Glitter Pavement Paints - Pinspiration & #cbias

Disclosure: I am a member of the Collective Bias® Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias and their client.  I have not been told what to say, all opinions are my own. Links are provided for convenience, I am not a member of any affiliate scheme & will not receive payment for their use.

I was given a shoppertunity challenge, and a free reign.  "Find something you want to do on Pinterest, and do it!"  So I took to my "Things for Squeaky" board, and once I realised I couldn't buy up the whole of Ikea, I opted for homemade glitter pavement paints based on this recipe from The Imagination Tree, as the weather's still reasonable, and it sounds like something different to do.  You can have a look at my shopping expedition here.

No nail polish! Shock! Horror!

The paint recipe was very simple - cornflour (or corn starch to those in the US), mixed with an equal quantity of water, gel food colourants, and loose glitter.  The glitter caused me the most headaches, I chose my supermarket by the one that normally has the best supply of craft stuff, but they didn't have any glitter. I called at 3 other shops that are normally really good for crafting, but still no loose glitter. Plenty of glitter glue, glitter paints & glitter pens, but no loose glitter. I ended up asking around at work & someone gave me a hint so I was able to get a stash of multicoloured glitter.

Cornflour is brilliant stuff.  I couldn't get Squeaky all that interested in the paint-making process, but she was still confused by the solid/liquid state of the cornflour & water mix.  I'm sure I've mentioned my fascination with Non-Newtonian fluids before (thanks to a couple of episodes of Brainiac), but the way the mix reacts to being stirred is just crazy.  It thickens up as you stir it, and then goes back to being liquid again when you leave it alone. To the extent that I could pick up a solid chunk of paint, and then let it pour back into the container.  I'm easily amused.

Adding sparkles

I made up the colours, mixing the food colourants to make 6 different pots of paint, and added a healthy shake of glitter to each paint pot, then headed outside with Squeaky & her friend Pirate Girl, who had come round to join in the painting fun.  It was a lovely sunny day, so just right for fun in the garden.

Investigating the paints

Old clothes on, and out for some fun.  I'd rearranged the garden to give us as much patio space for painting as possible.  As the paints were food based and non-toxic, I wasn't really worried what the girls decided to paint, as I was confident it would all wash off with a hosepipe. Or shower if it was the girls themselves.

Good job really, as they quickly decided to paint themselves.  It's the freedom of being allowed to do the daft things you're normally told off for.  But that's part of why I chose this activity - a chance to explore colour, texture and art in a different way.  You want to paint your face? Go ahead.

Or your feet.  Strange girl.

And my garden chairs.  As you can see, the paints dry to a chalky kind of effect, and while they run a bit, they're much neater than traditional paints, as they were quite thick.

It wasn't just mess though, we did make some bits of real art.

Sunshine

It's tricky stuff to get used to - it was quite hard to paint as you'd normally do, as the tension of dragging the brush on the floor made the paint thicken up (non-Newtonian again). So it was easier to dab than to brush, which is where the sponges came into their own.  I think I'd make the paints slightly thinner next time, they might be easier to draw with that way.

The girls insisted I made a second batch of paints, a couple of slightly different colours this time, so they could carry on painting themselves and every available surface - including a couple of slightly confused balloons.  What those poor balloons had done to deserve such treatment, I really don't know.

Our finished sunshine, and accompanying raincloud.  Quite appropriate for the Welsh weather really.  I think we might have a new Sian Lloyd on our hands with these two.

The glitter didn't show up quite as much as I'd hoped from the amount that you could see in the paints. It was quite subtle once the paints were used.  But I like the effect, and I think if there had been much more glitter involved, I would have struggled to clean up.

As it was, the patio cleaned up really easily, given 5 minutes with the hosepipe, the chairs much the same.  The windows took a little bit more work, because the paint had smeared on them a bit, but even there, we're not talking a lot of effort.  The girls cleaned up just fine with a handful of wet wipes & a quick dip in the bath.  In fact, by the next day, the only way you could tell we'd been up to anything was the food colourant which had stained my fingers while I was mixing the paints.  I'll wear gloves next time.

Bacardi Cocktails with #cbias

Disclosure: I am a member of the Collective Bias® Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias and their client.  I have not been told what to say, all opinions are my own. Links are provided for convenience, I am not a member of any affiliate scheme & will not receive payment for their use.

We've just got back home from a weekend away in (very) sunny Tenby, staying at a gorgeous little holiday park, and making the most of the chance to relax & soak up some sunshine.  We've been on quite a few £9.50 type holidays now, and we've got it down to a fine art.  Squeaky doesn't want to stay up all that late, we go to the kids disco, and sometimes she'll decide to join in, maybe we'll stick around for the quiz, then we head back off to our caravan, tuck her up in bed & kick back with a couple of drinks before going to sleep ourselves.

Club dances, hooray!

Don't panic, my daughter does actually have shoes, she just preferred to take them off, for reasons best known to herself.

Well, a couple of days before we went, I spotted a "Shoppertunity" through Collective Bias to have a Bacardi cocktail party, and I thought this would go down pretty well with Daddy once Squeaky's dropped off.  You can have a look at my Google + album here to see how I got on shopping.

My favourite aisle in Tesco

I made a mad rush to Tesco in Merthyr Tydfil, before we set off to the caravan to stock up on the essentials for a cocktail party in a new location.  It's amazing the things you never notice on a day to day basis.  I'm sure that flag has been up on the wall there for years, but I'd never noticed it until I took this picture.  I'm usually too busy looking at the wine!

Checking out the rum

Rum is great stuff, though I didn't know there were so many variants of Bacardi.  Looking through my cupboard at home now, there's Bacardi, dark rum for drinking neat, dark rum for mixing, and navy rum for when I've got a sore throat.  That's not excessive, is it?  I mean, there's far more types on the shelf, aren't there?

Well, after piling everything into the back of the car, off we set for Pembrokeshire, a lovely drive down and settled into our caravan.  Friday evening we just had a quiet visit to the clubhouse, and an early night.  I had plans for Saturday!

Don't you just want to dive in?

 Plans that admittedly involved a swim, and a trip to the beach.  But they're still plans.  Picnic sandwiches, sandcastles, and a paddle in the sea, all to build up an appetite.

Sand in my sandwiches. It's traditional.  Nails: Speciallita - Gracc Jelly - Queimada

Appetites built up, we headed back to the caravan for cocktails & a bit of a barbecue.  Daddy, while happy to join me on the cocktails, flatly refused to have his photo taken.  I think the umbrellas may have been a step too far!  I made up a selection of cocktails, with the Bacardi & peach schnapps I'd bought in Tesco, and a couple of other spirits I'd picked up from home.  I tried to recreate a few cocktails we'd had on holiday in the past, so there was the obvious Cuba Libre and Mojito (Daddy opted for the Cuba Libre, the Mojito was all mine.  Never come between me & my Mojito, unless you're offering me another).  Then there was a brown cow, made with Bacardi, dark rum & chocolate milk. Not quite as sweet as you'd think, but very rich, and I probably couldn't drink more than one of them.  Daddy wasn't impressed, but he's a hard man to please sometimes.

L-R Liquid Cocaine, Brown Cow, Cuba Libre, Mojito, Drama Queen

My last pair of cocktails were a bit more experimental - I remembered a cocktail from my dim & distant past called Liquid Cocaine, but couldn't find a recipe online that matched what I knew was in it.  There should be some pineapple juice in here, but I'd only got orange, so it's Bacardi, Amaretto & Orange juice. Sweet, addictive, and I could drink it all night.  The other is a twist on a "Sex On The Beach", as I was using Bacardi rather than vodka, and the internet tells me that Bacardi, Peach Schnapps & Orange Juice is a Drama Queen.  Again, very sweet, but Daddy preferred this one.  He must like drama queens, otherwise he wouldn't have married me!

Cheers!

Somehow, in amongst all the cocktail making, we safely managed to have a little barbecue as well.  Squeaky was safely tucked up in bed, having insisted on "normal" hot dogs for tea.  I love summer evenings, it stays so light so late, we were still sitting out til well past my bedtime!  Sausages, pork chops in a gorgeous BBQ sauce, and jacket potatoes with cheese oozing out.  Once we'd finished our barbecue, we were considerate caravan neighbours & made sure the fire was safely out before going to bed for a very well earned rest.

The aftermath