Where to turn for inspiration??

So it's already lining up to be "one of those days" - I've left my work pass (and hence my access token for dialling into my work laptop) back at the flat in London; the engineers working on my project have accidentally pushed the wrong script out to hundreds of laptops and the first I hear about it is from the customer, rather than my team; the grass in my garden is about 2-3 feet high and there's no way my lawn-mower will go anywhere near it, plus I blew the motor on my strimmer last time I tried to use it. I still haven't figured out what to do about my iPhone 3GS which I discovered had quite literally blown up yesterday (exploded batteries are apparently a known 'feature' of this model !!!).  So where to turn to stop this day getting any worse?  To put things back into perspective - it is, after all, only 09:30am so there's quite a lot of potential for improvement :-)

Even getting it all out into this blog is helping.  I have my salt crystal lamp over there, I'll switch it on.  I can light candles and incense, maybe smudge some sage.  I am at home, not in the office so I can rest if I need to.  I'll get a new strimmer from Argos or Asda and tackle the grass later, then start carving out the patterns for my new goddess garden.....

So now a short time later, the rock salt lamp is on, sage-smudging done, a myrrh incense cone is burning and I have a roaring log fire, lit by my favourite method of sparks onto char cloth.  I absolutely adore the fact I can light a cold fire and have it burning in brightly in a couple of minutes without needing a match or flame of any description :-)  The candles on my altar are alight too, it's quite warm so the patio doors are wide open letting in the breeze and the sounds of the birds singing.  I have time to take a few minutes to just relax, before going back to emails and spreadsheets....... 

..... so several hours later, I have chilled out quite considerably.  I have created backgrounds on several more index cards by experimenting with drops of colour in water.  I've found it works better with a drop of oil on the surface first, and acrylics work better than water colours.  The oil droplets formed can enhance the overall look, though I guess it would be possible to just use oil paints instead of oil plus acrylics.  One of my cards got too wet and had water pooled on the surface so I drew spirals on it in watercolour paint to see what happened.  My phone camera doesn't want to post pictures so it may need to wait until I'm back at the flat before I can update with photos on here but am happy with the results so far :-) 

My ICAD for the day turned out completely differently to my expectations (this is happening A LOT with my art, including with the mandala course).  This one was an attempt to blend paint in the way that so many people on the Daisy Yellow site do so beautifully - I'm beginning to think there is a technique to it that I don't know yet, lol.  Patterns and images seemed to stand out so I just followed them with a pen and ended up with my first piece of abstract art.  I still don't know which way up I prefer it!