And it was born...........

So as you know I'm a china painter. I love porcelain art and spend hours everyday painting it. For many years I've painted spoon rests like the one pictured on the left.

I had painted one of them and it was already fired, finished and ready to be photographed. It was sitting beside my work table.  At the time I was in the middle of doing some decorative painting and was applying varnish. Now if you paint, you know if you put varnish on your pallette paper it will run...sometimes even to the edge of the paper and off. So I grabbed the spoon rest and put the varnish in the little well. It  was perfect for what I needed to hold my varnish.  And because it is porcelain clean up was a snap.

As I was cleaning it out, I thought, well I have to clean my brushes. Generally I put the brushes in brush soap and scrub in my hand but for some reason I just used the little spoon rest. The paint on the porcelain had enough "tooth" to clean but be gentle to my bristles!

and the Paint Buddy was born! 

I love my Paint Buddy. I use it all the time. One day I was thinking, I should share this with others. So  I made some paint buddies in put them in my Etsy shop.  You can purchase them at this link:  http://www.etsy.com/listing/66765859/handpainted-porcelain-paint-buddy

or if you prefer a spoon rest. Here's the link for the one pictured. http://www.etsy.com/listing/39694775/handpainted-porcelain-spoon-rest-ofg