WOYWW #568: Two in One

Last week, I clean forgot it was Wednesday and missed linking up, even though I had all the photos prepped and ready to go. I blame Easter Monday, which masqueraded as a Sunday and totally confused me. As a result, I have now two-weeks' worth of projects to show, but I'll try to be quick, promise. Here's my desk shot taken on Easter Monday:

I was playing with some inky backgrounds, cutting them into smaller pieces for collage or whatever else they can be used for. I'd also just finished decorating my little die-cut drawers you saw on my desk 'au naturele' last week. I decided to just paint them a rusty orange over crackle paste, and later added some washi tape for good measure as well. It ended up a little warped so next time I'll use a better board. Here's a closer look:

This week I continued experimenting more with painty/inky backgrounds inspired by this free tutorial by Jeanne Oliver, titled mini abstracts. I used a cheap file folder as my substrate. 

I took it a step further and added some washi tape, old postage stamps and found words to some of the little pieces:

So that's it art-wise. It's good to be creating again. How is your lock-down going? Looks like it won't end any time soon. I still find myself quite busy between my job and homeschooling. My son's learning about the Cold War, which I find fascinating as I lived through the latter part of it on the other side of the Iron Curtain. It's interesting for me because I never knew about the Berlin Blockade, for example - somehow it was glossed over - or rather omitted completely - in my old history books! My secondary school education was still very much dominated by the Soviet doctrine. Anyway, I'm rambling...

Bear with me, I just have a couple of more photos and a video left to share...

The pharmaceutical committee I work for sent all the team members a bouquet of flowers to thank us for our hard work. It's nice to be appreciated and a far cry from the treatment I got in some of my previous jobs working in retail, if you remember - now that I think of it, I guess I just didn't belong there and I'm grateful that I've finally found my place. 

The old apple tree down the garden is also in full blossom - I always look forward to the time when these little pink/white petals make an appearance - a sign of renewal and hope - especially in the current circumstances. 

Sometime during Easter week when the weather was so warm, we had a little bonfire down the bottom of the garden at night. We were scaring each other with ghost stories in the dark LOL. I hope my son will grow up to remember this as one of the precious family moments of the lock-down of 2020. In all this madness, we have to find the positives and make the most of this unprecedented situation. 

Hope everyone's keeping safe. Take care folks and see you soon! xx

WOYWW #566: I'm back - kind of...

I thought it was time for me to show my face again on WOYWW and let you know that I and my family are okay in lock-down. We haven't left the house in more than two weeks. Luckily, I can work from home - and I'm quite busy too as I'm part of a team that works with pharmacies. On top of that I have homeschooling responsibilities for my son who's in year 10, studying for his GCSEs next year - currently on his Easter break. So it's hardly a holiday, but we're actually having a nice time together as a family. We can spend time outside in our garden enjoying the spring sunshine, so we don't even miss going out much. We could go on like this indefinitely, but of course I know that things will have to get back to some sort of normal soon as not everyone is having an easy time of this.

I even ventured into my craft room at the weekend inspired by Roben-Marie Smith - and not for the first time rescuing me from a creative rut! She's taking part in the Virtual Art Summit which runs until the end of the month. It's free to join with a voluntary donation. Roben-Marie's lesson inspired me to get inky again with the following results:

The book on my desk is destined to become a "Transitions Journal"which is another one of Roben-Marie's free courses. That's a longer term project for me. You can also see those little cardboard drawers on my desk - I used the £5 off voucher from Craft Stash for Mother's Day to treat myself to the Eileen Hull Scoreboards die that cuts them. Potentially, I could build an Advent Calendar at the end of the year, so could be quite useful.

Hope that was sweet and short and to the point. I have just two more photos to share: yet another stunning sunset experienced on Saturday and a photo of Oreo (aka pocket panther) sunning himself in the conservatory, which really comes into its own at this time of year.

Hope everyone's keeping safe! Will be around visiting soon! xx