The Flower in a Bag

I don't remember how the bag came into my possession. Suffice to say it got well played with over the Christmas season, and is now cumpled, tatty and generally, quite the worse for wear.

I was trying to decide whether to throw it in the recycling or do something crafty with it before chucking it out.

So I decided to try drawing a flower on its crumpled but blank innards.

As you do.

There was a logic to my madness - which was that I'm not very good at drawing flowers, and doing a doodle inside a hidden and soon-to-be-thrown-out bag is as good a place to practice as any.

I grabbed one of my LittleOne's colouring-in pens. Again, it reduces any expectations and pressure. (I think I've previously mentioned that I have a pretty savage inner critic?)

Anyway, I came up with this.

Photo taken in the kitchen with as much fluorescent light as I could get into the gift bag with one hand, while holding my phone with the other.

Actually, you know what? I thought to myself in tones of doubtful surprise, that's kinda not bad.

So I played with it in my Photoshop Express app.

First, I went through interesting permutations trying to blend that streak of light.

The black and white filter helped.

I couldn't reduce the texture, so I expanded it.

LittleOne had a couple of awesome goes.

Then, a couple of final flippy and colour variations to finish off.

And there you go. Not a bad result for a flower in a bag. Even if I do say so myself!

PS. I haven't thrown the bag out yet.

PPS. If you have a favourite, let me know!

The Sun and the Moon

The following little story came to me while driving home one night on a dark road lit up in silver by a half-moon. I suddenly had a fanciful little image of a car smilingly gobbling up a crescent-shaped sliver of moon-flake which helped its headlights shine brighter. Such an image wouldn't normally find a home outside my head, but

Getting the Right Accent

There was a Twitter hashtag which did the rounds recently: #tweetjustyourvoice. The idea was to use record an audio of your voice with a visual that didn’t include your face, and then post it onto Twitter so that your communities of tweeps (Twitter folk) get to hear how you sound. I would have probably continued on my merry way, happily ignorant of all things connected to this hashtag, except that it got embraced with gusto by the FridayPhrases community , with a certain FridayPhrases host (the very persuasive @AdeleSGray ) inviting me to take part. If ever there was a hashtag designed to wallop me well out of my comfort zone, it was this one. Why? Thank you for asking. There are several reasons.

Making Mauritius-Style Banana Cakes (Gateaux Bananes)

I mis-managed my bananas. I got my timing all wrong and they were suddenly too ripe and too spotted and dotted to eat, and were sitting there looking at me with accusatory and reproachful looks. Banana cake was the obvious solution. But why go the way of regular banana cake, when there's the distant call of Mauritius-style gateaux bananes (you guessed it: banana cakes).

Dodo Au Go-Go

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