Yes, all your burning questions about the traditional folk art that is tole painting are answered here today (but only the burning ones). Katie is hung over and a little slow but that didn’t stop The Gals from recording a great episode.

The show opens with a little talk about our failed Kickstarter campaign and how you can help keep the podcast going even though we were unable to secure the funding we need in one large chunk through Kickstarter. A little update to that: We are $45 shy of what we need to upgrade our web storage and since we are using about 95% of our available storage, this is the most pressing issue.

You will find a “Donate” button in the bar over on the right side of this blog. If you donated to the Kickstarter you have your money back now (since we didn’t get funding), if you still want that money to go to us you can donate it this way. You do not have to have a Paypal account to donate and you can still use prepaid gift cards if you prefer to be more secure with your credit card information online. The Gals discuss other ways that you can help the show out in the episode as well but we wanted to make sure you knew about this one here on the blog.

Back to tole painting! Katie gives a short history of tole painting but if you would like to read more about the rich history of this delightful form of folk art you can read about it on the zest-it website by clicking here.

It seems the keys to traditional tole painting are the specific strokes and brushes used, as well as a painting method called “one stroke painting”. The zest-it site provides some basic stroke and brush information and you can check out their information on that here.

AND here is that one stroke painting video tutorial Katie mentioned.

The Gals collected some cool examples for you to look at over on the Two Artsy Gals Pintrest so make sure you go check out the album for this episode.

If you have already listened to this week’s episode, you now know that our beloved Sharon is leaving the show. We are all super bummed but understand that with raising two small boys, living on and running a farm, and working a full time job doesn’t leave much time for anything else. Loni Lane will be steeping to take over as Katie’s co-host (you may remember her from the decorative furniture show we did when she filled in for Sharon back in January). Loni is awesome and you will love her. And Sharon will be back on occasion to fill in for Loni as needed and maybe just to drop in and say hi.

We have a new way for you to connect to us! We have a voicemail line just for the show (I know! Exciting, right?!?!?!?), and we thought Sharon’s departure would be the perfect opportunity for us to break it in. Sharon has three shows left, so that means you have a couple of weeks left to leave her a voicemail telling her goodbye and all sorts of nice things. You can also just leave questions and comments about the show. That number is 503-395-7190. Give us a ring, yo!

Speaking of ways to get in touch with us, you can also just do it the old fashioned way and send an email. Ask The Gals questions, leave comments, give us show ideas… you can do it all by emailing twoartsygals@gmail.com. Oh my gosh, we are rocking all the social media these days. You can follow us on all of them simply by clicking the appropriate buttons over there on the top right (just below the donate button). Also, remember to subscribe to the podcast so you always have a fresh episode as soon as it goes up. You can do that through the RSS feed on this blog and through both the iTunes and Stitcher apps. Also, if you left the some awesome ratings and feedback no one around here would hate it.

Next week The Gals are going to be talking about Tyvek Mailers and you are not going to want to miss that! Until next week… make some cool shit, yo!