First: here’s what my desk looks like this wednesday morning

WOYWW #771

Those of you who remember my old blog posts and desk photos may now be surprised: what is this? You had a brown desk, right? And it was in front of the window, right? Yep…at the end of last year I bought new furniture and threw out the old corner desk. It was a great worksheet, yes, but the whole thing was not very flexible and when a friend or student came over, we had to sit next to each other. That felt rather awkwardly, especially when teaching how to bind a book… So I got rid of the old thing and bought me a new desk, new dressers and two smaller tables that I can slide around. Now there’s more flexibility and that was the intention. Mission succesfull, yay!
Here’s the before and after pictures

Before

After

I like sitting in that fresh, light corner behind the tables and I still create a lot on the days I don’t have to work… of course most of the time goes into keeping my ‘Chronicles’ art journal up to date. It’s my 15th year/Chronicles journal and it’s there on the table all the time. These are the latest spreads.

Chronicles art journal – Week 8

Chronicles art journal – Week 9

Chronicles art journal – Week 10 (with postcard in pocket)

Chronicles art journal – Week 10 (with postcard out of pocket)

Besides these Chronicles journal, I do create other spreads, drawings etc. but this post would get too long if I’d show that all to you… so I leave you with these and will go visit YOUR blogposts and desks now… have a lovely day, see ya!

WOYWW #699

Here’s a picture up close… the cardboard that I used for the cover turned out not to be thick enough to make this stitch stand out nicely, so I stuck an extra piece of cardboard on it. That’s another lesson learned: the thickness of the cover is also something I have to take into account.

People who follow my blog/me a bit longer will know that I keep a weekly art journal for many years now. I call this my “Chronicles” and in december I will bind my 14th “Chronicles” journal to fill in 2023…! The 2022 journal is still going ofcourse, and here’s the latest spreads I created.

Chronicles, week 37

Chronicles, week 38

The spread for this week shows more photos because I created pockets and flaps on the pages. There was a lot to tell and show that week…. here’s the story:

My beloved likes art. His preference is for painters such as de Chirico and Delvaux. Years ago he told me about a “Paul Delvaux museum” that was situated “somewhere in Belgium on the French border”, and that he would like to visit that museum one day. We didn’t have a chance to do that back then, but I remembered the fact…

More than ten years later – settled in a nice apartment in Middelburg, having a job and experiencing more ‘light in our lives’ – the idea came back to me. I googled the museum and guess what: it is located in Koksijde on the Belgian coast! Gosh… that’s not that far away from where we live! The idea was born: I kept my mouth shut and decided to make it a surprise trip. The plan was delayed due to Covid and my mom’s illness, but at the beginning of August it was finally time to take action. My dad offered to loan me the car, I studied the route and I secretly booked a hotel.

I marked three days on the calendar saying “these days have to stay open”. I didn’t say more than that I’d planned a surprise trip. Oo-o-o… with all kinds of questions he tried to figure out where we were going but I kept my jaws tight! I managed to make ‘hint cards’ in my atelier without him seeing it and once on our way he was allowed to open an envelope and get another hint every now and then.

Just a few kilometers before arriving at our destination, he was allowed to open the last envelope and when it became clear that we would visit “the Paul Delvaux museum” my beloved was just perplexed… and that was exactly the reaction I had in mind!

Of course I saved those cards and put them in a little pocket on the page.

The day after our arrival we walked to the museum and spent two special hours between the paintings. Trip successful!

Chronicles, week 39

… was my birthday week. The card to the right was made by my best friend.

Pfew, that’s quite a heavy post, thanks for visiting and reading! I hope to find some time to visit you back, it may take a few days but I’ll try to squeeze in a few hours of ‘desk-visiting’ as I’m curious to find out what you are up to! Have a nice week, see ya!

WOYWW #593

Here’s a photo of the big work shop, the ‘restoration and conservation studio’ of the Zeeuws Archief.

… and there will probably something like this on my desk:

My job is, to save paper and documents like this from further desintegrating. Ain’t that the most wonderful job for a paper lover like I am?!!

When I get home on Wednesday, my ‘weekend’ starts and since I can’t get enough of paper, I dive into my own little atelier to play with my art journals. Here’s a spread from a couple of weeks ago.

The Chronicles of Marit 2020 – Week 36

This spread is all about Corona and yes, the numbers are increasing rapidly in the Netherlands. I write this post on Sunday afternoon and on Tuesday, there will be another press conference by our prime minister. I expect stricter measures will be announced – I just hope I won’t be send home from my job again because there’s no way I can take those original documents I work with back home with me, so when we all have to go into another lockdown, I will be without a job again… keep your fingers crossed!

I’m still a member of the Dutch Dares design team, a scrapbooking challenge group on Facebook. The challenge for October is Food and Drinks and here’s my take on the theme.

It’s getting difficult to get those layouts done in time because besides my job, I’m also writing and filming tutorials for my new online workshop KRONIEKEN that starts at the end of this year (it will be in Dutch only, sorry.) I committed myself to stay a design team member until December so there’s two more ‘dares’ to go… I think I can do that.

And what are you up to? I hope you are well and healthy still. Thanks for your visit and I hope to pay you, fellow desker, a visit back in the next couple of days to take a peek at your desk and stay in touch. Have a great day, stay safe!

WOYWW #528

There’s two half-finished art journals on my desk. That’s not my usual way of creating but yesterday it somehow worked, as I was at the computer writing a Quirky post and every time my mind  wandered off the topic, I turned my chair and ‘did something’ in my journals.

The journal on the left is my ‘Chronicles’ art journal and last week you could see it on my desk while I was working on a spread for week 26. That one is finished now.

The Chronicles of Marit 2019 – Week 26

Next is my ‘Soul from Zeeland’ journal. Months ago I created the background for this ‘spread’ (actually this are three pages, you can fold the part on the right and when you do, the next page will be visible and works with the left page of this spread… sounds confusing? I’ll show you how it looks when I finish the next pages.) Last week I gave this spread it’s final touches.

Voor altijd naar huis (Forever going home)

Because I spend most of the past days at the computer, typing, I will keep this blogpost short. This is it, from me, today, but if you like to see more artsy desks, hop on over to Julia’s blog where you can find the link-list with all other ‘deskers’ to visit. You can even join in yourself if you want to… I assure you it will be fun! Thanks for your visit, enjoy your day.

Can you tell this desk was staged? Yes, you can… there was something I don’t want you to see (yet) on my desk so I put that aside to show what the mailman brought last week.

WOYWW #523

It came in all at once; can you imagine my face seeing the mailbox filled with not one, not two but THREE happy envelopes?! THANK YOU SO MUCH LADIES!

Next is an art journal page/collage that I made for a challenge at the “Dutch Collage Group.” In the Netherlands, there is a retail chain/supermarket where you can take a ‘free magazine’. (For the Dutchies: Albert Heijn’s “Allerhande”) The challenge was to get the montly magazine and create a collage using only the images in the magazine. Here’s my take on that challenge

Marmaid

That’s it for today lovelies… oh wait, one more thing:

The first Quirky Dutch Summer post is online: a tutorial on how to make a journal with canvas cover.

View my former post HERE if you’re interested.

And now I’m really signing off and get to work… thanks for stopping by. See ya!

I think especially you fabric/textile orientated deskers (LLJ, Annie-Wipso, Shoshi, Lynn, Jo-Twiglet) might want to hop over to her website to see her Japanese-inspired art pieces (look under “Projecten.”)

Doing all kind of different things last week you might think my desk is empty than… well, no. I layed my Chronicles art journal on the desk and whenever I have a spare minute, I add something to the pages. Most weeks, the Chronicles spread comes together in one or two atelier-sessions but not this time… it will probably turn out to be a chaotic spread – we’ll see.

WOYWW #513

And here’s the spread that was on my desk last week. I just added some journaling to the page and called it finished.

The Chronicles of Marit 2019 – Week 12

It’s another grey and windy day on my peninsula… it’s nowhere near Spring outside so I put a little flower pot (Narcissus ‘Tête-a-Tête’) on the table to bring Spring into the house. My beloved bought me a present last week: “Journal d’Irlande” – the latest book, published posthumously, by my favourite writer Benoîte Groult and I plan to spend some time curled up in the chair reading. It’s just a day for that! Hope your day will be nice and cozy too, enjoy!

For the Quirky Dutch Summer blogseries  2019
***I AM LOOKING FOR CREATIVE GUEST ARTISTS/TEACHERS***
who want to write an inspiration-blogpost or tutorial.

There were quite some reactions on my call, but most came from Dutch crafters and since I want to offer a various ‘mix’ of guests, I would love some ‘foreign’ (non-Dutch) artists/crafters to submit. I can think of many of you “deskers” that would be able to offer an inspirational blogpost for this Summer series… come on my friends, don’t let me down!

Are you interested in being one of my guest-artist-teachers this Summer and write a blog post for the series? Send me an email this week! (This call closes on April 1.) Find all the info HERE

My desk saw a lot of activity last week but I cannot show all of it yet… I created something for a friend and it’s only just in the mail on it’s way to the USA so I keep the photo’s of “that” on hold. After I put the package in the mail yesterday, I started creating a Chronicles spread for week 12 and I made a photo while I was working on it,

which made me think…

I always clean up after creating, so the photo I take on Wednesday morning almost always shows a neat desk. I am used to taking a ‘morning photo’ but I might change that and take the photo for What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday on Tuesday-afternoon from now on… a photo taken in the midst of creating shows more interesting things for you to see… agree?

WOYWW #512

I love these alphabet stamps that you can see in my file but these stamps come with an issue: they’re very sticky and hard to pull of the plastic sheet. I tore a few already! You can see the little pieces laying on my desk (next to the scissors.) Those three small pieces, stuck together on the acrylic block, make an E…

As if I don’t have enough art journals to work in, I bound me another one last week! I blame Marie Mathlener for it – 🙂  Hi sweetie! –  ’cause when she visited me a couple of weeks ago, she brought her journal and it had a canvas cover. I loved the look of that so much! I asked her where she got the canvas and her answer was a tip I couldn’t believe that I never thought of myself: “buy a cheap canvas in a dollar-store, cut the canvas from the frame, throw some paint on it ‘et voila’ there’s your cover.”

My first thought was to turn this into a ‘collage journal’ but I’m not sure… once I decide on a theme for this journal I might add a title to the cover.

And that’s it for today folks, but before I sign off I’d like to have big CHEER for my beloved, who deep-cleaned the bathroom while I was playing in my atelier.

Thanks for stopping by my blog, have a lovely week and don’t forget to check out the call for guest-bloggers… see ya!

My desk shows little activity this morning. I visited my mum and dad yesterday and my atelier stayed untouched… I just put the books I got from my parents on the desk when I got home – to find them there this morning.

WOYWW #511

Ages ago, I showed you this corner in my atelier: the guest bedrooms. I painted the back of that case lilac, remember? (I published a photo in September.) You had all kinds of ideas on what to do with that lilac back, but I never showed you what I did: I taped some fun prints and art pieces on it ánd a blank sheet of paper and pen-case containing markers – so guests can draw or write something when they feel like it.

Last week, I saw Kathy McCullen published some of her old collages on her Facebook page and I commented that I still have some prints of her work (she send me those back in 2010… wow, time flies!) including this one that is on the back of the case (top left.)

The black-n-white doodle page was made by my brother in 1985. The children’s drawing was made by me and when I look at the way I drew the house and the turtle (I think it’s a turtle but I may have meant to draw a hedgehog or a ladybug) I must have been around four years… And then there’s two more recent collage pieces. Last weekend, my son woke up seeing all this ’cause he came to visit us.

It was so good to have him around for a day – we laughed and talked and after dinner, him and I (or is that ‘me’? Oh, those English ‘rules’…) walked to the store to buy some potato chips which I forgot to buy earlier… Nout has this super-duper phone with a high-tech camera that he used to make a photo of the old town hall that is illuminated at night, and WOW, did that photo come out beautiful!

I found the challenge blog Sketch~N~Scrap that provided this sketch

I used this Sketch N Scrap #173 sketch/challenge to create this layout, using my son’s photo and a photo of the same building that I took in daylight some time ago.

We are in week 12 of this year already, and I am a bit behind in showing you my Chronicles pages… so here’s one spread from a couple of weeks ago

The Chronicles of Marit 2019 – Week 9

I’ll show the other weeks in another post soon, ’cause this blog post is long enough as it is.

Thanks for your visit and see you soon!

There’s nothing on my work desk for you to see so I turned a quarter and made a picture of the desk that’s against the wall…

WOYWW #510

Those paintings (there’s another small one behind the printer) and framed print are waiting to be hung on the wall in the hallway. We need to buy a rail for that first, so I can hang a ‘collage of paintings’ without drilling an enormous amount of holes in the wall. Those pattern sheets I found in a second hand store and I plan to use parts of it in my art journal.

Instead of art journaling, I am still in a scrap-mode lately. There’s this Dutch scrap booking challenge group on Facebook and their latest challenge was ‘Spring’. Exactly a year ago today, we were handed the keys to our new apartment and Spring began with us moving houses… so I made this layout with the challenge. Does it look “Happy Spring” or what?!

Thuis (Home)

Where art journaling takes me to deeper sides of myself and cost efforts sometimes, I find scrap booking very relaxing. It also takes me back to my early blog days (10 years ago!) when I first discovered all kinds of scrapbookers online and challenge blogs that inspired me. I learned so much in those first months! Those challenge blogs I used to go to (who remembers ScrapMojo, Scrapping the Music, Scrapping Out Loud, These are a few of my favorite things – Hi Julie 🙂 🙂 🙂 ) are all gone now but I found another challenge blog: Challenge YOUrself

Their challenge: “This month, we challenge you to scrap a photo with YOU in the frame along with using just black and white plus red on your page.”

I had to think of this old photo (taken back in the eighties) of me wearing my red raincoat, sitting on a bench on a dike, so I decided to give it a go and play along with the challenge… I printed the photo in black and white and colored my coat and boots red. (yep, I had red boots, my all time favorites… I almost cried when they were so worn out that even the shoemaker couldn’t repair them anymore…)

On a Windy Day

The background paper is an oldie from my stash (don’t know the brand) and the pattern is a photo of sand ridges. The paper behind the photo (the ‘white cracked wall’ pattern) comes from a scrapbook paper block that I bought for a bargain at a local store (for the Dutchies: “Action”) I stitched with the sewing machine and I found some old letter-stickers for the title that I painted red. It was fun to create this layout while the storm raged outside.

I wish you all a happy Wednesday and a lovely week. Thanks for your visit, see ya!

There’s beauty on my desk today…

WOYWW #508

… and I’m pretty satisfied with my last art journal spread

The Chronicles of Marit 2019 – Week 7

So what are my plans?

Take a shower and get dressed (yup, I’m still in my pj’s)
Drink another cup of coffee.
Wait for the laundry to be ready so I can hang it outside in that Spring-breeze.
Go for a walk in the sun and take the camera with me.
Select the photos so I can take you with me on my walk throught the neigbourhood in my next blogpost.

Is that a plan, or what?

Hope your day is lovely too.
Go make something out of it
make it Feelin’ alright!

P.S. The finished scrap layout that I was working on last week is in this post