It's Christmas- and birthday-card making season, which I always enjoy. An excuse to get out all sorts of crafting materials and have fun with rubber stamps, stick things together with the hot glue gun, play with spangles, blob around with paint and generally increase the peace. I never have a single idea what I'm going to do at the beginning, but something always happens. I began completely empty headed, but as soon as all the bits and pieces came out and I started playing with them the cards made threw themselves together. It's so satisfying to see the neat rows of finished, folded cards.

... is a sheet of toughened glass, which my partner B also uses as a surface to muller his paints. He makes his paints by hand and for that purpose he constructed the wooden jig you can see surrounding the glass. This holds the glass steady, and he can put sheets of white paper underneath which can be changed when they get dirty. It is a clever, practical invention which works brilliantly for making monotypes, lucky me! Here it is on my work table, all freshly cleaned after I finished for the day.

I'm going to be busy at the weekend - my beautiful god-daughter (B's daughter, yes it's a bit Fleabag), owner of vegan The Beans Bakery on Instagram, and her fab YouTuber husband Ben are coming to stay for the weekend. We haven't seen Ben for nearly three years, and it's been nearly a year since we saw Molly, as they had both planned an Easter visit which didn't happen because of lockdown. We are all so excited about the weekend!

Next week I will be back on the monotypes and I'll maybe show the glass in action.

Meanwhile, check out Beardo Benjo on You Tube, especially if you are partial to a little spooky horror gaming!

Three more new templates works in landscape format. I made quills from birds' feathers to draw some of the shapes, mixing the uneven, splashy ink lines with the precision of technical and mapping pens used on others, collage, and areas of tone created with repeating lines. They are probably the lightest, most free work I have made for a few years and I was pleased that they seem to connect to my younger self at art school. One day when I was studying painting at Gray's School of Art I had exclusive use of a printing press, and I made about 20 monotypes based on landscape drawings I had made out in the Deeside country near Aberdeen. I worked them with loose paint after printing, and it was a simply wonderful day, a big favourite in all my years at art school. Today I am delighted that my new works are reminiscent of those.

The first two artworks made as a result of the templates diary. They are on ruled sheets of paper taken from a vintage Cameron's Register of Class Marks, R.H. The book had never been used; it belonged to my mother, who was assistant head teacher at a primary school in Rosyth for 40 years. The sheets measure 21x34cm, or 8-1/4 x 13-1/2 inches as it was back then, and are ruled in charming light blue, dark blue and pink.

This is the first template work on wood veneer, which I made for B's birthday card. It sports the letter B, and paired images to reflect the Pisces star sign as planned in the diary of templates work last week. It was more difficult to make than I imagined, although I made it in exactly the same manner as the ones in the diary of templates. I wanted to work with the wood to strike a balance between the collaged and painted shapes, and to allow the wood the illusion of coming forward in some areas.

This is where I am considering taking with the templates work. I made these paintings on wood veneers in the last week of February 2015 - exactly 5 years ago. Last May I was gifted a large box of veneers in a variety of woods, and I have been wondering what to do with them since; now, I see something suggestive in the quality of the templates work which is pointing the work in this direction.

I wrote a post about these particular veneers last April.

I cut out templates from paper this week and pasted them into the diary. Looking at them now, I think they look like tumbling clouds; which is no surprise considering Storm Dennis has taken over from storm Ciara this week. I have three old wood sash windows in my work room, which face north west, also a chimney which was sealed off in my room but is still functional in the lounge below. There is no escaping the wind rattling the glass panes and booming in the chimney, nor trees revelling outside - and I love it. The weather always seems to sneak into my work, no matter what the work is.

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!