It's Pine Car Mania!
On March 30, I will be participating in my first Pinewood Derby. My son is in Cub Scouts, and when I heard that parents and others could enter in the 'wannabe' category, I just had to build my own car. I am just not one to do things halfway, so I set out to make a pinecar that would be a little work of horse art. My car may not be the fastest...but I was determined to make it one of the prettiest!
I'm calling it "Horsepower" (of course).
The medium was a bit of a challenge. I planned to originally use oil paint, so I primed the car with several coats of gesso and sanded it smooth, then added a base coat of oil color. But the three-dimensionality of the car proved to be a problem with slow-drying oil paints. So I wiped off the oil paint and started over with some inexpensive wood-craft type paints that I purchased at Wal-mart. If I had a working set of acrylics, I would have gone with those, but my box of tube acrylics dates back farther than I'll admit, and I ended up having to chuck the whole lot of dried up tubes in the trash.
I still need to get some holes drilled in the bottom to add some weights, and I'm hoping that these little horses really make this car fly!
To end on a funny note...I just had to post this picture of our loveable Maizy. This cat is sort of a big blob of fur that settles and spreads where it plops. The other day she was watching the birds in the window, and the dog came up to bother her, and in the process, the potted amaryllis bulb ended up on the floor. As I'm sucking up the dirt with the vacuum, she's still sitting and watching the birds, while I'm moving the vacuum nozzle around her. Any other cat would have high-tailed it outta there, but not Maizy. She's not going to let a little thing like a vacuum cleaner ruin her enjoyment of the chickadees.
For cats, watching the birdies must be like us reading gourmet food magazines...it's enjoyable, and makes your mouth water, but you know you're never going to make any of the dishes.
