They are FREE as a bird after 25 years of being caged!!

Hello,

I am just so excited to share my pastels out of their cage.  Well, actually they were in their little boxes for over 25 years and just waiting to come out.   Now if you have a strong heart please go ahead and look at the photos.  Remember I never claimed to be the neatest pastel artist. 

Here we go!!!

I don't know if they even make Rowney pastels anymore, I will have to check with Dick Blick to see if they do. Notice the wonderful box or case?  You will notice that I love little boxes.  

The inside of the box,  this one seemed pretty organized and they are  waiting to be used.  I love these because they were so soft and after I filled the tooth of the paper of sandpaper they would just go right on top so smoothly.   Now, I know some spray the surface to give more tooth but I just didn't like the way it changes the color.  So Rowney pastels were to my rescue. 

The larger assortment of pastels.  They were in a little box you will see shortly but my collection grew and grew.  Soooo, I made this box out of cardboard and then a big  piece of foam over it and then the lid to the box.  I used two, actually suspenders, to wrap around the box and off I would go to classes.   Just made my heart go pitter patter to open it up and there they were.

The hard pastels in their cute little box.  These were perfect for detail--be it trees or eyes.  They worked perfectly, of course you could go over the top of the softs also for some layered color.   Sharpened them with a razor blade, watch the fingers please, or a rasp worked also.   Once I tried a pencil sharpened, man did that ever eat them up.  I only did that once. 

These cute little boxes all stacked together and originally held the first start of my soft pastels.  Now it holds my "neat" little pieces that I use as I paint and my extra sticks of the colors I used the most.   See the upper right?   Those are treasures also.

Now this little treasure of jumbled up hard pastels is really how I worked.  Guess I just like digging around.  Most of the time I just held the colors I was using in my right hand.  Well, sometimes I would switch to my left hand to change stroke direction.  I didn't ever use both hands at one time to paint, my brain just doesn't work that way.

The pastel pencils,  I almost forgot about those.  They came in a cute and colorful tin box but don't have a clue where it is.  Hopefully packed away in a little cubby somewhere.

There you have it, my stash of pastels.  I just had to share with you and thanks for looking at them.  I know they will preform nicely for me.  

Thanks for coming into my world.  Hugs to ya.