The Mother's Day Present

My son and I decided to do something special for mom/wife this year. Of course, I did the usual let-her-sleep-in / breakfast-in-bed thing. But we also had a present in mind.
Rewind a few months back and we decided to get rid of our living room torchiere lamp (a 90's era energy-sucking fire-hazard). We got this. I wanted to customize the lampshade, so I took a tip from eHow.com and shopped for some plastic. Instead of using sharpie markers, we decided on using paint (more on that later). My son idolizes David Bromstad, so his thought process was as follows:

• Interview mom and find out what her favorite color scheme is. (She likes cool tones)
• Use a heavy brush with stippling patterns and lots of gradation
• Use a spray bottle of water to get the desired artistic effect

The tempera paints in the kid's art-center wouldn't hold up to the plastic and the water, so we took another trip to the crafts store and scored some acrylic paints. After some test paintings, we had a working solution.

She was quite surprised and loved the finished product. Happy Mother's Day!