Fader

...Temper Trap

Last night I went to an experimental drawing class at mac. I went armed with my pencils and sketchbook, not really sure what to expect, but to my delight ended up with a pallet containing brown furniture polish, coffee, vegetable oil, black ink and mud. Everyone was also given a big piece of paper and a photocopied image of a landscape - i picked a nice mountainy one - and for two hours had a go at creating a piece using experimental materials.

This was my result - in true me fashion, my final larger attempt only got as far as the mountains after taking too long on the tester, so I decided to bring it home and try it myself with various materials in my cupboards. Need to find something which I'll be able to use to do the water a bit better - clearly coffee wasn't my thing.

- oh that also just gave me a thought about substituting water colours for tea. Fab :) Now, what can I char in substitute for charcoal...

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... I'm getting real lazy with my titles lately. I have no excuse. Just pure unoriginality and lazyness.

Last weekend the girls came to visit, half because we wanted a night at Snobs, and half because it tied in nicely with Alex's birthday. So I made some more cakes :) Ditched the swirly icing in favour of these multicoloured cupcake-kebabs. Icing was yum, cakes a little dry, I have yet to reach perfection...

Oxford Comma

...Vampire Weekend

It was Adams birthday yesterday, so I made him these yummmmy brownie cupcakes with peanut butter frosting, from a recipe posted by Dujour. Of course, I had in mind that mine would also look beautiful and perfect, and then got to icing and found that I have still not mastered the art of cupcake decorating. After my first few attempts looked like a tiny dog had actually trotted along and done his business on top of my little brownies, I did get a tad better. Ah well, I guesssss I'd better make more for practice :)

We also took a trip to Oxford, which obviously made me very jealous of everyone living there, and made me wish I'd tried harder (much harder) in school, so that I could be one of those casually smart and brainy students swanning around all those lovely buildings. Hmph.

We also stopped by Bicester outlet village, and I got some nice spotty wellies from Cath Kidston, adding to my seemingly growing collection of bottle green clothing. (This purchase was very justified due to last winter's weather and my lack of waterproof, grippy footwear. I have yet to think of valid justifications for my other purchases, other then I never have to reach far to tell the time, thanks to my new 'time piece' necklace.)

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The last few of China photos for now. The last of my film at least, (there's a few more on Flickr) still plenty of un-posted, un-edited other photos (mainly from 798 Project, which which is a great place as shall be seen in due course). These are from inside the Forbidden City, which is just pretty huge.

And of course, I do like lamp posts. And Beijing-ers do love their bikes.