Pat Was Right!

By now you all know that I used to work restoring houses for my friend Pat. For years I have watched her go to the trouble of laying out painter's tape face up on newspaper and then fastening her shingles down on it before staining or painting them. It seemed to take quite a while to do the laying down but was fairly fast once they were in place. Today I decided to try it her way. Pat! You were right! What you see below took me about 20 minutes. Thank you!!!

I think that this method was described in one of the mini magazines a long time ago.

Unfortunately, I think of masking tape as my enemy. I usually have more of it stuck to me than to whatever I am working on. Don't ask about the time that I bound my hand to the 5 sided bay of a Harrison dollhouse with it. And it not only takes cat hair off of clothes, it takes it off of the cat if you don't control it.......Anyway, I think that this will be my new method of attack on shingles, even though I hate the tape part.

The only other thing I did today was go to the same garage sale for the third time this week. A woman a few blocks away used to have an on line craft store. I can get into trouble at regular garage sales. This one was triple trouble. Thank goodness this is the last day that she is selling.

I won't go into details of what I got. I spent under 20.00 and got enough stuff to start my own craft store. Most of it was supplies like small 2x3" ziploc bags @ 100 for 25 cents and unused boxes to use for polymer clay jewelry at 10 cents a piece.

One gem that I found that I am really happy with is a "broom" for my minis. She had a lot of cosmetic making supplies. I bought some old fashioned shaving brushes with wooden handles and natural bristles. This is my new favorite for cleaning out my minis. The bristles are stiff enough to pick up the dust, but soft enough so that they will not damage small things. Best of all is the short handle. I used to use a stiff bristle oil painting brush. The trouble with those is the long handle. Lots of times you can't get them into an 8" ceiling without a lot of manipulation. This one gets into all of the corners. I am sure that lots of people already use them, but this is new to me.

Now please excuse me while I go finish shingling and sweeping.

See you tomorrow.