Marit's Paper World (blog)

(I taught a) Colorful and Sunny Workshop

Marit — Sat, 11 Jul 2015 10:07:05 +0000

I taught an art journal workshop yesterday – we created several basic pages with templates using mono-printing & spray ink techniques. It was a small group of five ladies, which was marvelous as there was time to get to know each other and connect. I had a fantastic day and so did these ladies! thank you so much Monique, Nel, Pauline, Marie and Melouise for the fun, the excitement, the laughter, the love and the flowers (and thank you Monique for taking and sending me these photos!)

Half past ten (see clock 😉 ) – explaining and showing examples and tools

Mono printing using a gelli plate and templates

Lunch in the sun at “De Vriendschap” (A big hug and thanks go to Connie de Lange – the owner – for the marvelous lunch.)

Bread, soup, salad, fish… the food was excellent.

In the afternoon, we played with ‘found poetry’ and doodling on the backgrounds. Here’s some of the pages the girls made…

Page made by Marie

Page made by Melouise

Page made by Pauline

Pages made by Monique

Pages made by Nel

I know for sure that the ladies liked the workshop (and me as a teacher) ’cause look what the group gave me…

… and now it is Saturday morning, ‘the day after’. The flowers are in the vase. The ink and paint is back on its shelf. I’m ready for a day at the atelier, all inspired and still smiling. Hope you have a great weekend too.

Live Workshop in Middelburg!

Marit — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 10:06:07 +0000

{This blogpost is in Dutch because I teach this workshop in the Netherlands. If you are from abroad/english speaking and want to participate in this workshop, send me an email…}

Op vrijdag 10 juli geef ik een live-workshop art journal basis-achtergronden maken m.b.v. mixed media technieken (gelli-monoprinten & werken met spray inkt) en het gebruik van ‘gevonden teksten’ in een collage.

Je vind alle informatie – en kunt je inschrijven – in mijn online shop.

Er is een beperkt aantal plaatsen beschikbaar dus schrijf je snel in!

Index Cards 13 – 19

Marit — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 07:40:51 +0000

Days fly by so quickly, it’s already Friday and time to show you my latest index cards. Yep, ICAD 2015 is still going strong and I still play along.. although I must say this weeks’ prompts had me a little puzzled. I had to force myself and give myself a push to still work with the challenges. I found some of the them real difficult but I managed to work through that and I made an index card with each prompt. They may not all be that good, but I pet myself on the shoulder for keeping up with the challenge and prompts!

First, two index cards with the prompts from week 2

Week 2 – Theme: Painting
ICAD #13 – Blueberry & Plum

Gelli-monoprint with acrylics, cut out text and doodling with black and white marker.

Week 2 – Theme: Painting
ICAD #14 – Salt & Pepper

Gelli-monoprint with acrylics, cut out text and doodling with black marker.

And here’s the series of Week 2 all together

On to this week then – week 3 – and the theme is ‘collage.’ Usually collage is not a problem for me, but this week I did not really could get a grip on it… Looking back on what I created I find most of the cards a bit cliché. Oh well, my work cannot be awesome all the time now can it? Even I suffer from a lack of inspiration every now and then. So cliché or not… here they are

Week 3 – Theme: Collage
ICAD #15 – Route 66

Scrap of paper map showing route 66; image of an old route 66 postcard decreased and printed and a stamped image of a hitchhiking girl, colored with pencils.

Week 3 – Theme: Collage
ICAD #16 – Greeting Card

“Greetings from Zeeland” – cut out magazine photo of a lady in traditional clothing from this region, border with washi tape, stamped and cut out lettering.

Week 3 – Theme: Collage
ICAD #17 – Wabi Sabi

I had a lot of problems with this one… what the hack is ‘wabi sabi’… I spend some time searching on the computer and at the end I decided to cut some sort of circle from a magazine page and just glue it to the card.. and I actually like it a lot!

Week 3 – Theme: Collage
ICAD #18 – Tree House

I combined a cut out tree-trunk and an image of a bird house. Stamped and colored the girl (‘Alice’)and gave her a cut out bird in her hands. The clouds are stamps and I finished it off with a bit of doodling.

Week 3 – Theme: Collage
ICAD #19 – Snow Globe

The inside of the ‘globe’ is a collage of magazine clippings (mountains, woman swimming.) I added the snow dots with a white Posca pen. The globe is accentuated with water paint (Caran d’Ache neocolor water-soluble pencils and a wet brush.)

On to the weekend then. I have a lot of creative plans but should do a little housekeeping too, so let’s see what the days bring… but in all cases: Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World!

After the Spring Fair…

Marit — Mon, 20 Apr 2015 11:05:26 +0000

… I’m still glowing! As you may know, I went to a Spring Fair to exhibit my art journals and promote my workshops. The Fair was at a school, and I shared a classroom with three other artists. We all had very different art to show (paintings, ceramics, paper-fabric cards) and when we were done decorating and putting our stuff on the tables, ‘our’ classroom looked fun and whimsical. We’d also set up a “mono-printing corner” and there were a lot of kids who wanted to try this technique. They printed lovely cards that they could pick up later (after drying) and MAN, were they all enthusiastic and happy!

I did not take my camera, but the other artists-friends made some photos with their cellphones* that they emailed me later. (*Yes, I have a cellphone, I’m not that unworldly! However, my phone is from the stone-age and it doesn’t have a camera, I can only call and text with it.) So here’s an impression of the Spring Fair.

I don’t have an overview photo of their stands, but here’s work from artists Mirjam van Sluijs (ceramic lamp) and Antoinet Wisse (crocheted garland)

On the next photo you see the corner/stand with the paintings of my friend Lena Schreijenberg.

And here’s my table.

Behind where I was sitting we put up a table for mono-printing with a (handmade) gelatin plate. Most kids that wanted to try this technique were approximately 8 years or older, and they usually ‘got it’ right away when I showed them how to use the gelatin plate and templates to mono-print. But I remember the sweet little girl on the photo that came in with her dad… she wanted to play and make a card but when she stood there with that apron on, she was a bit afraid and so I helped her all the way. She was so cute!

All and all, there was a lot of interest for my art journals and I had a real fun day!

Thanks Lena and Antoinet for sending me these photos!

**I blurred the faces of the people on the photos because I don’t know if they gave permission to publish their faces.