After two weeks filled with (Christmas) lights, good food & wine, music (Top 2000) and noise (fireworks on New Year’s Eve) it’s back to business now… Last weekend I finished the last spread in my “Chronicles 2014” art journal and bind a new journal to use this year. I will show you the new art journal next time, today I publish the last two weeks in last year’s journal. Enjoy.

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 51

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 52

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Last page

Ever since I started “The Chronicles” (in 2010) I took a photo of myself on (one of the) last days of the year, to glue on the last page in my journal.

My son visited us last week and I wanted to have a picture of the both of us… but I almost forgot to take it. It was already dark when I remembered – and he’d planned to take the train back home that evening – so we had to use the flashlight to get a good photo. The flashlight kept on reflecting in my glasses, so I took them off. (I do have new glasses you know, and they look good on me, but you’ll have to wait for a good photo.)

I hope your first week of this year was a good one.
Remember to keep creating…!!

From Christmas ’till New Year, my blog will be filled with Top 2000 art and before we burst out in Musical creativity, I want to use this ‘silence before the storm’ day to show you my latest art journal pages in the Chronicles journal.

The Chronicles Of Marit 2014 – Week 48

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The Chronicles Of Marit 2014 – Week 49

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The Chronicles Of Marit 2014 – Week 50

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That’s all for today guys… no chit chat or long stories from me today because I’m off to create with the Top 2000… YEEEEHAAA!

Goodmorning y’all… today is the day that the complete Top 2000 list for 2014 will be announced (between 4 an 6 pm CET, in the radio program “Wout2day.”) The list will probably be online tomorrow morning and I will put a link on my blog in the side menu as soon as it’s there***. From that moment on you can start creating for the Creative & Musical Blog Party – a great activity to fill the weekend with isn’t it?!

***The Top 2000 list for 2014 is now published online HERE

As you know, each Friday was ‘Found Poetry Friday” on my blog…

I started this series in July 2013 but lately there aren’t much people playing along (besides Carla – a faithfull follower who submitted a found poem almost every week!) So I decided to not continue this series… I will of course keep on ‘finding’ poetry and publish it on my blog, but not on a regular base anymore.

I want to thank everyone who played along ~ especially Carla ~
To close the series: here is a poem I found by scrolling through the Top 2000 list from last year.

Beautiful People

Come Together

Listen To The Music

Eight Days A Week

Happy Together

(Melanie, Beatles, The Doobie Brothers, Beatles, The Turtles)

I would love it if you join me and leave me a songtitle poem in a comment… to close this series.

Last but not least: I created quite some Art Journal pages over the last weeks that I did not publish on my blog yet… Here’s two. (More to come next week.)

The Chronicles of Marit – Week 46

The Chronicles of Marit – Week 47

I wish you all a beautiful weekend.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world

For the ones who follow me and/or read my last post: the Open Atelier weekend was just awesome!
You can read about it – and view the photos – in my former post HERE.

Today is a quiet day… no deadlines (at least not for this week…) so the day ánd desk is all mine to chill out with relaxed creating… like playing with the new crayons my beloved bought me, or work on the art journal page I started yesterday (or both.)

Here’s how the desk(s) look this morning…

WOYWW #287 – The left side of my ‘U’ shaped desks

I started a new spread in my ‘Chonicles’ Art Journal (“the Chronicles” is a weekly, ‘diary’ like, art journal I keep for the fifth year already…!) After I put gesso over the background, I put it aside to dry and started playing with my new colouring crayons my beloved gave to me last week, and that is what you see on the other desk…

woyww #287 – desk in front of the window

If you are not familiar with WOYWW, you might ask what it is and why I show photos of my desk. Well… What’s On My Workdesk? Wednesday is a weekly blogseries/hop hosted by Julia in the United Kingdom and lots of crafty people share photos of their desks every Wednesday. Find the list of participants HERE and have fun visiting artist’s desks from all over the world!

It’s been ages since I showed you the Chonicles pages… because of the Open Atelier deadline I spend less time on this journal and I was a few weeks behind in both creating and showing these spreads. I’m working on week 47 right now though, so I should be catched up soon. Here’s two spreads of former weeks for you.

The Chonicles of Marit – Week 44

The Chonicles of Marit – Week 45

(The doll-shape is inspired by the art of the beautiful Kim Mailhot… I admire her art very much!)

Thanks for stopping by my blog and I hope you all have a creative day!
Don’t stress over Christmas, relax and enjoy today!

A few weeks ago I received a number of small plastic bags containing ‘bistre’ from my blogfriend Elvy. I showed you an art journal page last Friday (here) on which I’d used bistre, but that was not the first time I used the stuff. Today I show you how my first excersices with bistre turned out – and you will see why I am totally in love with that coloured powder!

Because I received six bags with different colours I was curious to see how they all would look like on paper. Not thinking about the outcome yet, I took my Chronicles art journal (it was time to make the next week-spread anyway) and sprayed water on the pages. The Chronicles is sort of a weekly diary, I hand-bound the journal myself using fine structured watercolour paper for the pages. The paper takes in water and paint like no other paper!

Then I sprinkled a little bistre powder from each colour on the moist page. I used a small brush to get the powder from the bag and tipped/sprinkled it on the page. After I had done that wich each colour, I sprayed more water over the page and wiggled the book to to let the colours run… here’s the result.

Bistre ink is a traditional ink made by boiling wood soot. The resulting ink color depends on the type of wood burnt to make the soot. Authentic Bistre is made from Beechwood and gives a transparent, dark brown with yellow undertones. (credit) I do not know where the red and blue comes from, but ALL the colours look natural to me…

… this background page in my journal raised a problem though… it was a bit too colourful and ‘busy’ to write over…. I’m glad I took a picture of it before I toned the pages down with gesso… on the finished spread, the wonderful colours and shapes are hardly visible anymore.

The Chronicles of Marit – week 48

Oh, and here’s a photo of what I bought last weekend… six little plastic pots to store the bistre and a set of spatulas (there are more, these are the smallest)

Now that I am well equipped, I’m all ready to make the next beautiful bistre-page…

Time flies.
I is again Wednesday and you all know what that means…. What’s On My Workdesk. Wednesday.
Sooo… enter my atelier and I show you how my workdesk looked this morning!

Today I took a photo of the desk that is to my left as it is there where the action took place last week – there’s still not much going on on the ‘main desk’ besides the colouring book that lays there (and by now you probably know what that looks like, as it has been laying there week after week…)

WOYWW #283

The sheets and strips of paper and the oil are there because of a test I’m running… my plan is to create a parchment feel to the paper and I remembered that I once (a loooong time ago, when I was in art school) used lineseed oil on paper, which gave the paper a bit of a transparent and parchment-like look. Now I don’t have lineseed oil in da house, but I found an old bottle of hazelnut oil and thought ‘Oh well, maybe that works too. After all, it ís oil!’ So I cut a strip from the paper and covered a part of it with oil…

…curious?

The materials cabinet acts as an extension of my desk now, as I taped the piece of paper on it to dry.

Can you see the difference? The oiled part of the paper looks indeed a bit like parchment… I think it will be usefull for the purpose I have in mind, yay! (Bacause I had made a photo of this cabinet anyway, I thought you might like to nose about on the shelves too. So I labeled the stuff to make it easy for you.)

I also want you to show some art journal pages before I go and spend the rest of the afternoon visiting a great bunch of other artist’s desks around the world. (That is what’s ‘woyww’ all about you know, having a peek into other people’s craftrooms to see what they are working on and how their desks look like. It is very entertaining thing to do on a grey afternoon!)

I’m running behind in posting my weekly pages that I create in my Chronicles art journal… these spreads are from a couple of weeks back already…

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 41

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The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 42

The afternoon is half gone now… I’m off to visit some desks!
Thanks for stopping by today – keep on rockin’ in the free world 😉

Another day… another “What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday and what a day (or better, week!) it is… On Monday, a team of construction workers arrived to start renovating the bathroom and toilet and I will have that bunch of men in da house untill Friday… They grind, drill, brought a big radio that’s tuned on a popular station (right now: Robbie Williams… ‘hey ho, here she goes… ‘ ) they sing and whistle, drink coffee and, I have to say, work hard making our bathroom looking nice and ‘new’ again. I hide in my atelier most of the time, but apparently they influenced me with the mess they make ’cause my workdesk has never looked this chaotic!

WOYWW #279

WOYWW stands for “What’s On Your Workdesk? Wednesday.” It is a weekly blogseries, hosted by Julia from Stamping Ground. Hop on over to Julia’s blog to find the list of participants and visit crafty desks all around the world.

See that new radio in the window sill? I got it from my beloved for my birthday last week but we still have to make a proper connection so that the it will give a clear sound – for now, the extension powercord does its job (but I won’t listen to it this week anyway, as the radio/music from the workmen fills the whole appartment)

And here’s the desk to my left… even more messy!

My days were filled with (birthday) visits, walks and trips last week which gave me not much opportunity to sit down and visit the other woyww-desks… I will make it up to you this week, OK?

I have two more spreads from ‘the Chronicles’ to show you – then I’m all up to date – so here are the last two weeks in my art journal

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 39

In week 39 I wanted to draw something every day instead of writing (but I couldn’t resist writing a little… my journal isn’t complete without words!) I have to confess that most of the drawings are drawn from examples that I found on the internet (like the bookreading girl, the bike-in-the-rain and the girl with wings… you can learn to draw these wings HERE )

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 40 (left side)

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 40 (right side)

Week 40 was my birthday week (October 2nd) and I added all the b’day cards & letters that I received to my journal in extra plastic holders that I sewed to size and bound between the pages.

The sky is grey like it’s going to rain.
The tiler glues new tiles and whistles along with the radio (John Legend – “All of me loves all of you.”) It is going to be another noisy but yet creative day… hope yours is good as well.
Whistle a song!

Goodmorning beautiful people!
I got up very early this morning, it was still dark and I had to wait ’till sunrise (and a little bit longer) before the light in the atelier was strong enough to take a proper picture of my desk – but at around 8.30 the things on my desk became visible enough to take a photo.
Come on in and view what is was on it – oh, and I have some art journal pages for you to see too!

WOYWW #278

WOYWW stands for “What’s On Your Workdesk? Wednesday.” It is a weekly blogseries, hosted by Julia from Stamping Ground. Hop on over to Julia’s blog to find the list of participants and visit crafty desks all around the world.

Again a very neat desk – not much going on here. Well, there was a lot going on yesterday with the sewing machine and needles and thread and such. I presume you don’t believe me when I tell you my desk looked like a mess 🙂 but really, it did!

So where did the sewing activities all of a sudden come from? That was because my son payed us a visit on Sunday & Monday (it was an early birthday visit because he won’t be able to be here tomorrow on my actual b’day.) He gave me the latest (just released) CD of Leonard Cohen Popular Problems as a present and if you know me just a little bit you will understand that I am over the moon with this present!

Anyway, he also brought this second-hand vest that he bought. It was a bit too wide for him and who else could he better ask to take it in for him… right?!

On Monday we went shopping and he bought a beautiful black suit. He did not have the opportunity to try it together with the vest because he had to catch a train, but I’m sure the vest looks marvelous with his new suit!

And so I spend yesterday afternoon working on it (I’d taken my son’s measures before he left and the vest was full of pins) and now it is lying on my desk ready for him to pick it up (or maybe I send it to him… he needs it by the end of October.)

Next are some art journal pages from my Chronicles Art Journal in September… last week’s page isn’t finish yet  (as of reasons stated above) and I plan on working on it some more today (although there are quite some other things on my to-do list too…!)

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 36

(This week’s page contains all kinds of business cards and a brochure about the Art Route, see this blogpost for that…)

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 37

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 38

This blogpost is getting rather long – sorry folks… but I do have one more thing to draw your attention to:

There is this free event starting today on Facebook (if you are not on facebook, the prompts will also be published on Nicci’s blog) I don’t know if I will manage to play along all those days, but I plan to hop over to the prompts daily and pick some of the most inspiring prompts to work on.

Not familiar with art journaling but dying to start with this form of art? Connie Hozvicka from Dirty Footprints Studio publishes a free art-journal mini course on her blog – it’s perfect for both beginning art journalers (start with day one) but also very inspiring for the more experienced art journalers among us (I myself am enthousiastic to try the techniques from day four)

Well… that’s enough tips to get creative yourself don’t you think?
Go for it, make something beautiful today!

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 32

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 33

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 34

(The postcard on the right goes in the plastic bag that I made at the  top right on the page – it covers the quote then so I took it out for the photo )

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 35

In one of my next posts I will show you the spreads from September and then I will be all catched up… going back to showing you one spread a week. Hope you enjoyed these pages.

First I could not do a thing because of the stress of looking at a deadline to find a new house and after we found that, by the end of April, my weeks were filled with packing and moving to the new place. Living in the new appartment brought new troubles and more stress (a noisy neighbour lived above us) and instead of relaxing after a difficult period, we faced yet again firestorms.

I took short notes on scraps of paper to remember everything what happened to use the text on the Chronicle-pages, but it wasn’t until July (week 30) before I had unpacked my stuff and started creating again. First thing I did was to prepare the pages of all the weeks that I had taken notes (week 14 – 29.)

These pages all look the same… on the left I created a ‘calendar’ kind of page – to write down the facts with each date – and on the right I glued lined paper to write my personal story about this period in my life (“old fashioned private and personal diary-writing”.)

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 14 to 29

In week 30 my atelier was ready to use, my stuff was unpacked, and I started creating a Chronicles-spread every week again.

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 30

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 31

(Oh, and our upstairs neighbour was forced to move out last month because of the nuisance she caused, so now we finally, finally can really settle in and relax… but those events are on Chronicle pages of August that I will show you later)

Thanks for stopping by today and have a lovely weekend.
Keep calm and don’t hinder the neighbours 😉