Summer of Colour Week five

Look how beautiful the colour combination chosen for the Summer of Colour is this week. 

So my personal challenge this week was to be less fussy and not to have a circular edge to my mandala.   Boy, it took every bit of restraint not to join those up those outside points! 

 

If joining in this project has taught me one thing, it's the calming effect of drawing one of these!  Time just goes and you're so totally absorbed in following your design around the sections of the circle.  It is so relaxing.  Of course, the first thing I see when I look at the photo I took is the fact that I seem to be unable to actually centre the circle into the middle of the paper!

 

There are some crazily clever people taking part in this challenge and my drawings are so simplistic in comparison - please do pop over there and click on some links and prepare to be amazed at some of the work that people are doing.  The word 'inspirational' doesn't even come close. 

 

I'm in the process of poem writing today.  My work colleague is leaving to be a full time author and historically, she will always write a poem for people who leave the office.  So I volunteered to write one for her.  'How hard can it be?'  I wondered.  Hard.  Really hard!  So I finished my first draft of it and asked my husband to listen while I read it out to him to see how it sounded and whether I had got the rhythm of the lines right.  It was hard to tell at the end as I found I had a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye and I could barely read the lines out.  That's good in a farewell poem - right?!  Back to the drawing board ...