Midas Touch?

Golden thumb by Mahtab Hanna

Has anyone out there ever worked with gold leaf? Well, I am working on a humongous triptych for a church using a heck of a lot of it, and let me tell you Friends, stuff is no joke! It is all "Hi, I'm shiny and beautiful" and then you go to apply it and its all "Oh, what I meant to say was that I'm actually the most fragile, temperamental, flat-out moody material on the planet!" My studio is covered in gold, Friends. I mean...there are pieces of it stuck to my hair. Things were looking that bad by lunch today.

Good news though! Turns out that I was sold the wrong adhesive. After a few hours of general huffing, puffing and stomping around this morning, I took a look at the bottle and discovered the mistake. Lucky for me, I had been working on a practice surface, and things have been looking up since I went back to the store for a trade in.

Plus, these guys were there the whole time to keep me in check. One of my now friends/past clients recently stared making them and stopped by my studio yesterday to let me pick two for myself! Aren't they fantastic?

 They've joined this guy...

and this guy (made by my awesome sons) and formed their very own little Greek Chorus to cheer me along and keep me smiling. Somehow looking over at this little brood when I had ripped wads of gold stuck on every finger helped me take myself a little less seriously.