ATC’s made by me (Marit)

Paper weaving #1 & #2

Riddle

Mme. Butterfly #1 & #2

ATC’s made by Nout

My son came over yesterday and dived into my atelier *grin.* We spend the day between my paper stash, he played a little and went home again with a bag full of ‘stuff’. Oh how nice it is to spoil your kid!

The theme for March is ‘abstract’…and on we go! Thanks for stopping by. We’d like it when you leave us a comment. Thanks!

Friday haiku

The photo was taken by Lena Schreijenberg

I submit this haiku to Recuerda Mi Corazon where our lovely hostess Rebecca brings us all together to share a haiku on Friday: Haiku my Heart

Mail
In June, my friend Robert (in the USA) and I swapped ‘ephemera’ – he’s a collage artist (see his art here) and I use pieces of paper and images in my art journals all the time, so we thought it would be fun to send a ‘surprise package’ to each other. I received his package within two weeks but it took ages (6 weeks!) for my package to get to his place, and when it did it was heavily damaged… wrapped in plastic by the postal service to hold it all together.

After emailing back and forth, we found out that some of the things I’d send were lost in the mail including the card I made. Luckely, I took a photo before I send it.

So I created another little piece of art and – together with some new ephemera – brought it to the mail last week. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this envelope makes it to the USA in one piece. And the new card I created for Robert? I took a photo, but he reads my blogposts (hi friend!) and I don’t want him to see it before he got ‘the real thing’.

ATCs
Next are three ATC cards I created for my friend Melouise, who celebrated her birthday last week.

I know for sure she received it ’cause she posted a photo on Facebook stating: “Got nice birthday mail (…) fortunately I feel a lot livelier than the ladies on the cards.” I’m glad about that dear one!

… and now, I am going to sit in the sun and enjoy my little balcony (I re-arranged the plants, added some new ones – Lavender – and cleaned rigorously.) We live on the third floor so I can keep the right distance from people that walk through the little alley below 😉 I hope you have a nice day too – enjoy whatever you do and stay safe!

Je t’embrasse

“Julia-and-the-deskers party”

Julia posted WOYWW-blogpost #520 today.

FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY

CONGRATULATIONS JULIA!

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That is 10 years of What’s On Your Work desk Wednesday!!
10 years of crafty people getting together online, showing their work desks and connecting.

I joined the WOYWW-tribe in February 2013 and was hooked right away. I became a so-called ‘desker’ that year… Julia talks about this weekly event and what it means to be a ‘desker’ in her blogpost today so if you click the link, you can read it and, if you like, join us at WOYWW. No obligations, step in and step out whenever you feel like it. We’re a nice bunch of crafty ladies welcoming everyone. Read this page on Julia’s blog Stamping Ground for more info about WOYWW.

And this is what it is all about…

WOYWW #520

My workdesk shows tests with the new ‘stuff’ I bought last week: crackle glaze. I played with it all afternoon yesterday, to get a feeling of how it works and what paint and surfaces work best to use it on.

And I created an ATC to celebrate the 10th anniversary.
Just one ATC, to send to the next desker who’s name will be on the list after me… instead of creating a bunch of ATC’s to swap – and put stamps on all those envelopes to send – I decided to make just one and put all the stamps on that one package, which I’ll fill with all kinds of extra stuff, for the lucky lady that comes after me. (I’ll wait to see who that will be and will try to find ‘matching things’ to put in the envelope, it depends on the person’s interests and style of creating.)

Anyway, here’s the ATC I made.

I know you guys want to visit everyone to celebrate the anniversary so I won’t write a long blogpost today. I’ll just show you my latest art journal pages and then sign off to get dressed (yep, still in pj’s…) go for a walk with my beloved and visit ‘the deskers’ this afternoon (and probably some of you will get a visit later this week, the list will be long today I presume…)

The Chronicles of Marit 2019 – Week 17

The Chronicles of Marit 2019 – Week 18

Have a great day y’all and see you for another ten years of ‘desk-hopping’.

Fiday haiku

Photo made by my friend Lena Schreijenberg

I submit this haiku to Recuerda Mi Corazon where our lovely hostess Rebecca brings us all together to share a haiku on Friday: Haiku my Heart.

So… my mojo is gone but I’ve experienced days like this before. I am familiar with times when nothing seems to work, when I feel detached from my art and myself and am a little lost. I know it is no big deal and the flow will return, one just cannot force it. I have some tricks up my sleeve to get through these times and one of them is to take a colouring book and just ‘colour’ without thinking too much. Another thing I do is make ATCs, ‘just’ glue some pieces of paper and add a bit of paint’ on a small card. It doesn’t have to be pretty and if I don’t like it I can throw it away, but it is important to create ‘something’ to keep in touch with my creative side. Here’s what came out of my hands yesterday.

When I uploaded the above photo to my computer, I noticed I had some more photos/ATC’s waiting in line. I created these last year but never showed them on my blog…

Night building

 “Zetti” girl

Intuition

… and now I’m off to put on the music in my atelier and splash some paint on paper. I don’t know what comes out of that but I figured that adding color, any color, to the day will do me good. I wish you all a colorful day.

Now, a year later, everyone is healthy and happy again and it’s time for me to move on and dive deeper into my own art again. It was a pleasure to create these tutorials for you. You can find today’s tutorial HERE

What is this weekly event is all about?
Plain and simple: post a photo of your workdesk on your blog and put your link in the linkie-list on Julia’s blog! Then visit (some, all) the other participants to see what they are up to. That’s it.

So here’s what my desk looks like this morning.

WOYWW #416

I’m not working on something specific today, but there’s two presents on my desk! I found a surprise package in my mailbox last Saturday… I recognized the handwriting from my friend Lenny but didn’t know what was in the package. When I opened it there was this beautiful box with Japanese brushes and a little card (the one with the bird in my window sill, in front of the pen-holder) saying “I am decluttering my house and changes are that this box might open more in your atelier…” (You can count on that Lenny!)

Mandy van Goeije brought the stack of beautiful papers, dictionary and book pages with her as a present yesterday. Mandy is an art journaler who lives nearby but whom I never met… we found it time to meet and she came visit me yesterday… time flies when you put two creative souls together in an atelier… we even forgot to have lunch! She brought some of her journals with her and how beautiful it is to see her art in real life! If you have some spare time, you should check out her blog and art!

And today, at the WOYWW anniversary, presents are involved also… well, sort of. For the ‘deskers’ who are in for it, there’s an ATC swap going on to celebrate the 8 year milestone. I participate in that swap and created five ATCs. One is for the next person who puts her name/link in the link-list (that is according to the ‘rules’) and I also like to send one ATC to the person who sends me an ATC (the one above me in the list, which is Sandra de), so I have three spare ATC’s to trade with who-ever wants to swap with me. If you would like to receive one of these, just say so in your comment (when there are more ‘candidates’ for a swap I will randomly draw names tomorrow – Thursday – and contact you.)

So… celebrate today and see you for another year-round of WOYWW!

And you may even remember that I talked about ‘The Ice Saints’ (in this blogpost.) Well, I talked to my green-fingered neighbor and he said that I don’t have to wait until that date to buy plants. Because we live in an apartment (2nd floor,) a little frost at night will not effect the plants that are on a higher balcony, he said. He didn’t have to say it twice: I got on my bike and went to the garden-center to buy me some plants.

… Now you expect a photo of the balcony, don’t you? You will have to wait a little longer ’cause there’s one thing I want to do before I will call the balcony ‘ready for Summer’, and that ‘one thing’ is on my desk today!

WOYWW #414 (Click on the link to find out about ‘What’s On Your Work desk Wednesday’ and the list of ‘deskers’ on Julia’s blog.)

Yes, I am being creative with thread (and a crochet hook.) I am crocheting a colored ‘granny square’ to put in the boring lawn chair that’s on the balcony, to give it a ‘Bohemian’ touch. The last time I can remember crocheting was when I made a brown-orange curtain for my teenage room window (yes, I’m a child of the ’60!) However, the technique came back to me pretty quick and I enjoy working on this granny square in the evenings. I will put photos of my balcony on my blog once the granny square is finished, so you can see it all in it’s full glory then.
Here’s the patches I crocheted so far.

I went back to “The Pennywafelhuis” (open atelier in my apartment building, see last blogpost) to photograph what was on the easel two weeks ago. The painting is a bit chaotic but I think I kinda like it anyway.

Next is an ATC that I created for a swap a couple of weeks ago (which remind me: I should start creating ATCs for the WOYWW-anniversary!)

And here’s an oldie in my “Zeeuwse Ziel” art journal… I always forget to put the date on my pages but I think I painted this in February. It’s me in the eighties, reading on a Sunday afternoon. I used a photo as a reference.

The quote is in German and says: “Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.”

That’s all for today lovelies, thanks for stopping by.
Enjoy life and be creative whenever you can.

So, a quick blog post today.
There’s nothing on my desk that I can show you (well, there IS something on my desk but it has to stay a secret for a while longer) so instead I post two photo’s that were taken in the “Pennywafelhuis” yesterday. “The Pennywafelhuis” is an ‘open atelier’ in our apartment building run by artist Marlou Pluijmaekers and photographer Anda van Riet. I sometimes go there for coffee and a laugh. Yesterday, however, I decided to put on my old sweater and go work there.

I submit this to the weekly woyww event – it’s not a ‘desk photo’ but a complete ‘open atelier photo’.

WOYWW #412

The easel I worked on was a bit wobbly so I had to put my foot on it all the time… looks pretty much ‘in action’ doesn’t it?!

I don’t have a photo of what’s on the easel though… but I do have a series of ATC’s to show you that I created a few weeks ago.

Butterfly ladies

Next days are filled with all kinds of ‘stuff’ so I probably will not be able to visit woyww-deskers before Monday… but if you leave me a comment I will try and pay you a visit back early next week.

Enjoy your days,
take some action.

Enough with the shouting now… and on to today.
Just an ordinary Wednesday, and here’s how my desk looks

WOYWW #390

I’m a bit behind with showing my ‘Chronicles’ spreads. You probably saw this one laying on my desk two weeks ago when I was working on it

The Chronicles of Marit 2016 – Week 44

While going through my journals to look something up, I found an old ATC that I forgot about. I created it last June for a tutorial (that only the subscribers of my newsletter got to see) and I think it is a good one to end this blogpost with, as the outlined word says “waving.”

Waving at you, dear reader, thanks for stopping by!

So, my desk does not show any new things. There’s some stuff that I received that I put on my desk, but nothing creative going on.

WOYWW #366

I received another ATC from the anniversary swap. This one is made by Sylvia

On the day of the anniversary, I received an email from Linda “Phinner,” an old blog friend that I swapped ATCs with in the past. Although she does not participate in the woyww-event, she saw my ATC on my blog and asked me if we could swap. We made the ‘deal’ to make a few extra ATCs for each other and last week she received my package. Besides the ATC I made for the anniversary, I created five more ATCs that I can show you now.

It looks like I prefer creating small projects at the moment… there’s a tiny art journal laying on my desk also, that I finished last week while spreads in my ‘big’ art journals lay on the side; unfinished. But that’s OK… there’s nobody forcing me to create or work on specific pages so I just go with the flow. I take time to walk in the sun (the weather in the Netherlands is lovely these days) and read books. Inspiration to work in art journals will come back for sure.

Whatever you are working (or not working) on: enjoy your day!

P.S. Good wishes go to Julia, our woyww hostess who is recovering from brain surgery – and a big thank you go to Lunch Lady Jan, who is hosting the woyww event for as long as Julia needs her rest.