Barbie

 Barbie is the mermaid I made at Gather 2 Grow, a cool arts and crafts shop in Port Orange (it’s by Seabird  Island). Well, I didn’t make her; she’s a wooden pre-fab. But I did paint her, using a paint pour technique, so she’s a marble mixture of pink, light pink, flesh, and orange, kind of like a sunrise or sunset. I was looking up art classes and I found the Gather 2 Grow website with a variety of classes, and as soon as I saw “paint pour” I knew that  that was something I wanted to do, so I signed up and paid the forty dollars. Terri, our instructor, told us to pick three to four colors and layer them in little Dixie cups. Then she put a thick layer of white paint all over our flat wooden cut-outs. Some people had sharks, horses, dog paws, and even round lazy susans. Then she taught us how to pour the paint on top to create cool patterns and designs. You can’t go wrong with paint pour: it will always look cool. A lot of paint can get wasted, though, but you can scoop it up with a spatula and apply it to any bare spots, or apply it to another cut-out. Barbie took three weeks to dry, and then another week to dry from the resin coating. So now she is glossy and shiny. When I picked her up I put her in the front seat of the car.“Barbie, I’m going to show you the town!” I told her, then we went to Starbucks. “If you’re good I’ll let you have a coffee” (how can a newborn mermaid misbehave?). “ I don’t know if you can handle the caffeine.” Oh yeah, I had whole conversations with her. When I got home I showed her to John. “Isn’t she pretty?” (Don’t want to blow up her little mermaid head). She sat on my desk for a while; I even put some faux-flower leis around her neck and wrists. She’s such a girl. Now she is outside on my table on the porch. I think I will introduce her to Beary. I hope they get along.