…so I decided to leave my weblog and the Internet alone for a while and update/publish only the Quirky Dutch Summer posts on Mondays (and of course visit the QDS facebook group on a regular base.) That will leave me time to ‘freewheel’ and if there’s something I need to do right now, it’s just that!

So the next couple of weeks you won’t see me around much, at least not in the virtual world. I’m taking a break to spend the afternoons in the atelier without the urge to post, to walk along the beach or take a bikeride with my beloved when I feel like it, to sit in the sun and read a book – in short:

relax!

I hope you all enjoy your Summer too!

I bound me a little book to work in – I found a free stockphoto on the Internet, showing  cassette tapes  and since the cassette celebrates its fiftieth birthday in 2013, I found it appropriate to use that photo to cover my journal.

I like to work with a theme and in the week leading up to the Top 2000 party, I came up with all kinds of ideas but none of them seamed fun or feasible. (For instance: create a ‘found poem’ with every entry… I liked that idea very much but it would take way too much time to achieve.) When the official Top 2000 list was published online, I still had no theme so I decided to just ‘go with the flow’ and choose a fun and happy song to start with.

Techniques/materials: Homemade gelatin monoprints,  letter drawing (title) and stamping with handcarved stamps (circles) and coloured with sharpies

#1882 Beatles – Magical Mystery Tour

When the first spread was done, I looked for a song to create something with for the second day of the party… My eye fell on a songtitle that seemed to follow the first songtitle quite nicely and an idea came to mind: I could go with the ‘found poetry theme’ after all, if I made the entries follow each other like a poem – forming a ‘story’ if you like…  From that moment on, I choose songs for their title (and not necessarily because I like them…)

Techniques/materials: Pages from an old map glued to background. Painted with gesso and acrylics (used a handcut template to create the gesso ‘blocks’ in the bottom left corner.) Pieces of a gelliprint (filled the silhouette with an old map). Handwriting/lettering with sharpies,

#1533 Animals – We’ve Got To Get Out Of This Place

With the idea that the songtitles should make a ‘poem’, I came up with two songtitles for the third day. I wanted the pages to be nice to look at if you view them seperately  (after all, the number of the songs were different and so it should be possible to publish them seperately – with a little distance of each other and other art works/songs in between.) But I also want it to match as a spread, to continue the ‘story’…  Here’s the spread I created:

Techniques/materials: Dylusion Spray inks. Different templates and a handcut silhouette (inspired by a photo my son took of me)  Piece of monoprint (circles), dictionary page, cut out teksts, doodling with markers/sharpies.

#1502 Peter Sarstedt – Where Do You Go To My Lovely

#1488 Wham – Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go

When you start to look at a list of songtitles, it is amazing how much choise there is in titles that form a poem. Really… I had difficulties narrowing it down to just two songtitles to work with! But the next ones seemed fun and happy, and I wanted the ‘story’ I was creating to be a happy and fun one… I ‘brought the pages together’ by continuing the dotted line on the right page.

Techniques/materials: Black/Blue/Purlpe acrylic paint, cut out photo of the earth, cut out pieces of monotypes (“planets”) spray ink and handmade template/silhouette, Dylusion Spray inks, dimensional paint (the ‘lines’), handwriting and doodling with white posca pen.

#1164 Beatles – Across The Universe

#1090 Joe Cocker – You Can Leave Your Hat On

I don’t like the next song, but the songtitle fitted the ‘story’ so well, and when I saw the title I had an image in mind right away. So I went with it. (Again, I added a dotted line to strengthen the feeling of continuation.)

Techniques/materials: Torn photo of the fall of the Berlin wall (found on the internet, original photo by Jean-Claude Coutausse), acrylic paint.

#709 Spandau Ballet – Through The Barricades

Most of you know, I had a rough year with a burn-out and all kinds of obstacles on my way… I’m doing better lately but I felt I needed to get it out on this page. The title of the Fleetwood Mac song just called for that (it is also one of my fave songs, so I really wanted to include it.) I painted the songtitle on top of my journaling (as it is rather personal/private) and the page came out beautiful!

Techniques/materials: Pieces of monoprints (for the back and border), handwriting (marker) and letterdrawing (black marker and white acrylic paint)

#500 Fleetwood Mac – Oh Well

There were so much songtitles I could choose for on the last day! I roughly selected 23 titles at first, and then started to eliminate. I first got rid of all the ‘negative’ titles as I wanted my ‘story’ to end happy. One title also gave me the opportunity to include an image of a couple… my beloved and I like to go for long walks and I found a beautiful silhouette of a walking couple. So finally, the choise was made and here are my two pages for the last day – again, they can be viewed seperately as well as a spread.

Techniques/materials: Gelatin monoprint, selfmade templates (silhouette and circle), doodling and letterwriting with markers/sharpie and text cut out of magazines. 

#261 Queen – These Are The Days Of Our Lives

#104 Beatles – Here Comes The Sun

And here’s the ‘table of content’ which is the clue to this book… ’cause it makes a found poem!
(I see only now that I made a mistake in the names & numbers at the bottem of this page – Joe Cocker is missing! Oops!)

Here’s a more detailed photo (you can click on the image to enlarge.)
In case you still cannot read it – this is the ‘poem’

Magical Mystery Tour

We’ve Got To Get Out Of This Place

Where Do You Go To My Lovely

Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go

Across The Universe

You Can Leave Your Hat On

Through The Barricades

Oh Well

These Are The Days Of Our Lives

Here Comes The Sun

And here’s the very last page: a plastic pocket to store the Top 2000 list.

The last weeks of December were very hectic and – like almost every year – a lot of things got neglected… like my other art journals. Also, my studio is a mess! To get there I have to wade through spiderwebs and layers of dust… spiders wave at me in the corner of the bathroom celebrating their own party and I absolutely need to spend some time on housekeeping.

Then there’s a calender to be made, administration to be done (my email inbox is overflowing!) and I also want to update my website and this little blog of mine. And there’s more ‘little things’ I need to work on, you know – the kind of things that don’t take a lot of time in theirselves but when you put it on a ‘to do’ list for a while, that list gets rather long! I call it ‘the loose ends of the past year’… and to handle and get rid of those things I decided to take a blogbreak. I did so in the last two years to use that time to ‘get to myself’ and get some work done – so it is becoming a bit of a January tradition.

I will be back in a couple of weeks (the plan is two weeks, but don’t pin me on that…)
I hope to be able to show you some new work then (I have a lot of ideas and plans for new pieces and art journals… and also my ‘Word to live by in 2014’ came to me last week and I definitely want to reflect on that in my new Chronicles journal too.) I hope you all have a good start of the year… keep your head up, keep the creativity flowing and see you in a few weeks!

This means, that writing a blogpost costs me half a day. Coming up with a title or theme, shooting the right photos (+ cropping and adding the watermark), finding the right words to share what I want to share… I like blogging though, so I don’t mind taking the time for it to try and do it right.

But

(Yep – you felt it coming – there’s a but…)

I don’t have much time lately.
You must have noticed: my posts weren’t as well thought-out as they used to be. Sometimes even (very) short. And that’s bothering me.

And then there is this:

Yes, sweeties, that’s MY STUDIO!! Well, maybe that’s too big a word for it, but it’s my SPACE anyway… When my son moved out in November 2011 my beloved and I discussed the possibilities for a studio. We came to the conclusion that I would take the best room – the one that has two windows (good light!) and is close to the bathroom and we would move the office space to my son’s old room. Now it was easy to come up with that idea, but not so easy to realise. There would be construction work to be done and – well – you know – we never started on it.

Which meant that I went on creating at the big table in the living room – while upstairs, there was an empty room available.

Mind you, not ’empty’ empty – as there were books and clothes and boxes and things that my son didn’t took with him or ‘would go through later’ (you know what happens when you think ‘I’ll look at that later’ – later never comes!) but space was ‘available’ anyway. When my son visits us in the weekends, he puts his laptop on the desk and sleeps in the bed. That’s it.

Last week, I suddenly couldn’t stand it anymore.
The reconstruction of the upstairs is not going to happen soon, so I decided to start cleaning up the room on the top floor and see what I could do to make some sort of a studio. I would of course have to share it with my son – when he’s here I’m sure he don’t like to have his mama sitting next to him all day –  so I will have to come up with a ‘travel tote’ of some sort that I can take downstairs to create when he’s using the room.

On other days – this is all mine:

“Where is the bed” you might ask…
on ‘this side’ of the room (where I stood taking the photo) there’s a bed and another small desk –  I did not photograph that though. The cabinet dividing the room has storage space on both sides.

I love the shelves under the window – it’s perfect to store / display all my finished art journals. The top row holds all of them. On the lower shelf: books I use for altering or cut things from

And there’s a big closet that is filled with more ‘stuff’ – I have a lot of ‘stuff’ 😉

Now… back to the beginning of my post: contemplation.

What’s happening in my life these days.

• A magazine to work on (FEATURING issue 3 is out and available here)
• Teaching an online workshop (starting February 4, registering still possible here)
• A studio that I will have to get used to working in (I’m a ‘routine’ girl – and when the routine gets broken it takes me a lot of time to adapt on the new situation – and no, that’s not ‘old age’, I’ve always been like that!)
• A beloved and a household that needs attention (one more then the other – you tell me which 😉 )
• Private ‘stuff’ that I need to think over and deal with

And then there’s this blog… I want to keep it going but my way of blogging will definitely needs to change in order for me to feel good about it. But how? What? When?

I don’t know yet.
I guess I have some thinking to do – and therefore I decided to take a break from blogging. Yes dear ones – I will be ‘off blogging’ for a while. For how long? I don’t know. I guess, as long as I need to figure some things out. We’ll see. I hope you won’t forget about me and that I find you all back here again when I get back from my ‘retreat.’ I might even show myself on facebook and twitter every once in a while – and if you really, REALLY miss me, feel free to email me!

See ya when I’m back!