I mentioned works in progress in my last post.

There was the Christmas tree made out of twine …

As with most things, although it’s not perfect, it looks better in real life. It was made by wrapping some cling film around a polystyrene cone, spreading Vaseline over the cling film, wrapping glue soaked twine around it, leaving it to dry and carefully squeezing the twine tree from the cone. I put an artificial tea light inside and there you have it.

My messy papier mache …

Not too messy now, apart from the rim …

… fixed.

I made it with tissue paper so it’s quite delicate and translucent. I’m going to paint it though when the fixed rim is dry.

I found these words somewhere. Pinterest, I think. They were attributed to Mark Twain but some research suggests that someone else wrote them. I couldn’t find out who. To be honest, I don’t care who wrote them. They resonate strongly with me and I felt compelled to do this …

Otherwise, I’ve been playing with paint and glue. In art shops and elsewhere you can buy stuff called crackle paste to recreate old cracked paint, like this example from the house we stayed in the the UK the weekend before last …

I found out during the week that the same sort of effect can be achieved by painting over tacky PVA glue. I thought I’d give it a go. We shall see in due course whether it worked or not. This is it so far …

I’ve been doing other stuff with watercolours too, getting used to blending them to create interesting backgrounds. When I’ve something worthwhile I’ll post them here.