I’ve always thought that if you do something, you should do it to the very best of your ability, no matter what. My husband is very much of the ‘that will do’ approach, which used to really irritate me.

With hindsight, it was an impossible ideal – it’s obvious that I couldn’t do my absolute best at everything I did in life; there’s only so much time, and so much of me. It was a tall order to impose not only on myself, but also on others – it led to feelings of disappointment and dissatisfaction. It was also the slippery slope which led me to strive for perfectionism in my art. Over the last few months, my mindset has shifted, I would say, seismically.

That’s not to say that I’ve stopped caring, or have become laissez-faire. I would like to say it’s because I now care much less about the result, and more about the process, but I’m not quite at that point yet. It’s more that I’ve stopped imposing such high expectations on myself – in the past their achievement might ultimately have given me a moment of satisfaction, but it was rarely ever enjoyable or something that I actually wanted to do. Now, I feel that I am motivated by what interests me, and I would still like to do my best, for example, in the sense of making the most of opportunities and ideas, but I recognise that there are so many variables which could influence what that might be.

Anyway, long story short, I’m done, finito, and heaven forbid – it’ll do.

So, I had the mirror images printed and fixed them to the back of the existing cut outs. I used a crafter’s glue – Tombow mono liquid glue – as it seemed the least likely to cause buckling etc. Now the cut-outs were thicker than they were originally which caused a problem of the white edging. Also, even using a brand new craft knife didn’t prevent some of the edging being visible face on, which was particularly irritating – I don’t really do fiddly stuff and I’m not the neatest – as I had been really careful when cutting them out. I used some highly pigmented coloured pencil to get rid of the white as best I could. I then glued the cutouts onto the mirror, which proved tricky as the mirror surface had to be wet for the glue to cure properly. I managed it as best I could, but it was a tricky process trying to get enough glue on the back of the cutout for it to fix, but not so much that it would ooze out from underneath and react with the water on the surface.

It will do.

Next problem: photographing the finished piece.