To begin with, ’cause after all it’s WOYWW-Wednesday, here’s a photo of my desk

WOYWW #655

That bra… teehee… yep, I came home from work wearing this yesterday, do you recognise that ladies? Well, I took it off and put it on my desk ’cause I need to get that repaired right away before it ends up at the bottom of my drawer to never come out again.

The cardboard pieces will become the cover for my Top 2000 journal that I plan on making/binding today, the first day of my vacation will be well spend! I wouldn’t be able to do much other than play in my atelier anyway, because the Netherlands again is in a heavy lock down due to Covid (and the increasing infections with the new Omicron variant) and there is no possibility to do anything other than stay at home or maybe go for a little walk. All stores, restaurants, pubs, museums, cinemas and theaters are closed until at least January 13 and people can’t come together (well, the rule is to not invite more than four people besides your own household for X-mas and only 2 on all other days.)  I’m lucky to have my atelier and the online Top 2000 event, I won’t be bored at all!

The next spreads in my Chronicles art journal do show the worries about increasing Covid infections – I need to finish the last spreads in this journal and a fresh bound blank journal is already waiting to get filled next year. I hope those spreads in the new journal will all be happy and colourful ’cause that would mean my days were, and I hope to find time every now and then to show it on my blog. For now, here’s week 45 – 48 for 2021.

The chronicles of Marit – week 45

The chronicles of Marit – week 46

The chronicles of Marit – week 47

The chronicles of Marit – week 48

I do wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS and all good for the next year, let’s hope things will get ‘back to normal’ in 2022 (although I doubt that…) Whatever may come: stay positive and keep on loving each other! Je t’embrasse!

But first (’cause that’s the tradition, you know) here’s a Friday haiku

Photo: @LenaSchreijenberg
I submit this haiku to Haiku my Heart

On to the journal then… I still create art journal spreads almost every week. Even in busy times I throw some paint on the pages and create a ‘quick spread’. It’s just my thing to keep the Chronicles going. Right now I am binding the journal that I want to fill next year and it’s my 13th Chronicles journal, can you believe I have 12 journals filled with weekly pages? It’s quite a stack! Here’s some spreads from October/November.

Chronicles art journal – Week 41

Chronicles art journal – Week 42

Chronicles art journal – Week 43

Chronicles art journal – Week 44

Thanks for stopping by,
Je t’embrasse

WOYWW #647

Scraps of paper which I use to test the water colour while drawing – these are from a couple of weeks. Yes, the drawing collaboration with my son is still going strong (although in another/new routine, see this post) and I safe those colourfull note-pieces to use in my art journal. That’s the plan anyway…

I will publish the drawings we made in Oktober next week – in the first week of November – but I can show you my latest art journal spreads and look who’s there on that photo: my son! (and his girlfriend, and my beloved, oh – and me!)

The chronicles from Marit – week 39

The chronicles from Marit – week 40

That’s all for now… the clouds are dissappearing, the sun starts to shine just now so I am going to put on my shoes and go outside to enjoy my wonderful town in Autumn light and sniff some fresh air. Have a lovely day too and I hope to visit you later this week. See ya!

Friday haiku

Photo: @LenaSchreijenberg
I submit this haiku to Haiku my Heart

Some of you might know – or remember – that I keep a visual week journal (called “Chronicles”) and these are spreads from this year’s journal. It’s my 12th journal (12 years of Chronicles, wow!)

The Chronicles of Marit – Week 37

The Chronicles of Marit – Week 38 (postcard ‘closed’)

The Chronicles of Marit – Week 38 (postcard ‘open’)

For the Dutchies: I teach an online “Chronicles” workshop again in 2022, registration is open.

Even tussendoor voor mijn Nederlandse lezers: eind van het jaar start er weer een nieuwe online “Kronieken” workshop. Je kunt je NU met korting inschrijven. Vind alle informatie HIER

Last thing I want to show today is a spread in my big “Grandes Chaleurs” art journal:

“how to learn to fly”

Thanks for stopping by,
Je t’embrasse

WOYWW #642

Here’s what WAS on my desk last weekend…

I participated in a ‘inspiration-swap’ – I had to send someone an envelope with all kinds of images, paper and stuff, and I received an envelope from another participant – I found all kinds of things in my envelope (see photo) that I can use on my art journal pages. I especially like the coloured threads…

Here’s my desk how it looked yesterday evening and you can see that I used one of the images that was in the envelope on the spread already.

The spread on my desk isn’t finished yet, but this one is…

The chronicles from Marit – week 35

And last but not least: ‘mail art’ I send to a co-worker/friend last week (front and back)

That’s all for now… I’m off to work now and afterwards there’s a big barbeque that is organized by our director (Zeeuws Archief; it’s an annual event but last year was skipped because of Corona) so I’ll be home late. I hope to visit you later this week.

I started yesterday evening already ’cause one of the art journal Facebook groups I am a member off had an ‘event’ which I joined. The result of yesterday’s evening is what you see on my desk this morning.

WOYWW #641

Creative evening

I don’t know how you call this in English but I’m sure some of you know these kind of ‘events’… the administrator of the group picks a ‘creative assignment card’ every 10 minutes and you work with the challenges.

There were 8 steps last night:
1. Use three shades of one colour on the background
2. Use strips of bookpaper
3. Paint with a brayer or palette knive
4. Glue snippets of coloured paper
5. Draw or write with your non-dominant hand
6. Make fingerprints using paint
7. Work with Woody’s or Neo-colors II
8. Paintsplatter.

I ended up with this messy and chaotic spread but I will use it as a starting point and hope to turn it into a “Marit spread” one of these days.

Here’s a Chronicles spread (week 35) I created last weekend

And now I’m going to pour me some more coffee, put on my old shirt and get creative… I hope you have a good day too. Do something you like, even if it’s only for a minute or so… look at the clouds, put some paint on a page and kiss your loved ones. See ya soon!

WOYWW #640

I bought the fashion magazines on a flee market for a bargain and the “Poesie album” is there because one of my co-workers wrote in it and I need to take a photo before I pass it on to the next person… you read all about this album HERE

Scrap layout

A couple of weeks ago I made this layout… it’s been ages since I created an ‘old fashioned’ layout, it was fun!

The Chronicles of Marit 2021 – Week 34

I made good use of the second-hand fashion magazines… love the big photos of models in it and love to cut of their heads and create my own characters!

And that’s it – I told you: short and sweet! Thanks for visiting me, have a lovely day/week and I hope to pay you a visit back soon.

WOYWW #639

Here’s the two art journal spreads which I created last week.

Week 30

… and yep, that’s the boys of “The Who” on the spread. Remember my former spread? I used a photo on that page of a band that I presumed was The Who… silly me, I should have checked. Lynne pointed out it was the band the Small Faces! So I looked for a new photo of the Who to use in Week 32 and I found a nice one. And yes, I checked & double checked… this is the band who’s song I hear when my phone rings!

Week 31

Pimped my phone-cover

I got my phone over a year ago from my friend Lena, who bought a new one and let me have her oldie. It came in an old, left-over phone-cover and I didn’t like the ‘camouflage-look’ at all. I decided to buy a new cover but then came Corona and the stores were closed. I didn’t want to order online so I decided to wait and I got used to that cover – so didn’t run to the store when they opened again, but when I saw someone in a Facebook group posting a photo of her pimped phone cover (why didn’t I thought of that before?) I got on to it. After all, it couldn’t get any worse than it was…

.. and I’m waaaaayyyy happy with the way it looks now!

I started with sanding the cover (it was some kind of fake-leather fabric) then gessoed it and used Amsterdam acrylic paint and a bit of thin (tissue) paper. The words were drawn with a permanent marker and coloured with paint. I also stamped with a home-made stamp and Stazon black stamp-ink. I used mod podge as a varnish.

I told you already that my ring-tone is the intro of “Baba O’Riley”, a song by the Who, but when I get a text message, my phone calls Hey! Listen! (Gamers might recognize this, at this is what Navi yells to Link in the game “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” so I put that yell on the cover.

And that’s it for now, I gotta run to get to my job but I hope to see you later this week.

The last time I spend creating on my desk was on Sunday… I always clean up (sort of) after creating so here’s how my desk looks this morning… ready to go wild tomorrow!

WOYWW #637

And here’s my two latest spread which I created last weekend.

Week 30

Week 31

I bought a book for a bargain in a second hand store: “Rock & Pop, Half a Century of History” – it’s packed with pictures of musicians including this funny photo of the Who. I have a ringtone from that band on my mobile (Baba O’Riley) so that photo with the ‘story’ became the starting point of my spread. The background and added colors derived from that one picture…

RECTIFICATION: Lynne pointed it out and she’s absolutely right, The Who is not on the photo, those are the Small Faces! It said ‘Who” underneat the pic and I wondered a bit myself when I looked at the photo ’cause I didn’t recognized Pete Townshend… I should have had it checked before I used this pic on the page. Oh well, I added an extra text (see below) and I still like my spread.

We had rainy and windy days overhere last week and this morning doesn’t look bright either… I better take my umbrella when I walk to my work! I do hope the sun will come out to join me on my free days… starting tomorrow! Hope your days will be sunny and bright too. Thanks for visiting me, I hope to be able to visit you back so ‘see ya’!

I also have a lot of art journal spreads to show you, so I got behind the computer to type this blogpost and join the WOYWW’s tribe today. How are you all doing? How’s life in your part of the world? I’m doing pretty well overhere. There are still Corona-rules in the Netherlands but it’s a little bit more relaxed – and I’m a stay-at-home kinda woman anyway so it doesn’t affect me much. I can still do my job in the big restoration atelier at Zeeuws Archief – which I love – and I mostly like to spend the rest of the week (I work only 3 days a week) in my own little atelier. Here’s a photo of what’s on my desk today

WOYWW #636

I hope to finish this spread on Thursday but I might go outside instead, since the weather forecast finally predicts sunny days after days of rain and wind. The spread on my desk is week 30 in my Chronicles art journal, so I’m pretty much up to date with my pages. I haven’t published the former spreads though, so here they are… spreads from June and July.

Week 25

Week 26

Week 27

Week 28

Week 29

Today (Wednesday) is a workday but when I get home my ‘weekend’ starts and I hope to be able to visit some other desks later this week to see how y’all are doing. In the meantime, enjoy your day!