Grown up paint-by-numbers

Last night I went with a friend to Blush-n-Brush in Georgetown. It's a painting class where you bring your own wine/beer and snacks -- pretty brilliant idea, right? I mean I have done many things while drinking wine -- shopped online and ordered things I didn't need, responded to work emails, cooked Thanksgiving dinner, texted people I shouldn't...about time I added painting to that list!

You start out with a blank 16x20 canvas. Seeing that white space was a little intimidating to me -- was I going to be able to get it to look like the example at the front of the class? Was I going to screw it up? Thanks goodness there was the wine there to take the edge off and help the creative juices start to flow.


Our teacher walked us through the different stages of this particular painting, but I was still nervous. Was that too much black? Did I need some more purple up in that corner?


Then I started to remember what I loved about things like this -- there is no "right" way. Becoming a grown up, playing by the rules, following plans and reports at work....all those things have made me forget what it's like to just do something and not worry about if it's right.

We moved on to putting in the outlines of our vase and flowers. I admit I was a little timid at first and outlined my vase in blue before perfecting it in black. Such a wuss. Then some of that wine kicked in and I threw all caution to the wind and started just going for it and painting those flower outlines in black.
Such a rebel, right? ;)


At this point my biggest concern was getting paint on me. I will happily embrace my inner artist, just as long as I don't get too messy. God I can't wait to screw up my future child by trying to keep them mess free at all times. I am happy to report the only thing that got paint on it other than the canvas was the wine bottle.


So after some coloring in and shading and quick-drying it with a hair dryer, I ended up with my very own work of art. Pretty nifty, right?



This was SUCH a fun time - the only downside of the whole evening was a group of friends who happened to be in our class. They all arrived at different times so they were sort of spread out all over the classroom. This didn't stop them from yelling things across the room to one another. We lucked out with the one girl sitting accross from me at our table -- and by lucked out I mean I thought I was going to drop my artistic-zen vibe to slap her upside of her head. She turned everything the teacher said into a "That's what she said..." joke. EVERYTHING. I think the teacher wanted to slap her as well.

Bad joke-girl aside, I totally loved this place and am already hoping I can convince some other people to go back with me. It would be fun for a birthday, girls' night, bachelorette party. Heck, I even think it would make for a really fun date. Much less creepy that trying to recreate the whole pottery thing from "Ghost"

Any DC peeps out there want to go?