I did a little painting on the weekend… though not the painting I planned.

I had planned to paint the new raised beds I put together a few weeks ago, and maybe even get a good chunk of the sun porch painted. But the weekend ended up being much cooler than predicted. It stayed above zero, but below 10 C.. so a little too cool to paint.

So Saturday, I spent a chunk of the morning in the garden weeding and moving plants around until I broke my small garden spade (don’t get me started on how things just aren’t made as good as they used to be).

Then I came in and decided to pull out my craft paints, and maybe get a little work done on those decorative planters I got from Michaels a while ago…

And speaking of things not like they used to be…. When I first got back into painting pots a few years ago, I’d bought a pile of Martha Stewart craft acrylics. By last year, I’d used up most of my supply and went to buy more. But it turns out, they aren’t made any more. So… I bought a pile from Michaels from brand called CraftSmart. I didn’t get to use them much until this weekend…

And boy was I disappointed!!!! I’ve gotten better craft paint from the dollar store. The pigments are so weak, you’d need about eleventy billion coats to get any sort of even coverage on your project. I was not a happy camper.

In the end, I gave up after finishing my mushroom planter.

It was done with red and white from the Martha Stewart paints (the two colours I still had left), and the beige base mixed from the crappy paints and the MS white.

I have a collection of good-ole fashioned Folk-Art brand paints in an online shopping basket. I’m just waiting for payday to hit the by button. They were the best brand when I was a teenager, and I hope that hasn’t changed.

If it has, I may just have to suck it up, spring for a few tubs of expensive artist-quality acrylics from the art store, and go back to mixing my own colours!