Brush lines in paint: I have done a lot of painting with acrylics, and I would be very happy if I could be of help.  I need to know more about your situation.

My first thought is about the temperature where you are painting.  I   have my usual lair for painting in my attic.   Sometimes it gets very hot   up there.  In that case it is impossible for me to paint smoothly.   We  always cool off at night, but if that doesn't work for you, you can work  with the paint itself.

Each brand has a product that helps smooth the strokes.  I use Jo Sonja   "flow medium" with the Jo Sonja paints.   It thins the paint without   affecting the coverage the way water does.   However, water will help if   you have paint that has thickened.   If you put your blob of paint on a   wet paper towel, it won't thicken so fast.

Using the same brushes for varnish could present a problem.  I am not sure how serious it is, but I was warned not to use the same brushes for varnish and paint.   Maybe your brushes have been damaged by the varnish.  I have  large and small dedicated varnish brushes, and I use foam brushes when possible.

Are you preparing your wood?  You need to sand smooth, seal with sealer or paint, sand again.  On some surfaces I have to sand after the first and second coat of paint.  And don't even ask about MDF!  I put sealer and three coats of Titanium White on the last house before using Jo Sonja base coat and getting a really smooth effect.  (But I don't usually use acrylics on the house exterior, just needed this color.)

I have been teaching my friends how to paint (while working on my houses or their own), and I notice that they first tend to use too much paint.  You have to be patient and make thin coats.   The other thing they do is use a brush that is too small.  This makes more strokes necessary.  It also makes it impossible to keep the paint out of the ferrule (the part where the hairs are clamped).  I obtained a set of cheaper brushes for this work and hid my art brushes.

After painting houses and trim, the brushes need a lot of work.  It does seem impossible to keep the paint on the tips.  I keep cleaning them in the palm of my hand with brush cleaner and water until I don't get any more paint coming out.

You ask if you are using the wrong type of paint.  Well, there are various levels of quality.  Delta and Decoart are very good in the U.S.  Don't know if you have them.  Jo Sonja base coat paint is often better than you need.  I haven't used latex paint for trim, woodwork, or furniture.  Even the small jars put up for miniaturists would be way out of sight for such tiny projects.  I just made a house with gingerbread in three tasteful colors, which wouldn't be practical without the inexpensive acrylics.

I know there are others who can add more, and I look forward to learning from them.

Bar in La Honda, CA

Streaking paint: Please use flow medium, soft bristle brushes, prime your surface, change the direction of  your strokes with each coat, rub each layer with brown paper sack to soften any marks and consider the type of paint you are using. Tube paint will be very thick and require a great deal of thinning. Craft paint works well out of the bottle but will require several coats. Most expensive is not always the best now that there are so many mediums and aides to go with the less expensive craft paints.

Becky Holliday

One-room school: I am also doing a one-room school and I found my greatest help was just on the internet. I just typed in "one-room school" on the search and a whole list came up. There is one site there called "Iron Hill School" which would help you because it was an all black school. It showed what type of floors they had, what colors they painted their walls and everything. Also under "American Schools" you can find all black schools. From what I read the only light they had was from the windows. Students sat on long wooden benches with their work on their laps. Blackboards were just boards painted black. Erasers were rags glued to small blocks of wood. Hopefully this is of some help

Teresa in Calgary

1940's school: I started school in a poor mixed race neighborhood in Canada in the 40s, so it may not have been very different from your model. There were blackboards along the front of the classrooms, and they were black slate, each about 4' high and 8' wide. I don't remember coloured chalks being used; only white. The blackboard erasers were flat brushes of 1/4" felt strips - red, white and blue strips about 3"x6" with a wooden back. They were cleaned by "good" students who were allowed to take them outside and thwack them against other brushes or on the brick walls. We kids sat at individual desks -the old fashioned all-in-ones with metal frames, wooden seats and a "box" desk with a lift up lid. There was a groove about 1/2" deep all along the width of the desk, just above the hinged lid. This was for pens and pencils. There was a circular hole about 2 1/2" in the top right corner for your inkwell. The desk lids were deeply carved with assorted initials and mottoes. We sat in straight rows facing the teacher - none of these democratic circles! We used straight pens or fountain pens with the little levers and rubber bladders; very messy! And blotters - envelope sized pieces of thick white felted paper. We had math sets in metal boxes -with protractors and set squares, very like those still used today, and pencil crayons in packets of 8 colours or crayons for colouring.

Some of us carried satchels to put our books in; most of us carried them loose. Girls always wore skirts and blouses or pinafores, NEVER trousers, even in the dead of winter. There were cloakrooms near the entrance for coats and galoshes. We carried lunches in brown paper bags, or went home for lunch. (12 - 1:30)

The teacher had a large oak desk at the front of the classroom, and a matching oak chair. No cushions! There were pull down maps like window blinds - with extensive red areas representing "the empire", and a twirling metal world globe on a stand. We all had our own exercise books, small "readers" and "Think and Do" books featuring Spot and Puff and Dick and Jane. Although the classes were mixed sex and one grade to each room, sexual segregation was the rule. Girls and boys had separate entrances to the school. We had to line up in front of our specific door before school began, and spelling "bees" and math quizzes were always divided boy vs. girl.

I don't think fluorescent lights were available back then. I seem to recall long flexes with bare bulbs, some with the upside- down cone shades that were green on the outside and white on the inside.

Donna from Devon

1940's school: I went to school in the south in the mid to late 1950's and 1960's. I went to 3 different elementary schools. We lived way out in the sticks in AL for a couple of years where there were only 2 elementary schools, one for white and the other for AA students. The AA students had the newer building, but I never went inside, so I couldn't tell you about that, but I can tell you about the inside of our much, much older school.

We had the green chalk boards on 2 walls, the one behind the teacher's desk, and along the inner wall that was adjacent to the hallway and there was narrow bead board wainscoting painted white and the walls were very pale green. There were two doors into the hallway, one at each end of the room. They were 1/2 glass doors with transom's. There was a cloak room across the width of the room at the back of the classroom with a door at each corner (a total of 4 doorways into each classroom, 2 into the hallway and 2 for the cloakroom). The ceilings were very high, the windows were tall and narrow with a row of them along the outside wall about every 2 feet. Under the windows were bookshelves with encyclopedia's and other reference books. These shelving units were of dark wood.

The desks were the row type that bolt to the floor where the fold up seat for the desk in front is attached to the front of the desk behind, the was a hole in the desk top for an inkwell and a groove across the top edge for a pencil. The support structure for the desks were ornate iron.

Rusty in Ky

Silk fabric: Etcetera, Etc, in Roswell, NM carries a wonderful selection of fabrics and trims. Pam Kille is a very nice person to do business with, and has a great catalog that includes samples of the products. Pam Kille, 13 Isla Ct., Roswell, NM 88201 e-mail: rwk@rt66.com

Carol in MN

DIY needlepoint design: I am sure there are professional needlepoint design packages available for your computer, but if you only operate in a small way like me, there is an alternative. For this you need to have Microsoft Excel on your system - other spreadsheet packages may offer the same facility, I don't know.

FOR THE GRAPH PAPER
Open Microsoft Excel. To the left of the A and above the 1 there is a box. Click on the box. The whole spreadsheet will go black. eek! But don't worry - all this means is 'globalisation' i.e. anything you do to one cell will happen to all cells. Move the cursor to the ABC etc. line, and move it along until suddenly on the vertical line between A and B it will turn into a cross. Click on the left hand side of the mouse and drag the cross to the left - you will see every cell become narrower. Now do the same thing between the 1 and the 2, and every horizontal cell will become narrower. Play around until you have the size graph paper you like. Click on FILE in the upper left hand corner, go to PAGE SET UP, go to SHEET - under PRINT will be listed GRIDLINES - click on that box. That will give you hard lines on your printed out sheet.

Now for the fun part, the coloring in.

HOW TO COLOR IN
So you have your empty graph paper. Move towards the center ie go down and to the right, as your design will take up space. Say you want to design a bunny cross stitch or needlepoint design. You will want brown for the bunny. To the right of the screen is a tilted paint pot. Click on the square you want to use so it is highlighted. Go to the little arrow beside the paint pot and click on that - a whole spectrum of colors is revealed. Move the cursor around until the name of the color you want is revealed. Click on the color using left hand side of mouse.

Your cell will go brown if you have chosen brown. The color stripe under the paint pot will also have turned to brown which means all you have to do now is highlight a cell, then click on the paint pot itself and the cell will go brown. When you need to change colors simply go back to the spectrum.

WHAT IF YOU MAKE A MISTAKE??
One of the most boring things about doing all this manually on graph paper is if you make a mistake because it makes a mess making it right. Here it is simple. If you make a mistake, go back to the paint pot spectrum - at the top is an elongated box 'No Fill'. So click on the square you wish to 'rub out', go to the spectrum, and click on 'No Fill'. Your wrong color will disappear.

WARNING
I assume you will want to print out and use the colored graph you have made. Make the colors more extreme in your computer coloring in - if you make them charming and subtle your printer, who is an uncultured yob, will not perceive the subtle gradations and nuances of hue, and make all the blue family say, two blues, when you have used 5 blues. This is not what you want.

Helen from York, England

tiles: For the person looking for tiles, try http://www.minimanor.com/ and click on Old World Tile. They look great!

Marilyn in Illinois

Kids Project: I taught a class called Teeny Tiny Garden to kids in grades 3-5. Each year I do this I learn a little...this year I cut way back on the complexity of the project because a lot of it has to be done by me before the class! The classes are only 45 minutes long and there is not much time for glue and paint to dry. This project started out with a white fence on a painted-green wooden base. Then the students were given shredded foam grass, foliage, punched flowers, a birdbath and a bird to arrange any way they wanted. I gave a short lesson about scale (with flowers in vases in full size, 1", 1/2" and 1/4" scales for visual comparison) and demonstrated a couple techniques such as cupping the flowers with a blunt toothpick on a piece of craft foam. Each student came up with unique ideas, some I would never have thought of! There were even moments when you could have heard a pin drop, they were working so hard. I actually had time to take some photos this year and DH stopped by so I am even in some of them.. http://albums.photo.epson.com/j/AlbumList?u=1664953 look in the Kids College 2002 album on my Epson site. This was one of the most rewarding things I have done with minis!

Chris in Minnesota

Tiles: this is the email for the lady with real tiles Lop0309@aol.com

Jayleen in Montana