Preparing the Metal Cymbal for Painting
On my previous post I have a cymbal I plan on painting. One thing I discovered early on - you can’t just apply paint onto a metal and expect it to stay there. What to do?
First I clean the piece by lightly sanding and washing, and then apply several coats of metal primer to both the front and back. Right now I’m using Delta Ceramcoat Metal Primer, as it has worked great for me in the past.
After I prime the metal I paint several layers of acrylic Gesso…..
Soon I will be finishing the cymbal, creating a folk art sunflower painting!
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
Trash to Treasure - Painting on Cymbal
I’ve had several old cymbals lying around, and I’m finally going to get to work on them. On the first one I want to paint a sunflower, my favorite flower and a favorite of the chickens, too!
I also have to get another painting, which happens to be a sunflower - “sunflower #3 - MamaHen Sees Red”, ready to go to it’s new home in Illinois!
New Direction on MamaHen Folk Art Blog - Focus on Art
![\"El Blanco On The Farm\" Framed with hardware cloth](http://mamahenfolkart.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/100_2282webshot.jpg "Rooster Folk Art Painting - \\"El Blanco On The Farm\\"")
I came across a really great Squidoo Lens today: blogging-for-artists
and I’m going to start a new direction for this blog - focusing just on my art. I’m keeping the pages of my chickens, the art links and ms links, but I’ll start a new blog on my chickens, but I will mention them here when they play a part in my artwork, which is often!
Today I painted on some tiles. As usual for me, the tiles were saved from the landfill. They were never used. Sometimes I just don’t understand why people think nothing of throwing away new things! Anyway, I painted a picture of my white D’uccle bantam rooster, Señor El Blanco de Pollo, another rooster painting I’m calling “Chicken Tracks”, and “Chicken Scratch”. Notice my artist pallet in the pic of my workspace, I find the plastic lunch trays from Walmart work great - lol.
Squidoo and Twitter – Oh My
Today I have been hard at work trying to figure out how to make squidoo lenses and Twitter.
The Squidoo lenses are really easy to make, and there seems to be a lot of resources to help. My first lens is at http://www.squidoo.com/mamahenfolkart
Twitter is still a mystery to me, but I think you follow people around the web through conversations? I’ll figure it out as I go.
The Geese and Their Morning Chores
My 2 young geese, whom I now affectionately refer to as the wrecking crew, have added a new job to their daily “chores”. Every morning I go from coop to coop of chickens, feeding and watering the youngest, letting the free range ones out to roam, and tossing out the morning scratch feed.
From the time they were a week old I’ve been taking Lucy and Zander out with me, and they know the routine really well by now at 3 months of age and almost full sized. Their job has been to lag behind a bit, and chase the chickens that I am letting out into the yards, I’m assuming to encourage exercise, or something else important. At least to watch them it seems whatever they are doing is important.
This week, however, they have started a new job – tossing scratch out all over the ground. They never seemed interested in scratch, but the other day Lucy, who stopped honking and chasing long enough to notice some chickens eating it off the ground, tried some for herself – and she loved it! Of course, Zander had to try some, too. Now they chase after me when I get the scratch. They eat it straight out of the scoops, and are so messy I no longer need to throw the scratch out along the ground. I just have to keep moving to new groups of chickens.
The wrecking crew seems to really look forward to our morning chores. I now wonder how I ever managed to take care of the chickens without them!
Treats For Chickens
Chickens, like any other pets, really like their treats. I’ve been asked many times what kind of snacks, if any, to give to the flock. Here are the top ten favorite treats of my chickens:
- Peaches with the peel still on
- Kefir, yogurt or cottage cheese at room temperature, mixed with scratch – especially good when you’ve had sick chicks
- Bugs, bugs, bugs(and worms)
- Cooked spaghetti – just throw it to them and watch them run!
- Kale leaves – for chicks you can tie a string around the ends and hang them for both a toy and treat
- Hanging millet treats, from the exotic bird section of Petsmart – use the same as #5 for baby chicks one week and up
- Bananas in small amounts
- Apples – throw them out whole and this will entertain them for hours
- Pecan shells – living in Georgia there are several pecan farmers who use automatic shelling equipment. The leftover shells still contain a lot of bits and pieces of pecans. Our chickens really love the challenge, and when they are through the shells go to the compost pile.
- Watermelon – the fruit and the rind. The overall favorite of our chickens, geese and turkeys.
***One treat to never give chickens: raw potatoes, including the peel. They are very toxic to poultry!
D’uccle Bantam Pet Rooster
David Versus Goliath - A Chicken Story - How a 1 pound chicken put my 280 pound husband in the hospital
The victim: my 280 lb, 6 ft tall husband
The perpetrator: Señor El Blanco de pollo - a one pound bantam white D’uccle rooster
The storm came suddenly, with winds gusting and loud cracks of lightening. My group of banties were all out running through the yard, and in fearing for their safety we started scooping them up and putting the inside their house. Within minutes all were up except little Señor El Blanco, the D’uccle (dew-clay) bantam, who cunningly zipped out of our grasps.
Branches were falling from trees, and by this time I was crying, just sure Blanco was going to meet his doom. That is when hubby and nephew brought out the things the chickens dread the most - the nets. They meant business, but so did my little pet chicken! With the stealth of a football player, Blanco dodged left and right, under lawn chairs, through flower beds, the whole time lightening and thunder shook the ground.
The first person to go down was my nephew, sliding across the glassy marble walkway of the flower bed. Now it was down to two - man and chicken! Through the yard, over the porch, and finally, behind the chicken coop, which was out of my view. All of a sudden I heard a horrific scream of a man in severe pain. Hubby had slipped and fallen across the wedged net!
I had to help my better half into the house and into a chair where he continue to groan in agony. Meanwhile, I stood by the window tearfully calling out to my tiny bantam, who was ignoring me and happily trooping through the yard in the rain. Soon the storm was over, Blanco was rejoined by the other banties, and I’m sure he told them about his great adventure, and how he escaped “the net”.
My husband, on the other hand, had a lot of swelling in his leg, along with a cut. He ignored the pain and swelling for more than a week, until the swelling moved all the way down to his ankle, and blood pooled in his foot. We had to make a trip to the emergency room, where doctors diagnosed him with cellulitis. He then had to stay in the hospital for 4 days.
Upon his return home all of the banties, along with the geese, came up to see him. Blanco brought up the rear, but looked up at him, as if to ask, “Where have you been?”
Chickens in the Garden
I’m having a really hard time this summer when it comes to gardening. We seem to have a new breed of ants in the yard – Argentina ants. Instead of the normal ant hills we have long dirt trails. Since I’m letting several flocks of our chickens free range I can’t put out the high powered poisons.
Out of desperation to have at least some home grown tomatoes I decided to put some plants in my flower beds. Everything was going fine…until one young group – my Partridge Rocks, decided that the perfect dust baths could be had in the freshly planted ground!
I finally put up small fences around the tomato cages. Problem solved…of course, I just happened to be walking by my Asiatic Lilies today, and guess who I found?
Blue Eggs and Ham
It’s funny how people can get all freaked out when things are different from the norm. Case in point - Ameraucana chicken eggs. Our particular strain all lay eggs in varying shades of blue to olive green - not your usual barnyard brown or white variety. But - an egg is an egg! They look the same on the inside, taste the same, etc, and definitely come from chickens. People who buy our eggs, however, either want only the blue ones, or no blue ones at all.
One older man who buys from us even hypothesized that a special feed, supplied by the government, of course, caused the chickens to lay blue eggs. Never mind that other birds lay all different colors, this was a conspiracy! Hubby finally convinced him that the Ameraucanas eat the same as all the others.
Egg color doesn’t matter much to me, but I still find myself using mostly the blue eggs. My cornbread always seems to rise higher, or maybe it’s in my mind. For now, Dr. Seuss can have his green eggs and ham, I’ll stick to my blue!
The Chicken Chronicles
Well, this is my first post, and so I am going to introduce myself a little.
I’m a southern folk artist, and I paint on any and everything I can get my hands on.
A few years ago my husband asked if I would mind him bringing home a couple of chickens and a chicken coop. I thought no harm in that, and told him sure. Little did I know how quickly our chicken venture would grow!
Right now we have over 80 chickens, over 9 breeds, 7 full size coops, multiple small chicken “tractors”, 2 grown broad breasted bronze turkeys, and 2 geese that we hatched in an incubator, who think I’m their mama, and who won’t let me out of their sight!
While it can get very overwhelming, life with our chickens(and turkeys, and geese), is good! I do a lot of my paintings and other art outside in my “studio”, under the shade tree, surrounded by my flock.