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Give us this day our daily bread...

I don't know what's wrong with me at the moment. Creatively I am in a major slump, and as for the weekly tasks, I can't muster up the energy or the enthusiasm for them. Everything seems to be a slog, something to struggle through rather than something I am supposed to be enjoying. Struggle through I have done, and I do have things to put on here this week.






This box was from The Works. I started by adding some paper clay moulds - flowers, leaves and a label. Once that was dry I thought it was too plain, so I die cut some leaves out of cardboard for the top, and some butterflies for the sides (mainly because the leaves were really hard to cut!) Once I had attached those I coated the whole box in black gesso, then washed it in chalk paint (which has separated a bit, but it added to the effect.) I then added some burnt umber stain (sorry I have forgotten what it's called but it's that one that you put on, wipe off the excess then seal with a varnish) I left the inside black as I felt it didn't need anything.


Progress on the stitch, and you can finally get an idea of what it is supposed to be! Progress is still frustratingly slow, but that could be because of how I am feeling at the moment.

flour, yeast and proofing
eat fresh out of the oven
slathered in butter

So this week's thing was making bread. I will admit I cheated a little bit with this one, although technically I never specified I would make one from scratch. I just wanted to make some bread, without using a breadmaker, but to pound out my frustrations while kneading dough. So I used a kit. Unfortunately, my mood was more apathetic than frustrated so it didn't really work well, but it tasted nice at least.


One thing that I didn't take into account was the fact the halogen oven we have does not evenly cook things, so I had to turn it over and cook it on the underside afterwards, meaning it was a little crispier than I would have liked.

Confession: I had a couple of weekly tasks in reserve in case of things that I could not do/changed my mind about. Two of these are coming up - one of each. One was simply because of transport issues, one I am replacing with something I hope will be more productive for me. Don't judge - sometimes we change our mind, and this has already been a big year for me.

Ems


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