Felt tip pens

As I have been boning on about the gold leaf pen I thought I might share the sum total of my 'painting' pens with you - this is all I have - no colours or anything fancy.

seven in total

As you can see I did a sample of each of the Min-wax wood finish pens on coffee stirrers.  I need to get a few more for the other pens: meanwhile they are on a piece of scrap wood.  These are just a quick reference when deciding what to use for what.  Their colours will change from material to material but this is a rough reminder of how they look.  In addition I satin varnished half of each of the wood ones so I could see the difference that would make.

new gold v. old gold

Sorry this is so out of focus but it will do well enough to show you the difference between the gold leaf pen (left edge) and the gold pen I was using before.  Incidentally there is a down side to the gold leaf pen it has a rather chunky nib for our purposes;  don't despair, if you pump it a few times to get it wet you can pick up the gold from it with a fine paintbrush and go from there if you want to do any detailing.  Your brush will need to be cleaned with spirits though as I discovered too late to save my sweet little brush.  

You will now get a week's respite from me as I am off to the (four day!) Philadelphia show tomorrow and then a bit of a road trip down the coast to end up flying back out of Richmond, Virginia.  What japes, Pip!