Advent Sunday 3

Oh, my poor little neglected blog! I really do have a reasonable excuse for not having blogged more this week. I have been on a training course. Yup, the job centre have actually allowed me to be trained in something that will actually be useful to me. 

I am doing what's called a Level 1 in Basic Computing. This is a four day course and I'm doing 2 days a week over this last week and next. I have spent a day learning Sage software and a day on Excel. Sage is something which I have never encountered before so was a good thing for me to play with and I felt like I really got quite a bit out of. 

Excel I have used before, but not much since my GCSE way back in 1994. This meant that although I couldn't remember much of the GCSE stuff I didn't take long to pick it back up again when he explained it. I spent most of the session explaining how to do things to the people sitting on either side of me. But hey, I like doing that kind of thing, so it was fun :)

Tuesday we will be covering Powerpoint which is, again, something I've never used before (I don't even have it on my computer!) and on Thursday we're doing Desktop Publishing. This is another thing I covered in GCSE so I might have some idea of what is going on, but then again...

I've really enjoyed putting my brain to use. I do sometimes think that I would be happiest as a perpetual student. I love learning things and trying new stuff out. Which was an almost subtle segue into what this post is actually about.

I done did another making :) 

I have been pondering making sequinned baubles for a little while and never quite got around to it. But yesterday I bit the bullet and decided to give it a go. I bought 3 packs of sequins in different colours (99p each and on a 3 for 2 though I couldn't get the red I wanted so had to settle for silver) a tub of sequin pins (£2.30) and a polystyrene ball from Boyes for 40p.

I emptied it all out on to my lap tray and got pinning. I had a couple of false starts whilst I worked out the design which meant I pinned and re-pinned more than I would have liked to. But eventually I settled on a segmented design and happily pinned away whilst watching DVDs with madam. It's incredibly easy to get quite a fancy effect.

It did take ages though, partly as I had such a big ball to cover and partly because I kept being distracted by a certain someone and her antics. I also realised that the amount of sequins I had might not be enough to complete the project and that started making me stress a bit, but I just kept pinning and in the end I finished, with the design I wanted, with only 2 sequins left over!

leftovers!

and leftover pins from a full tub...

the base of the bauble (and where the design started from)

A right way up bauble

spinning, hanging bauble!

I'm so impressed that today I have gone out and bought more supplies and some slightly smaller balls to decorate! I did buy more pins too, but this is mainly paranoia on my part as I have some left, though I must have used at least half of the ones I had originally so I maybe do need them...

I shall put some pictures up when I have finished making them, though I need to try and wrest the first one back from madam who has hung it up in her room. Mind you, when I look at it all I see is that it's not the colours I wanted so maybe I will let her keep it!