Back around to the middle of the week again, which means it’s time to head out on the weekly desk jaunt.  See Julia if you need any introduction to this weekly blog hop.

We had a real battening down of the hatches kind of weekend ahead of a crazy and powerful late season storm just a couple of days ago.  It was particularly bad in Illinois where there were deaths reported from the tornadoes.  I also knew it was a bad one when my folks called from England on Sunday evening as it had been reported on their late night news and they were worried.  Lucky for them we still had power, otherwise they would not have got through and would have worried all night, thinking the worst.  I took a screen capture of the radar from Sunday afternoon, as it was quite something and stretched for another 100 or so miles South of the edge of the picture.

It lasted about 4 hours for us before being replaced by much colder temperatures and sustained 50mph winds for most of the night which hampered the utility company’s efforts to keep the power available.  In the end 693,000 people in Michigan alone were in the dark.

I was at my desk while all this was going on, but keeping one eye on the radar and one ear listening out for the tornado sirens, which thankfully never came.  I was trying to put together a Christmas card using a LOTV image and my Prisma pencils.  There’s a sketch there and the Fiskars sentiment stamps that I seem to use a lot, and at the back is a PB stamp that I’d used the day before.  Sitting on the old red wash cloth is my tub of mineral oil (with the white cap) for blending the pencils with and the special Prisma pencil sharpener to the right of that.  And at the front, a nice cup of green tea to calm my frazzled nerves! (I have to add that the only thing the Mister was concerned about was his roast lamb dinner and the homemade pumpkin pie that was in the electric oven!)

I thought I’d show you the beginnings of the coloured image

It’s basically mostly coloured but not blended at this point, I’ll go back in after the blending and add shadows and highlights where they might be needed.  On a more detailed image like this one, I’m probably looking at a good two hours worth of colouring before I will call it done and will start making my card with the papers I’ve already chosen.

So that’s me this week, I’m trying to get that card finished but I was at the dentist on Monday after work for a filling so as yet, haven’t had the time to get back in there again.  See you on the blog hop.