… and here is that little piece that I created on an index card.

This work is part of a stack of cards I created between March 2013 and August 2014 and stored in a special box. You can view that BOX OF LONGING on my website.

thanks for stopping by my blog,
je t’embrasse.

Yep, you are in the right place… that is, if you like both art journaling and magazines. Last month, my art got published in the latest issue of Stampington’s “Art Journaling” and Stampington & Company informed me that I could give away an issue to all my US followers.

Now I do have a lot followers from the US (hi guys!) but because I live in the Netherlands, I also have a lot of online friends and faithful followers outside America. I do not want to leave those sweeties out of the draw so I will order another issue of the magazine that will go to one lucky winner living outside the United States.

Yes, you read that right,

I GIVE AWAY TWO (2!) ISSUES

Here’s a glimpse of my article that is in this issue

but of course there is a lot more to enjoy.

I read the magazine from cover to cover and back again, enjoying the different articles and art styles. I especially liked seeing the pages of Hope Wallace (Well Traveled.) Her travel journal reminds me a bit of my Chronicles art journals. I was in ooh and aaw over the art from Ella Wilson (Steam of Consciousness) and I was happily surprised to find an article from my friend Glenda Tkalac in the magazine. There’s also tips from the artists and techniques to try in the magazine.

So… what do you have to do to win this magazine?
Simple,

leave me a comment in which you let me know what country you live.

I do take compliments too 😉 and you ARE of course most welcome to like me on facebook, share this post etcetera, but that won’t give you ‘extra points’ or something. Leaving me a comment telling me where you live is enough to be part of the drawing.

I will announce the winners on NOVEMBER 11

(that’s my blog anniversary folks… I will be blogging for 7 years then!)

I’m looking forward to see all your comments.

Small Clue…

… to a Big Mystery

To make a long story short… I am doing better. I am slowly getting back my energy and I figured that picking up blogging will probably do me good. It will bring some sort of rhythm in the week, if you know what I mean. However – there will be some changes in my blogging to make it easy on myself. I don’t know if it will work and if I stick to the ‘schedule’ (I decided to be nice to myself so if I don’t feel like blogging, I won’t!) but here’s what I came up with.

• I will NOT pick up the ‘BIG Road Trip Series‘ again. There were little submissions and little interest from American artists to write guest posts, which lead to me writing most of the posts myself. That made the posts less ‘personal’ and more ‘tourist-like’ and hey,  you can buy travel books or look on the Internet yourself if you want that. The original idea I had about this series was nice, but I have to accept that it didn’t turn out the way I hoped’. So let’s forget about it and move on.

• I plan to write blogposts on Mondays, in which I can ramble and/or show my latest work. However, if there’s nothing to talk about or show to you, I will skip the Monday-post.

• On Wednesdays, I plan to continue with the “Tales from the Studio” and publish a ‘golden oldie‘ layout (look HERE for explanation of these titles) ánd a photo of my desk for WOYWW.

• I started a new blogseries on Fridays just before I had my ‘break’, and I am enthusiastic about picking that up again. You are all invited to play along with “Found Poetry Friday” (look HERE for explanation) with FPF#2 coming up on Friday!

So HI folks! Here I am again. I do hope you found the way back to my blog too – so that I am not talking ‘into the blue’… I even have some pages to show you right now. Here’s what I made during the last weeks…

(index card for my ‘Box of Longing’)

Remember Days, Remember Moments

(Art Journal spreads)

The Chronicles of Marit – Week 28

The Chronicles of Marit – Week 31

The Chronicles of Marit – Week 32

You may notice that there are weeks missing… those were weeks in which I did nothing and therefor those weeks/pages in my journal are blank. There are more pages (after all, we are in week 38 now) but I will show those later.

And then there’s this… besides the header, I also changed the menu on top.
My art is way better archived in the galleries now (more logical) so if you are curious to see my latest mixed-media monotypes, you should be able to find that particular album in no time 😉

Last but not least… I am thrilled to announce you that I am one of the “40 amazing artists” in Seth Apter’s new book!!! The book will be released next month – read the announcement on Seth’s blog HERE – and you will hear more about it then for sure!

For now, here’s a picture of the cover:

It is good to be back, dear ones!
Take care of yourself now (don’t burn out!) – and I hope to see you back Wednesday.

As you know, I participate in Haiku my Heart Friday – posting a haiku almost every Friday – since  May 2011. The last 30 weeks, I published a haiku that I found in my bookcase by combining book titles. The booktitles with the right amount of syllabes to make haiku are all used by now so I faced a dilemma this week: back to writing haiku from scratch or “stretch the borders” and make a brand new series… and I decided the latter.

You know I love not only haiku, but poetry in general. I am especially fond of ‘found poetry’, and I mean found in all its forms… found in book titles, found in magazines, on book pages, cut out words and sentences – you name it. There is so much possible when it comes to ‘found poetry’… the found poem can be a haiku but also a longer poem… anything goes and as an extra, I love that it is so usable in art journaling!

Sooo… as of now my Fridays will be FOUND POETRY FRIDAY – and I hope you will join me.

Yes, this challenge is wide open to anyone who loves found poetry!! As of NEXT WEEK (July 19)
I will add an “Inlinkz”-list at the end of each Friday post and if you want to share your found poems (and/or art journal pages that you made with it) you are welcome to add your name to the list that will link us to your blogpost. You can post your found poem on your own blog any time during the week, so you don’t have to make YOUR Fridays all about poetry – you just link the post that contains your found poem to the list on Friday. Now doesn’t that sound like fun?

And what is a blog series without a badge?

Right! So I created a badge.

(I will put this badge in the side menu with the proper code later this weekend – to make it easy for you all to copy and paste it onto your own blog.)

To give an example of found poetry: here’s a poem I found this week…
This is a book title poem but as I said, any found poem goes!

I can’t wait to see what you find/make in the next week… you do play along, don’t you?!

OK, on to the ‘normal stuff’…

I created two index cards last week (I submit these to ICAD)

Now you must know I have these old books in my stash that are filled with photos and news-articles from certain years (for the Dutchies: “het aanzien van …”)
I once bought the books about “1965” and “1975” on a flea market, and while flipping through the pages of 1965 last week, I found some awesome pictures that inspired me. I cut out the photos, glued them onto the cards and searched old magazines to find funny titles to go with the photos… machine stitches complete the cards.

Just a few of the Next Generation

"Class of 1965" - The ladies on this photos graduated and 
received certificates to be stewardesses for PanAm airlines.

.

A Place of Lavish Dreams

This photo is of the New York City skyline during the black out of 1965:

“The Northeast blackout of 1965 was a significant disruption in the supply of electricity on Tuesday, November 9, 1965. (…) Over 30 million people and 80,000 square miles (207,000 km2) were left without electricity for up to 13 hours.” ~ Wikipedia

It’s been a while since I showed you an art journal page… here’s one I created a couple of weeks ago but did not show you yet.

Conversation

The quote says: “It is all right to hold a conversation but you should let go of it now and then” ~ Richard Armour

( I have no idea what was on my mind or why I choose this particular quote – it sounds a bit weird to me now but the page is in my ‘weird art journal’ so it fits after all 😉 )

I’m off to have lunch now and after that I have a date with my neightbour Miriam. We plan to bind us both a journal (I will show her a special binding technique) and these journals will serve as our ’round robin journal.’ We plan to exchange them all the time to work on each others pages… should be fun!

Thanks for stopping by today, dear ones!
Hope you all have a nice weekend,
go find a poem!

Wednesday… WOYWW day… and I owe all woyww-participants an apology – I did not visit one of your blogs last week! I planned to blog-hop but the weather got very nice during the week, warm even and because of that temperatures raise real high in the office space. There are more ‘machines’ in that room and it gets really hot as they all work like little heaters! So I turned off my computer as soon as the necessarily work was done. I know a lot of you woyww-hoppers are from the UK – and you must have had the same weather on your isle – so I hope you understand and forgive me. I try to do better this week – I promise!

Here’s the Wednesday golden oldie scrapbook layout – lifted from one of my old scrapbook albums.

(I don’t create ‘traditional scrapbook layouts’ anymore but every Wednesday I dive into my albums and lift a ‘golden oldie.’ The layouts I pick are random, YOU – blog readers – name the number of the album and layout to show. Let me know in a comment which album you want me to open next week – find the list to choose ‘golden oldies’ from here)

NOTE: I have been doing this for a while now and I notice that the risk that you name layouts that have already been requested is high… therefore I made a list showing the ‘free’ numbers and the ones that have been requested/shown already.

This week’s request came from Margaret – from Glitter & Glue
Ali asked me to open album 3 and show layout #5

Here it is… BFFs {click on the image to enlarge}

This is me with my BFF Lena. We are friends since primary school so that is indeed ‘forever’ 😉
I think this photo was taken in 2005 (is that correct Lena?) and the layout must be created somewhere around 2007… I never dated my layouts and kinda regret that now! And EEECKKK… we’re both smoking there! Lena quit a long time ago (when?) and as you might remember, I stopped smoking last March (and – although I still miss smoking A LOT – I concider myself a non-smoker now.)

Anyway, Lena is a talented painter and her work can be viewed on her blog  Six Lilies Studio
(I tell ya – it’s worth a visit!)

Because of the heat ánd the “Tour de France” (I am watching the report of this big bicycle race on TV every afternoon) I didn’t spend much time in the studio last week, but here are my latest index cards. (submitting to ICAD and Glue it Tuesday.)

Good morning.

Good night.

Here’s how my desk looks like this morning… SUMMER INDEED!

WOYWW #214

The WOYWW headquarters can be found over at The Stamping Ground from where the lovely lady Julia hosts the biggest weekly blog hop. Thanks Julia.

Bright sunshine through the window shining on my little table (as a result, the big desk in the corner behind this table is standing in deep, dark shadow and invisible on the picture)

There’s not much going on here, but I want you to have a better look on the art that Jana from Tangled Pen send me.

For the WOYWW 4th anniversary swap I made some extra ATCs and Jana emailed me that she would love to swap my little card with work of hers. She told me it would take her a while before she would ‘answer’ my ATC but I didn’t mind that, and last weekend I received an envelope from Sweden. It was worth while the wait!!!

Jana is also creating on index card – she send this one to me.

If you know Jana, you know that she is a talented painter and I especially admire the way she paints birds! Jana knows I have blackbirds in my garden who wake me in the morning, singing in the pergola beneath my bedroom window, so she painted this blackbird for me. Isn’t that the most sweet and precious painting?

Thank you so much Jana!

The blackbirds (and jackdaws, we have a lot of those lads visiting our garden too!) had their beaks wide open from the heat over the last days but today it cooled down a bit. Just enough to call it a nice Summer day. A bearable one – yay!!! Hope you all have a great day too!

A short blogpost today – as my son is visiting and…

IT IS HIS BIRTHDAY!!!

So I found a book title haiku especially for him!

*My son's name is "Nout" - which is coming from the name "Aernout" 
meaning "Ruler of Eagles"

And of course I submit this haiku to Haiku my Heart Friday – the weekly event where haiku-lovers gather around our lovely hostess Rebecca to find poetry, inspiration, wise words and a lot of kindness and love.

And here’s another series of index cards to go in the Box of Longing and created for ICAD

Passion

Attention

Precision

And the weekly art journal spread: The Chronicles of Marit 2013 – Week 26

Size: 31 x 24,5 cm – 12.2 x 9.6 inch

That’s it for today dear ones… I am going to enjoy my son’s visit as it has been weeks since I had him around. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Wednesday… and you know what happens on Wednesdays don’t you?
Yes… I take you with me into the studio!

First I show you a golden oldie scrapbook layout – lifted from one of my old scrapbook albums.

(I don’t create ‘traditional scrapbook layouts’ anymore but every Wednesday I dive into my albums and lift a ‘golden oldie.’ The layouts I pick are random, YOU – blog readers – name the number of the album and layout to show. Let me know in a comment which album you want me to open next week and what layout I should show… )

This week’s request came from Ali Wade – from Me and My Life
Ali asked me to open album 2 and show layout #13. {click on the image to enlarge}

[The arrows point me out on this spread]

This spread contains photo’s from my study “Costume-making / Couture” – it was a three year study { high school level} to become a seamstress. We learned to design, [technical] draw and make clothes. As you can see on the photos, we also had lessons in grime/make-up and all kinds of creative presentation (like photography.) On ‘open house’ days, we promoted the school by showing our clothes to the public like real models on a catwalk. I have a bunch of good memories about these years ,

I’m still having fun with creating Index cards.
Here are a few I made last week.
I submit these also to ICAD and Glue it Tuesday.

Farming a Barren Land

Niets meer aan doen [Free translated: “leave it as it is”]

While the sewing machine was still on my desk, I grabbed a gelatine monotype that I made a while back… it was pretty much a boring image but I love how it looks after I sewed on it!

And, last but not least, today’s work desk!

WOYWW #213

Every Wednesday, a bunch of crafters/artists take a photo of their work desk. We then gather around our lovely hostess Julia, where we all leave a link on her blog Stamping Ground  That’s where the fun starts, as each link brings you to another work desk somewhere on this world. The list is usually far too long to hop over to all the blogs but last week, I actually visited all 147 participants that were on the list! I don’t know if I will manage to do that again this week – it was quite a trip.

In return, a lot of people visited me back and there were some comments and questions that screamed for feedback or an answer:

Darnell : “I’d love to know how you write on your pictures, if that’s not too difficult to show…”

I use photoshop and one has to have some knowledge on how to use that software to get the text on the photos – but I might make a tutorial if there’s more of you that have photoshop on the computer and want to know how I do it…

Julie Ann Lee : “…and also I think your journals are fascinating! I just want to hold them and look at them every one…”

There’s a button galleries in the top menu of this blog.  The drop down menu takes you to all my journals and art – just click and explore!

Gill :  “…Meant to tell you this before, a couple weeks back I found one of those small gold coloured flimsy plastic record things, that sometimes came free in magazines (in 70s?)..and it was..wait for it…an interview with the BCR..was slightly bent and I haven’t tried to see if it will still play yet.”

I love that the world wide web connects ‘old BCR fans’ like Gill and I… who could have ever thought that way back when?! Did you manage to play the record Gill? Oh, that Scottish accent those lads had!

Marcia : “I would be interested to see the insides of your grid journal.”

The grid journal is one I don’t show in my gallery (not sure why…) but in the side menu you’ll find categories where you can select the category Grid Journal and see all the posts come up that have photos of the grid-pages.

Lisa M. : “I’m fascinated that you work on lots of journals at once, that must take some organisation.”

Eermm… not really. I just stuff them on a shelf and grab what I think is fitting for what I want to create at the moment….

Kimberly Hogan : “They [the art journals] look as though you made and bound them yourself.”

That’s right, I make and hand bind most of my art journals myself.

Voodoo Vixen : “I will have to see if I can get a copy of the magazine.”

FEATURING magazine is shipped all over the world (so yes, to Australia too!) The magazine can be purchased online HERE

To all of you who informed me that you received FEATURING magazine (the first shipment/magazines are hitting the USA and Australia this week) – thanks for all your praise and lovely comments! We can do with some promotion to spread the word, so if you are enjoying the magazine: please let the world know via your blog/website/facebook/twitter!!!

Thanks for visiting me again this week, hope you all have a lovely day/week and see you again soon!

Hello Friday, Hello Friends – let me start with a warning.. this blogpost contains
an OVERLOAD on PICTURES and it even starts with a VIDEO.
Are you in for all that? Then welcome, come on in!

To begin with this

We did it again! FEATURING #4 is out and I am majorly proud!!!
As you know we ship the magazine all over the world, so no matter where you live:
if you buy it, we send it your way! Purchase your copy HERE

On to another Book title Haiku now.
[Yes, I found yet another haiku combining the titles of my books… ]

*English title: Scarlet Feather 

And of course I submit this haiku to Haiku my Heart Friday –  the weekly event where haiku-lovers gather around our lovely hostess Rebecca to find poetry, inspiration, wise words and a lot of kindness and love.

A week ago, I received this comment from Michelle LaPoint Rydell

I answered the first question ~ HOW MANY JOURNALS DO YOU HAVE GOING? ~ in last Wednesday-post, and today I’ll walk you through my creative process

~ WHAT IS YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS LIKE? ~

I documented the process of making my weekly “Chronicles” spread to show you how I work. I make these weekly spreads for the fourth year now. (I just counted the spreads, and the one created here is #165) During those four years, I build up a certain routine – that starts at the beginning of the week. Tammy asked about it in an interview once and here’s the answer I gave:

“My way of working on the spreads changed over the years. I started with making the spread on Monday (creating the background and add the first images and text) and added some more every day. Eventually, that didn’t work for me. The spreads looked disjointed by the end of the week. Also, unexpected events could happen during the week and when it did, there was no room left on the pages to write about it because of what I added already. Another ‘problem’ I bumped on to was that the ‘feel’ of a week could change when the days went by. For instance, I would start with creating a bright, green or yellow background on a sunny Monday and then it would rain from Tuesday ’til Sunday… things like that changed my mood and by the end of the week the spread had the wrong ‘feel’.”  [Read the complete interview here on the Daisy Yellow blog]

So now I have a sheet of paper laying in the house, where I jot down what I did each day. Just short notes, like ‘I went to the market’. I make my weekly spread in the weekend – I sometimes start on Saturday but usually I make it from scratch on Sundays. Reading the notes at the end of the week automatically bring back the memories. (Sometimes, there’s a longer story to tell and my notes are longer then…)

Also, when I come across an image that I think would fit on the weekly spread, I keep it with the notes.

Last week looked like this:

The ‘card’ is a gelatine monotype that I stitched on. I did not know what to do with it next, so I kept it to use on my Chronicles page.

On to making the spread then… when looking at the mono type, I noticed that little bit of ochre in the image and I decided to paint my pages in that colour… so I got out the paint and smeared ochre on the page using an old credit card.

… and now comes the fun part of my creative process… that’s how the brain works (well, my brain anyway…)

– I have paint and a plastic credit card on the table already.
– The Chronicles pages need to dry.
– I have a stack of index cards for grabs.
– My hands are dirty already…

So ‘in between’ I add paint to three index cards – no idea where that will lead me later – but I don’t have to think about it now.

And did I randomly choose these colours to smear on the index cards? It may seem like that, but if you looked closely to the former photos, you’ll see that the same colours were used on my ‘starting point’ – the monotype… apparantly I am in that particular ‘colour mood’ and therefore it is no wonder I chose these blues.

Back to the Chronicles page then…. let’s take a bigger step:

I added the monotype (using washi tape) and I put a bit of colour around the ochre shape to balance the colours. After that, I cut out paper strips to make a colourful frame. I outlined the paper scraps with a black sharpie to give it more contrast. (You can see the difference, as on the above picture there’s a part of the frame – on the right – outlined, while the left side is still without lines…)

Next, I think the spread needs yet another image – so I grab some old magazines and flip through the pages. The ‘jumping woman with the robe’ maybe???

Naah…. too big a picture…

This one’s better!

Next, I draw lines to put the journaling on.
(using black and white sharpies)

Last, I write the journaling using my notes as a guide/memory support.
I filled in the ‘holes’ of the letters with a red copic marker just for a fun finishing touch.
So here it is:

Chronicles of Marit 2013 – Week 25

Size: 31 x 24,5 cm - 12.2 x 9.6 inch

The index cards with the blue paint – shown above – are not finished yet, but I did make two other cards for the Box of Longing which I – of course – also submit to ICAD

This is another example of how my ‘creative process’ works [don’t worry, there’s not as many pictures as above 😉 ]

Flipping through magazine pages, I bumped onto this advertisement.

I cut out the text.

Seeing that red line, the map of the London underground came to mind

The red line was the inspiration for the stitching – and here’s the index card I ended up with.

Take a Different Road

and another card, collaged with scraps torn out of the book The Brewery Manual 1961 – 1962
that I bought on a flea market years ago.

Dig this… Real Cool Beer

“Real cool beer” would go perfectly with Summer temperatures but we experience cold, grey and rainy days here in the Netherlands. I even had to put on a cardigan to stay warm. Can you believe it? In June??!!

I do hope it will get better soon because tomorrow the Tour de France starts, and it is half the fun to have to close the curtains against the bright sun to be able to watch the race on TV. I really look forward to it!

And you? Is there something you look forward to?
Whatever you are planning, I wish you all a wonderful weekend!.

I want to start this Wednesday post with some shameless promotion and a little bit of cheating – but I’m sure I’ll be forgiven when you see what I laid on my work desk on purpose today…

btw: I DID take a ‘non faked’ photo of my work desk too 😉 see at the end of this post.

That’s right, the new FEATURING is OUT!!!! There is an interview with Julia Dunnit, founder and hostess of the blogseries What’s On Your Work desk, Wednesday (woyww) in this issue, illustrated by (as you can see) photos of work desks from participants**.

FEATURING is an international, printed magazine that is shipped all over the world.
You can purchase your copy HERE

**I want to thank all of you who helped promoting the magazine on your own blogs.
You’re the best, gals!!!

OK – on the the usual Into the Studio post then… although it is not that usual. Something changed in the room – come on in and I’ll show you..

First, as every Wednesday, here’s a golden oldie scrapbook layout for you – lifted from one of my old scrapbook albums.

(I don’t create ‘traditional scrapbook layouts’ anymore but every Wednesday I dive into my albums and lift a ‘golden oldie.’ The layouts I pick are random, YOU – blog readers – name the number of the album and layout to show. Let me know in a comment which album you want me to open next week and what layout I should show… )

This week’s request came from Lisa Richards – from Pen and Ink… and maybe some paint…  Lisa asked me to open album 6 and show layout #11. {click on the image to enlarge}

A straight-forward old-fashioned scrap layout. You know, the way they were done back in the days: a photo – a title – a little bit of journaling – embellish…. oh wait, I never was much of an ’embellishment girl… no embellies then. Just a coloured frame and some sand. Does that count as embellishment??? Anyway, the beach-theme is pretty appropriate this time of year. Well chosen, Lisa 😉

{This layout was made with a sketch, as you can see in this old blogpost from August 2009.}

Last week, I received this comment from Michelle LaPoint Rydell

I am happy to answer and I will do so by dividing my answer in two – answering one question now
and the other one in my Friday post.

~ HOW MANY JOURNALS DO YOU HAVE GOING? ~

At the moment I have seven journals on my shelf that I work in on a regular base.

As you can see, they all have a different size and shape.
Some have a theme and some are, what I call, ‘miscellaneous’ – meaning I feel free to do anything I want in there…

Some of the journals are a bit neglected… I don’t work much lately in the ones that are shown on the next photo. It sometimes happens that I suddenly feel like working big (hence journals 5 and 7) but that is not the case lately…

These are the three journals that I grab these days. Number #4 is my weekly Chronicles, that you probably know about. Numbers #3 and #6 are – what you can call – ‘miscellaneous (although I did give them a title.) These are favorite at the moment.. but the most favorite size that I work on these days are index cards. The ‘Box of Longing’ is not really an art journal maybe, but it’s what I like to work on right now.

So here are some Index cards I made last week.
I submit these also to ICAD and Glue it Tuesday.

Long Shadows

DETAIL: puffy paint and machine stitching

Wild Card

Urban Explosion

I told you at the beginning of this post, something changed in the studio.
I show you the before and after photo:

My beloved cleaned and re-arranged the office last week and – lucky me – after cleaning he had a table left over. I had been complaining about the bad (yellow) light I had to work with from the moment I moved into this studio – half the time that I spend there I stood in front of the window working on the window-sill – and I was on the look-out for a good, natural light lamp. That won’t be necessary now, ’cause that small table in front of the window makes it all work!

The window-sill on the left and the small, mobile cabinet on the right provide additional surface. I still make use of the bigger work desk too of course, but when it comes to choosing the exact right colors or creating something real delicate (meaning I need good light ánd my reading glasses) – this table is perfect!

So, here it is, today’s workdesk!
(If you have no idea what I’m talking about when I say woyww, hop on over to Julia and find out)

WOYWW #212
[Julia says on her blog that it is week 213, but to my count it really has to be 212…]

Well, that was quite some blogpost, wasn’t it? Did you read all the way top to bottom? You must really love me then {*kiss*}

I love you right back, dear ones,
see you again soon.