When I get bored, my favorite thing to do is look at other peoples’ blogs, especially ones dedicated to mail. I was browsing Send More Mail the other day, sighing wistfully over her watercolor postcards. I’d love to do some watercolors right now, I thought. It’s too bad I don’t have any.
And that’s when I remembered: in chemistry class a few years ago, I was assigned the element cadmium and was required to do a project that included a real-world application of cadmium. I bought a tube of cadmium yellow at Michael’s. After turning in my project, I promptly forgot about the tube where it languished in a dusty pencil box at the bottom of my desk.
I found the tube and squeezed a tiny amount on the underside of a film canister lid, then pulled out my kind of junky Crayola paintbrushes I’d picked up at OfficeMax. A little bit of water (technically the water I used to clean the same brushes of Mod Podge, but that’s neither here nor there) and I was off.
It’s strangely addicting. I wrote a few greetings on the back of Penguins Postcards before dropping stamps on them as they’re destined for the mailboxes of my friends on the East Coast. I’m pretty glad I remembered this, even if it was only a tube of yellow student watercolor. It’s still something fun–and in the pits of night and boredom, a little sun can go a long way.
ink between the teeth 