
I was able to sand most of the bees with just the sanding sponge. For the legs and arms, planter holding ring, feet, and behind the eyes, I took a quarter sheet of sanding paper and folded it into a square so I could wrap it around the item (legs, arms, planter ring), tuck it easily behind the eyes to get down in behind them, and get in super close where the different parts join together. I think this probably took me all of 10-15 minutes for both of them.
Bee base coat
I then wiped them down with vinegar water to get the sanding dust off of them and to clean off any other ‘stuffs.’ It was sunny out so I just set up the cardboard I wanted to place them on for painting and let them dry in the sun for about 5 minutes. I then sprayed both bees completely black, front and back. I plan on spraying the bottoms of their feet since they could use some new rust protection. The paint I used was Rust-oleum’s Painter’s Touch 2x Ultra Cover Paint+Primer in Gloss Black. Here are the bees drying in the sun:
Base coat drying
About the time I finished painting the bees all black, it was time to head out to look at a few vehicles. Since it is going to be sunny, again, today, followed by rain for the rest of the week, I plan on painting the stripes on the one bee and spraying the wings on both. I’m going to need to pick up new ‘glass stones’ for the eyes. Each bee is missing one eye. I also need to pick up a small container of an accent paint for the designing on one of the bee’s wings.
While the bees are drying in between steps, I am going to start cleaning off and lightly sanding the planter pots I picked up with the bees. They’ve definitely seen some weather. Lance suggested adding some tape in the shape of grass or leaves to some of the planters before painting them. I like the idea. I will have to try it on at least one of the pots to see what I think of the finished product. I’ll use the same paint as I used for the bees, just in different colors. Should be interesting!!
Dragonfly Gypsy USA 