I do hope you enjoyed your Easter days? Mine were filled with sunshine, crocheting, love, laughter and a thrilling bicycle race (more about that further in this post) Oh, and a little bit of creating on Monday as there were birthdays coming up and handmade postcards needed to be made.

So what’s on my desk right now?

WOYWW #516

I was cutting out that ‘doll on rollerskates’ to use in my art journal. The photo behind that is a news photo of the winner of the Amstel Gold Race (a bicycle race) – we watched the race last Sunday and especially the last part of the race was thrilling… as a friend called it: “edge of your seat stuff!” (watch this short video of the last 1.5 kilometers on Eurosport if you’re curious now) and of course that event needs to be memorized on my next Chronicles spread!

On the photo to the right you can see my Chronicles art journal laying stand by, the page partly seen is the one I made a while ago. Here it is in it’s full glory

The Chronicles of Marit 2019 – Week 15

And here are those birthday cards I spoke about… fun, bright and happy collage postcards

this one is for Karin, an old childhood friend

and the next one is for Guus, my son’s girlfriend (the sweetest, nicest, awesome-est girl he could choose – I must have done something right raising him!)

I’m signing off now… when you read this on Wednesday, I will probably be somewhere in the midst of cleaning the apartment. Can you picture me standing on stepladder with a scarf around my hair, red-faced and sweaty armpits? (NO, I won’t take a selfie!)
May you have a beautiful RELAXED Wednesday, see ya soon.

Suddenly I was wide awake!
I blinked with my eyes – yep, still there…
I wondered what this could be…
and then it hit me – it was a vibe!
Someone had sent me a vibe!

Now I was really curious!
What kind of vibe would it be?
In any event a fun, positive vibe for its color was so bright!
I jumped out of bed, took a leap and then I caught him.

My oh my… it was a cleaning vibe! YAY!
I don’t know who send it to me, but THANK YOU!!!
It was just the one I needed!

I used it well during the day, and it shrank to just an eeny meeny little vibe.
I layed it beside the computer so it could rest. I have the feeling it will be
strong enough tonight to take off again, and I’ll send it to someone else
who needs it. (Jenneke perhaps? Keep your eyes open tomorrow girl!)

Do you expect photo’s of a clean house now?
I didn’t take one… but I have some artwork from last weekend to show you!

(Remember: you can click on each image to enlarge for a better view!)

The new prompt at A Year in the Life of an Art Journal is up!

As always, the prompts are designed for you to take all or parts of the
three part prompt and use the idea as a jumping off point for YOUR art!!
Use the songs as inspiration, create your piece as the prompt applies to you
and use the off the wall product/techniques to stretch yourself a bit!

THE PROMPT: Promises
THE SONG: Run Devil Run by Kesha
PRODUCT/TECHNIQUE: The poison symbol

As you know, I’m a guest host at AYITLOAAJ and I make a page with
each prompt to inspire the participants. There’s something strange
going on with my pages though… at the beginning of the year I made
a square book especially for these prompts and the pages all seem to
turn out a bit like record album covers.
They don’t look like my ‘normal’ art journal pages at all…
well, never mind what they look like, here’s my contribution for this prompt.

Run devil run

(21 x 19,5 cm - 8.3 x 7.7 inch)

I had the image of the cartoon (I think she’s called ‘Electra’?)
and I found it very fitting and complementary for the song lyrics.
The background is painted black, white watersoluble crayons for the ‘light’
behind the figure, the title is written with sharpie markers and the border
is made with puffy paint.

Birthday card for my uncle

(approximately 15 x 15 cm - 6 x 6 inch)

See those ‘waves’??? I carved my own ‘wave stamp’ and used clear embossing
powder. After spraying the dark blue mist over it, I wiped it away from the
waves and it left me with this image! The powder wasn’t really neat on the ink,
but I love the effect it gives with the blue ink over it… like foam bubbles!

Last but not least…

The Chronicles of Marit 2011 – week 32

(30 x 21 cm - 11.8 x 8.3 inch)

My son came home from vacation (Portugal & Spain)  last week and gave
me a set of postcards. They all contain images of the mosaic tiles from the
‘Mudéjar Palace’ in Sevilla and they are sooooo beautiful!
I didn’t want to cut them, so I scanned some of the patterns to print.
I used the pieces as a border. He also bought me a Spanish teaspoon –
it’s kind of a gimmick between him and me. Whenever he is on vacation,
he buys me a teaspoon! (My wicked collection ‘teaspoons Nout bought
me as a souvenir’ is up to ten now!) The spoon came in the little pocket
which is glued to the right. Ofcourse I used my hand-carved alphabet
and number stamps (see former post) for the dates.

I will be back with more (I hope) later this week!
Oh, and Dutch girls: enjoy the sunshine!

It’s the unfinished page
I made for A Year in
the Life of an Art Journal.

I wrote in this blogpost
how I struggled with the
prompt, and in the end
I left the page unfinished
and moved on…

… to come back to it
last weekend!

I had some spare time and decided to start working on the AYITLOAAJ
prompt for July 30th… that’s a bit early maybe, but it bothered me that
I skipped the last one and I wanted to really be in time with a page for the
next prompt and have a page to show by the end of July.
After all, I am a guest host at A Year in the Life of an Art Journal! (For the
curious ones: my prompts will be up in September and November)

So I took my ‘A Year…’ art journal and yep, I came across that unfinished
‘thing’ again. I almost flipped the page, but I can’t stand ‘unfinished bussiness’
so I hold still and looked at it for a while.

Fresh eyes – and I suddenly knew what to do!

The title of the prompt was ‘Broken’…
this page was unfinished and ‘broken’…

So I ‘repaired’ it!

(21 x 19,5 cm - 8.3 x 7.7 inch)

It still isn’t the best page I ever made, but it’s OK now.
(and yes, I finished the next one too. I’m more satisfied
about that page but it won’t be online before July 30th)

My son was here last week (he left last Friday for a holiday in Portugal)
and we took the opportunity to watch one documentary/film each night
from his DVD box ‘The Blues’ (Each movie is made by a different director,
Scorsese, Eastwood etc. and handles a period or aspect of the blues)

We also had the movie ‘Cadillac records’ on DVD so we watched that too.

“Cadillac Records is a 2008 musical biopic written and directed by
Darnell Martin. The film explores the musical era from the early 1940s
to the late 1960s, chronicling the life of the influential Chicago-based
record-company executive Leonard Chess, and the musicians who
recorded for Chess Records” – Wikipedia –

Being all into ‘the blues’ last week, I couldn’t help that some things
came straight on the weekly page of my chronicles. I glued the image
of Adrien Brody there because he plays ‘Lenny Chess’ in the movie…

The Chronicles of Marit – Week 29

(30 x 21 cm - 11.8 x 8.3 inch)

The lovely postcard I received last week (You can click on the image
to enlarge) is made by the awesome and talented Deb Christensen
from Dye-ing to be yours.  I just had to include it on the page!
I made a plastic envelope to put it in.

(30 x 21 cm - 11.8 x 8.3 inch)

Here’s the page without the postcard. You can still read the journaling
and guess what was hidden behind the mermaid…?
A sneaky scuba diver! Love it!

Last week, my blogfriend Sandra celebrated her 40th birthday.
I am waaaaaay older than her, and so are my braincells ’cause I had
another date in mind… to be honest, I thought her birthday was today!

Anyway, the card that I made her is double fitting.
That is from ME (with braincells as wrinkled as the face of that woman)
to SANDRA (with shiny and joyful and hard working braincells)

Happy NON-birthday dear!

(21 x 15 cm – 8.3 x 5.8 inch)

You noisy ones probably want to read the quote that I journaled on the card.
I don’t want to have you all hanging sideways in front of the computer screen
to try and read it, so here it is:

‘Het komt er niet op aan hoe oud men is doch hoe men oud is’

It’s a bit difficult to translate, but it has more or less the following meaning:
“It doesn’t matter what your age is but how you come to age/how you
act on your age.”

And that was it for now dear ones!
Thanks for stopping by, I always love to see you come visit and comment.
I know you love to see me visiting YOUR blogs too, but I have little time
at the moment so it may take a while before I’m caught up in blog reading.
I will try though, sweeties, I will try…

Have a nice week!