For over a year now, we have a leak in the roof that “they” cannot seem to find and fix…. Autumn set in last week with heavy rain and our ceiling is getting worse and worse…

I submit this haiku to Haiku my Heart

I also have some art journal spreads to show in my “Chronicles” journal. This is a  handmade visual year-journal in which I create a weekly spread. On the pages I comment and reflect on my days or just try to capture the week in words and pictures. Here’s my latest spreads.

The Chronicles of Marit 2022 – Week 34

The Chronicles of Marit 2022 – Week 35

The Chronicles of Marit 2022 – Week 36

(this post is also on the bloghop-list Art For Fun Friday)

Thanks for your visit today, stay dry and enjoy your weekend.

Je t’embrasse

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

Goodmorning on this lovely Friday and OH-MAN, am I glad the heat is over and Autumn is in the air! Even nature takes a deep breath, and when I see this photo of rose hips – that my friend Lena took last week – turning red I do a little dance. I never made rose hip jelly though, I’m not much of a cook but I might give it a try someday.

This post is a little longer than usual as I do have some art journal spreads to show.

The Chronicles of Marit 2022 – Week 31

The Chronicles of Marit 2022 – Week 32

The Chronicles of Marit 2022 – Week 33

I hope you enjoyed seeing more than ‘just’ a photo and a haiku. I won’t bother you with long texts or explanations ’cause the cooler weather gives me more energy and I want to put that into action like painting up a storm in my little atelier, or go into town and buy me new winter boots. (I could also choose to clean the bathroom… but naaahhh….)

Thanks for stopping by and do celebrate today! Smell the roses (rose hips!)

Je t’embrasse

I use my free time to spend the day with my beloved (yesterday, we visited a town nearby, walked along the seaside, strolled around on a tourist market and drank coffee on a terrace… how’s that for a vacation day?) visit my bff, visit my parents and spend time, LOTS of time in my atelier. I finished some more Chronicles spreads and I plan on creating one last page for the “mother-son collaboration project” – the evidence is on my desk right now! (I will publish all our results of last month later this week.)

WOYWW #682

I’m pretty satisfied with the spreads I made for week 22 and week 23…

Chronicles 2022 – Week 22

Chronicles 2022 – Week 23

…week 24, however, looks a bit ‘dark’ while it was such a nice week… oh well, I kinda like this spread anyway and am very content with how the photo transfer (the stairs) came out.

Chronicles 2022 – Week 24

Vacation time or not… I hope you have a lovely week.
Spend it well and enjoy every minute of it!

My friend Robert send me a package which contained all kinds of collage paper and I have plans to use some on a spread in my journal. That box with washi tape is there ’cause I used tape on the envelope (on the photo to the left) that I, too, filled with ‘stuff’ for yet another person ’cause I participate in a ‘inspiration swap’. I will take it to the post office today and in return, I will receive yet another envelope with collage-paper in the upcoming days… I guess one day off will not be enough *lol*

WOYWW #667

I will work on a spread for week 11 today (I’m running behind with keeping up my weekly art journal) and when I get into the flow, I might even create ‘week 12’. I will show you the weeks before…

Chronicles 2022 – Week 9

Chronicles 2022 – Week 10

These spreads show what was on my mind: my son who came to visit us, the start of the cycling season and the war in Ukraine. Creating helps to get it all processed in my mind… how about you? Do you use your creativity to keep the balance, to stay sane in these times of uncertainty?

Have a nice day/week, I wish you serenity!

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’!

It was all kinds of other activities, and especially the heat wave that lasted for more than a week, that kept me from blogging. However, I woke up last Monday to find the temperatures in the living room dropped with three grades (from 31 to 28 Celcius.) Tired of sitting tight in front of the ventilator, I felt energized only by seeing a number below 30 and so I started cleaning my workdesk. My beloved had bought me a new drawing tablet and pen, to use at the computer, that was delivered that afternoon…

WOYWW #585

… and now, with a clean desk, a new tablet and better temperatures, I’m all ready to go!

In the weeks before the heat wave hit our country and forced me to sit down and do nothing, I created quite a lot of art pieces! For one, I participated in another PASSport and collage project. You might remember I collaborated in the project last year – see this post (with some more explanation about the project, in case you are interested) and this post – and since it had been a while, I volunteered for another passport to create a spread in. I was the first to receive this little booklet and I was asked to also add something to the front. So I did.

There was a photo of a “Fraulein” (= “Miss”) on the first page and I did want to keep that, so I let the photo inspire me and worked around/integrated it.

It’s on its way to the next artist-in-line and I’m curious to see what she will create on the next pages.

I also created art journal spreads in my Chronicles.

The Chronicles of Marit 2020 – Week 30

The Chronicles of Marit 2020 – Week 31

I leave your with this, I have more to show but don’t want to take more of your time… thanks for your visit!

WOYWW #576
This was on my working table Tuesday afternoon. (Who said I couldn’t make a mess… 😉 )

Gelli-printing on my ‘big desk’…

… and the smaller surface to the left, used to lay the paper to dry (on top of my stencil-folder) and there’s my mobile phone underneath of it all (the ‘green thingie’ peeping out)

DUTCH DARES

A new dare at the scrapbooking challenge group where I am a (guest) designer. The challenge is to use this sketch:

The layout I created with this sketch
(the French sentence is from a Jacques Brel song: Ay Marieke, Marieke, Il y a longtemps. Entre les tours De Bruges et Gand.)

Notes from the land of the screaming seagulls

A few years ago (September 2017) I started working on a new series of ‘small collage-mixed-media’ pieces. It was a sequel to my earlier series Letters from the Wasteland. I created two pieces back then, but the project got ‘lost and forgotten’ at the bottom of a drawer after that… until I found it last week and picked it up again.

Notes from the land of the screaming seagulls III

Notes from the land of the screaming seagulls IV

The Chronicles of Marit 2020 – Week 22

Week 22 was a week the world will remember…

Thanks for staying with me ’till the end of this blogpost! Have a great week y’all – go do something fun: make a (creative) mess!

Friday haiku

The photo was taken 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

Samo

Next is a spread that I created a while ago. If you know anything about the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat you could’ve known by seeing the title ‘Samo‘ that this spread was inspired by his art. (And if you dabble your hands in art journaling or mixed media and never heard of this artist, look up his art! His work is especially interesting for people like you!)

This week I finished another scrapbook layout – again I used two challenges to create with. It’s relaxing and fun to make a scrapbook layout using the inspiration that challenges provide and above all, it’s a way to use my photos and keep the ‘memory album’ going.

So what was it all about this time?

Dutch Dares challenge: “Scrap a large or THE biggest change in your life!”
Challenge YOUrself: “We would like to see polka dots on your layout somewhere, it doesn’t matter how many or how few you use and as always, don’t forget to include a photo with YOU on your layout.”

What changed my life

Journaling is in Dutch: “Of course: study, falling in love, living together, finding a job, giving birth to my son and many, many house-movings: it’s all live changing. But what really changed my life was that moment in 2009 that I learned about Art Journaling. In the (more than) ten years after, I bound many, many journals in which I create daily. I published an art magazine, my art got published in various books and mags, I exhibited my art journals in an art galery and I teach art journal workshop. I became an artist!”

Thanks for your visit.
I’m glad we can still do that without risk: visit each other online.
I will spend the upcoming days in my atelier and surround myself with paint and brushes.
The creating bug may bite me, and that’s a non-dangerous virus to catch…
Have a lovely weekend y’all, stay safe!

Je t’embrasse

However, last Friday my blogpost was all about my Nefarious plans  (most interesting for Dutchies but if you’re curious too, click the link)  – so I thought I’d insert this extra ‘Wednesday blogpost’ to show my latest art journal spreads. I should be able to visit everyone who comments back this week… so here we go…

WOYWW #562

Yes, a scrapbook layout! I still make those from time to time and I found two lovely challenges on line that made me start… you can probably guess one of the challenges “use polka dots.”  (The other one is to scrap a life changing moment…) I hope to work on this some more today, but the deadline isn’t until the end of the month so there’s no hurry.

And there’s three Chronicles spreads/weeks to show – however busy I may be, I always keep my Chronicles art journal going…

The Chronicles of Marit 2020 – Week 7

The Chronicles of Marit 2020 – Week 8

The Chronicles of Marit 2020 – Week 9

Thanks for visiting my blog, nice to see you again! I’m curious to see what you, and the other deskers, are all up to – I do see some of you posting on Facebook but I look forward to visit your blogs! See you one of these days!

Last week, working at the Zeeuws Archief was kinda bizarre… the building I work in happened to be the center of a film set. The film is called “De Slag om de Schelde” (“The battle of the Scheldt“) the street was turned into a war zone and the Zeeuws Archief building was choosen to act like the headquarters of the German nazi’s. You can imagine how strange it was to step into my workroom (the room right above the front door) and see a Nazi-flag hanging in front of my window…

Of course, when the filming started, my collegues and I sat in the front seat – we all stood at the top windows watching! I brought my camera and took photos but those weren’t nearly as good as the pics my collegue Daniël Obbink took. Here’s a compilation (thanks for letting me use these Daniël.)

Today is my first day off this week (I went to work yesterday also, to make up for the hours I missed because of taking a Paleography course) and I have a long list to slay, so I keep this blogpost short, but I can’t go without showing you some art now can I? Here’s my latest art journal spread

The Chronicles of Marit 2020 – Week 3

The sentence (“you are not worth it that I lift my tongue for you…”) is from a text/letter I had to transcribe for the course. The phrase comes from a letter (from 1779) sent by a captain to his bosses in which he complaines about the behavior of his first steersman. I think this is swearing at its best!

And now, dear readers, I’m off to get some work done (are you a transcriber to my newsletter? I hope to send one out this weekend.)
Enjoy your weekend sweeties, do something fun! Go see a movie!