[Spikesgirl]

It's way too soon to be up this morning, but I've got an early call. There is a product out on the market that works similar to your spray bottle. Of course, now the name eludes me, but it is a glass jar and you attach a bottle of accelerant (CO, I'm thinking) to it. The plus is that you just spray, as you would with a can of spray paint, but you load your own color. Much easier on that fingers and you can get some really interesting results. I used it on a 8' x 10' mini drop and it took only an hour to do about three hours worth of work. The other thing that is great is because you're just 'misting', it dries like crazy - much faster than using traditional spray gun. The whole set up cost me about $15 and lasted quite a while. Refill air cannisters were about $5 a pop at Home Depot and lasted about 5 - 6 hours of regular use.

One of my favorite texture ideas is to use that brown hand towel material that is so prevailent at schools and use that instead of a sponge. Because the paper is flexible, you never end up with a pattern - the disadvantage is that you can go through a lot of paper. We had rolls of it, so it wasn't a cost factor for us. We also did a lot with kitty litter and Frosted Flakes (they're not just for breakfast any more...the cereal, not the kitty litter).

For wood graining, we used to dry brush, but now they have tons of little hand tools at Home Depot (Lowe's, whatever) that makes graining a snap. Students could easily grain with a minimum of supervision - always a good thing!

Charlie