Missing In Action

Wow! It's been a week since my last post. Unfortunately, it has been busy around the homestead with work, kids, and life in general. In between working 2 jobs orthodontist appointments, the county fair, Homecoming football and dance, fixing a toilet, trying to craft, and sleeping seems like the week got away. LOL.

In case your wondering, yes I started to fix the toilet even though Steve is a plumber. Do any of you notice that when it comes to fixing or doing something for you your significant other always finds something else to do? LOL. Steve and I bought the insides of the toilet a week prior to fixing it. You see the toilet in my bathroom liked to spray water everywhere because the little clean water tubey thing (yea you like my technical terms) kept coming out. Now mind you I have carpet in my bathroom (first of all DUH carpet in a rental bathroom Hello????) so I had wet walls and carpet. Yes I stopped using it after the second time it happened LOL. Anyway, I got tired of waiting so my son and I read the directions and started to tear into the toilet. "I am woman hear me roar" I was gonna fix the toilet... until I got to the flapper part. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't work. Well now I was not going to call Steve and ask for help... NO WAY NO HOW I was going to fix it. So instead I called my other plumber friend LOL. I even snapped a picture of the inside of the toilet and sent it to him to help me. I found out Steve had bought the wrong insides for my toilet... WHAT????? You're kidding!!!!!! He will not live this down I'm thinking. He did not look to see what kind of toilet I had. It turns out I have a toilet from 1964 and not just any part will fit. So off to the hardware store I go... I picked out the parts I needed just by sight I still had no idea what kind of toilet I had. The guy behind the counter was a bit stunned when I told him I was fixing the toilet myself. He was basically speechless. I was loving it!!!! So back home I came with my part. In the meantime I call my plumber friend back and he then told me I would probably have to take the whole tank off to fix it. WHAT????? What have I gotten myself into. Then he tells me that he called Steve and that he was on his way to my place. I was so mad that he called him I wanted to fix it myself. In the end I gave in and Steve and my son fixed the toilet and yes the whole tank had to come off. So from now on note to self.... always look to see what kind of toilet you have before you buy the parts and try to fix it yourself. LOL P.S. this is a Mansfield toilet I know all of you in older homes are gonna go run and look to see if that's what you have. LOL

Since I missed yesterday WWW I'll show you what I'm working on and stuck on...

I made these quilt blocks... and no bad comments LOL I know my seams don't match this is like only my 2nd try at quilting. Here is the part I'm stuck at. What do I put in between the blocks. Do I just cut squares or do I cut strips, what colors should I use, how do I bind it, do I quilt it or tie it???? Maybe I shouldn't have started this project LOL. Here are some colors I came up with what do you think???
I will have to buy new fabric because I don't have enough of any of the fabric except the muslin to finish it.

Good old muslin...











I think I've ruled out the red...



Now on to other business... Boy this is getting long. One of my new friends Karen pointed out to me that my directions for my last Tutorial Tuesday may not have been clear so let me clear up a few things. Here were the questions...
Question: When you said you did small sections at a time....I need this clarified.

1. Do you keep doing the same little spot over and over till you get it and then move on repeating the steps?

Or

2. Do you finish the project with those little steps and then go back and repeat 2 or 3 times.

AND....it didn't say in the tutorial but do you put wax on again and again...it only said: Paint and burn, paint and burn....seems like it doesn't bubble if there isn't any wax left to melt.

Answer...

You know sometimes I type these directions up and they make perfect sense to me and I think they should to others to. LOL. Duh!!!! It's my ADD kicking in.

Alright for your counter cabinet... what I would do is base coat like I'm sure you did... now wax the entire piece then take your top coat and just paint say the top or one side. Then take the heat source and just burn(melt) that part. Move on the the next side and do the same until the entire piece is finished with one coat of your top color. Then go back and put additional layers as desired. As for the wax... I only put one layer on my piece, but I used latex paint. If you are using acrylic I have done it both ways using more than one layer of wax or just one. I found that I like only the one layer of wax. It seemed that even though we kept heating it it kept melting. Maybe it is because it was latex paint or how much wax you put on the first time. Hmmmm.... I know at first I wasn't putting enough wax on it and it didn't bubble too much and just burned the wood. Make sure it is a really thick layer of wax. We did this technique by lots of trial and error.. You have no idea how many pieces of wood we went through until I got what I wanted.

We also determined that a softer wax might work a little better than that really hard wax that you sometimes get at the dollar stores.

So once again thank you Karen for bringing it to my attention. Remember if anyone ever has questions please email me I am happy to help out all I can.