I have a lot of talents.  I can speak French, I'm pretty organized, and I can definitely sell stuff.  Painting, and art in general, however, are not my special talents, so when I learned that I had to go to a baby shower and paint my own "canvas", I was nervous.   You might be saying, "But you have a blog about crafting!" Yes, that's true, but I'm not the one actually doing them, and we don't care how they look in the end.  This painting would be different, because the idea was to paint canvases for the new Mom and her plan was to decorate the nursery with all the assorted paintings. 

I showed up at the shower and ten blank canvases were set up for us, along with all the primary colors. The girls were chatting and several of them seemed really excited.  We settled into our seats and I selected to paint an owl.  I picked up my paintbrush and suddenly I literally felt a wave of almost panic.  I was so out of my element, I didn't even know where to begin.  

"Can I have the pink paint please?" I asked.

The nice woman smiled.  "You have to mix for pink.  Just add a little red and white together," she said kindly.

"Oh," was all I could think of to say.

I decided to just plunge in and get the whole thing over with.  I began with the outline first, then went on to my green background.  Suddenly I felt very relaxed.  There is something very exhilerating about painting a blank canvas with anything that I wanted.  If I didn't like the color, I just mixed up something new and painted over it.  I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed painting, and even more how much I enjoyed watching everyone around me create something.

Don't get me wrong.  Mine was by far the worst and I feel really badly that my friend will fee obligated to hang it in her baby's nursery.  I might just have to stage a robbery of it so she can have an excuse not to scare her poor child with my owl that looked like it had see-through wings.  But I learned a lot about myself that night.  I learned that it's good to force myself outside of my element every one in awhile.  I learned that I can still enjoy myself even if I'm not the best at everything.  And most of all, I learned that green and white don't make lime green, no matter how many times you re-mix it.

 Here is one of the girl's canvases.  She coped this painting, isn't it incredible?

And here is a "Daddy" Owl, with his arm around his "Little" Owl.  So creative...

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