This has been a funny old week. I have had a flurry of commissions for very specific and unique gifts. Whether it is a retiring colleague and an image of their workplace or a special birthday gift, the subject matter has to have special significance for the recipient.

It holds many memories, capturing them within the frame as a moment in time to treasure. Normally I simply turn the photograph in to my interpretation in the artwork but this week all I got was a request for a crow and a seagull on a wall, with Ravenscraig steelworks in the background.

The commissioner clearly had an image in his head, but I had nothing to go on in terms of scale, composition or medium, as he said he trusted my judgement and would leave it up to me. With the industrial theme it seemed appropriate to go with the starker black and white pointillism style.

From a tentative start it began to emerge in front of my eyes and the end result seemed to meet the brief. Sometimes we all need to be taken out of our comfort zone.

I try to put an image on Facebook each week but avoid putting surprise commissions on there, just in case the intended recipient sees them. The question then was, what will I put on Facebook? I decided to create a pointillism picture of a kitten, something which I hadn’t tried before. To my surprise, there seem to be a lot of cat lovers out there! It was clearly a hit.

My creativity then extended to home baking for the Rotary Car Treasure Hunt this weekend.

A box of in-car goodies for each of the 54 participants to keep them going for the journey... fortunately a task shared with one of the other Rotarians.

Attempts to find a literary agent or publisher for my memoir are ongoing but BNI colleagues have been really helpful in making contacts for me ... needless to say I am actively following them all up. In summary, this week has been a mixed bag of creative endeavours, each achieving some degree of success.

I wonder where this week will take me in t