A motto I have been trying to abide by recently. Although I don’t think it worked last night, we went to see Ash play in San Francisco, and I definitely had the headache of dehydration this morning.

I did avoid getting ‘rock neck’ (the condition of whiplash-type pain after having been throwing yourself about the place) though, but have stiff calf muscles this morning.

Perhaps I should have stretched first.

But my love of Ash has lasted for about 18 years already, I just couldn’t help myself!

Anyhow, anyone that knows me, knows that I rarely consume any liquid, far below that so called recommended daily intake of 2 litres. I reckon it is rare if I even have 500ml! It is perhaps time to rectify that, so I thought a little something to remind me would be good.

I was first inspired by some blue marbled paper in Paper Source, but it was $8 and I figured I could have more fun doing it myself. The first attempt at marbling failed however, so I went a slightly different route – will definitely try to do it again though.

Time to put my (limited, and I do mean very limited!) artistic skills to good use!

I had some regular old paint from IKEA, and mixed up a few shades of blue:

Totally stocked with all the artistic supplies as you can see.

Then I painted some wave-like squiggles on some regular printer paper (again, artistic to the max):

The one on the right is regular painted squiggles, on the left I brushed over it with a large brush of water to blend the colours a bit.

Then I chose a big chunky font, and printed off this image:

…and placed it over a sheet of thin white card, and used a craft knife to cut out all the letters.

Once this was done, I overlaid the letters on to my sheets of paper to decide whether to use the blended waves, or regular, or whether to use the letters themselves, or the piece of card they were cut from:

What do you think? In the end I plumped for letters on regular waves (top right), but I also really like the gaps on the blended waves (bottom left). Anyhow, I stuck the letters to the sheet with glue dots, which helped them be raised slightly off the paper for a little more texture.

I then framed it, using a plain black RIBBA (with mount) from IKEA.

I shall put it by the fridge.