Been busy...

Work on Friday. A last minute dinner party at my place on Friday night (where it ended up that my lovely friends bought most of the ingredients so all I had to do was whip up a pot of chickpea, tomato, spinach and potato curry , make rice and set the table. Which was pretty much all was capable after my day at work.)

Work on Saturday. A quick dash home to shower and change then I was off out to a 21st birthday dinner. During which my table mate and I compared ways of folding nappies using our napkins. All in the name of design: we were discussing the best folds to use on a baby shower invitation she's working on which she wants to wrap in a piece of fabric so it looks like a nappy.

And today she and I had our first Play Date. An idea we came up with over coffee at The National Portrait Gallery a couple of weeks ago: we wanted the chance to experiment and learn and, well, play with art supplies and ideas.

She was particularly keen to have a go at foam printing like I did at last year's CMAG class so that's where we started. First I showed her the basics I learnt in the class:(and discovered that: 1. A glass chopping board makes a good inking plate at a pinch. 2. A plastic one doesn't. 3. Especially when you're trying to use acrylic paint from the op shop instead of a second colour ink as you're too cheap to buy the real thing. 4. Speaking of too cheap, it doesn't pay buy the cheaper ink either,even if the girl in the shop says it works fine: it won't work like the good stuff does)

We sketched some ideas:and tried out various combinations. Reminding ourselves constantly that we were playing. It didn't matter if things didn't work according to plan as that was all part of the fun. And that we weren't setting out to create masterpieces.We learnt that my coffee cup mug rack makes a great drying rack in a pinch:and that sometimes you can take something just a bit too far and ruin it...Next time we're playing with collage.