It is nice to sit once in a while, for an hour or so, with a good book, coffee and being selfish. I picked up Richard Bach ‘Illusions’ and thought that it deserved a nice ambience to read by. So I lit the industrial resin burner I made about 20 years plus ago.

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Resin burner and Richard Bach

Pinterest throw imagery at my emails at least twice a day. Inclusions are recycled art or useful tool ideas. Then I realised that I had made lots of little personal treasures over the decades on decades of years. Lots, actually. No! There there has been so much that I have forgotten. So much given to friends and family. Handmade Christmas cards. Flotsam and Jetsam from beach visit finds made into driftwood mirrors, pictures, etc. Lately? It’s been nice finding bits of string, paper, card, printing blocks to make my own little journals.

Made a fair while ago now.

It’s good to muck about with something you have produced yourself. I know lots of people who are simply into ‘making things’ and following their own artistic endeavours. There are lots of them that are producing really lovely work. And yet it is not focused but ever moving in ideas. Want a small row of hooks to hang on a shed door for coats? Small branches cut to 8 to 12 inch lengths with each branch having a vital forked branch off it. The forked part, at a 45 degree angle ideally cut short to 3 to 5 inches becomes the peg. Screw 2 to 4 of them to a basic oblong frame and screw the frame to the shed door. It could do to hang small tools off too. 

In the garden last year, making a compost bin, hunting old bits of wood and recycling was fun. After working as a nurse and drowning in health related studies too. I felt really spiritually free again, in retirement, for the first time in a very long time. I can understand why my children love producing their own artistry. They grew up seeing stuff around them. And they have their artistic nature and it’s ability to produce and enhance gifts by giving hand made projects. This ethical way of thinking also assists their personal well-being. Genetically, I suppose, it’s in their bones. 

Took these few photos after my thinking about my making of small bits and bobs ‘industrial’ wise. It satisfies the personal senses. Sight, sound, smell. Little prayer and memories book from my man bag smell of Sandalwood and Clary Sage. The main title photo of the wooden book made for Angie on a long ago Valentine’s Day crammed with recycled paper for use as a messages pad. Made little boxes over years, this one for collectible coins. Metal baked bean can with additional small industrial pieces used to enhance my pottery or make pictures. The frames from old bits of wood. Find a lovely frame , like the tree carving, and make a small addition of paper art of your own.

Handmade paper and card box. Naive small industrial pictures. A piece of my own handmade pottery with metal embellishments.

And lo and behold. Richard Bach’s book has a cover that I made from an old piece of leather I found, a hot iron symbol stamped into it from a soldering iron and has the smell of my own beautiful handmade beeswax polish.