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!

I won’t type a long blogpost today ’cause it will be long already with a lot of photos. That is because I want to show you another week of ‘quick drawings’ that I created last month. I finished all the prompts (30! I’ll publish the last week some other time) and bound the pages into a journal that is on my desk today. Let me show you my desk first so if you came for “What’s On Your Work desk, Wednesday” and only want to view my work desk you can skip all the drawings that follow… enjoy!

WOYWW #361

And here’s ‘quick drawings’ day 19 – 25 that I created using the prompts from Roxanne Coble’s 30 days of drawing challenge

Day 19: Famous Landmark

Day 20: Beverage

Day 21: Teeth

Day 22: Earth Day

Day 23: Dessert
(I’m not much of a dessert-lover or sweet-tooth, but I love a ‘cheese plate’ – a French ‘plateau de fromage’ – with a glass of red port wine)

Day 24: Movie prop
(“The One Ring” from Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”. I posses such a ring. I wrote about it in this old blogpost from 2009)

Day 25: Something you hate (cockroaches!)

Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy your day, be happy!

Today is Wednesdays and you know what that means: ‘Tales from the Studio’ – including a photo of my workdesk.

Let’s start with a photo from my desk – I don’t think I ever had my desk photographed so messy!

(“why a picture of your desk” you may ask? That’s because of Julia from Stamping Ground.
Click the link to find out all about woyww and join the fun!)

WOYWW #248

And next… something completely different from art journaling or carving stamps…
It’s been a while since I made ATCs, but last month – when I enjoyed a ‘crafting afternoon’ with my neighbour-friend – I grabbed back to that tiny size and created this series:

Thermosfles – Vondeling – Voortplanting (Thermos – Foundling – Procreation)

… and one more

Mosaic

… I liked working small again! I found it a pleasant alternation from the art journal pages I usually work on. It also helped me to discover and develop new ideas… now that’s a bonus isn’t it?!

Have a good day ya-all,
make an ATC!

Thanks everyone, for the nice compliments about my newly-designed website (for the ones who haven’t seen it yet: I re-newed and re-designed my website. I also transfered the ‘about’ page, other information and the photoalbums with my art work from my blog to my website.)

Today is Wednesdays and you know what that means: ‘Tales from the Studio’ – including a photo of my workdesk.

Let’s start with a photo from my desk and how it lays waiting for me this morning…

(“why a picture of your desk” you may ask? That’s because of Julia from Stamping Ground.
Click the link to find out all about woyww and join the fun!)

WOYWW #246

Some may remember the ‘Grid journal’ that lays on my desk today (all posts are in this category) but it’s been almost a year since I worked in it. This little journal, however, is my ‘go to’ when I’m about to loose my Mojo and because that feeling was creeping on to me last Monday, I pulled out the journal and started cutting out random pictures (‘eyes’) to keep that little devil at a distance. I think it worked!

Six weeks passed since 2014 started. This new year is on it’s way… and so is my Chronicles art journal. Here are the pages from the first weeks:

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 1

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 2

The Chronicles of Marit 2014 – Week 3

… and that’s it for today folks. The sun is coming out just as I type this and I am longing for some fresh air… a long walk in nature is what I can do with so I’m outta here. Enjoy your day!

Is it Wednesday? Time flies.
Time to get into the studio then! Come on in and I show you a golden oldie scrapbook layout and of course you get to take a peek at my desk! Oh, and let’s throw in a brand new art journal page also…

Let us start with a “Golden Oldie” layout.

(I don’t create ‘traditional scrapbook layouts’ anymore but every Wednesday I dive into my albums and lift a ‘golden oldie.’ The layouts I pick are random, YOU – blog readers – name the number of the album and layout to show. Let me know in a comment which album you want me to open next week – to avoid that you name layouts that have already been requested, you can find a list showing the ‘free’ numbers to choose from on this page.

The next request came from Ali Wade who commented “I would love to see LO No.13 from Album 3.” When I flipped through the album, this is what I found…

The Plane, the Plane

Aaahhh… this really is ‘old school scrapbooking’… not much embellishments or ‘nonsense’ on this spread – just plain and simple photos to preserve a memory. On July 5th 2005, my son turned 13 years old. As a present, his dad gave him a scenic flight above the city. Knowing that the little plane would also bring him over our house, my beloved and I painted his name in big letters on the square that lies behind our house…. We just finished painting it, when we saw the little plane coming. (Oh, and in case you were wondering: we used whitewash for the lettering so it disappeared with the first rain-shower.)

And here is a photo of my desk how it looked this morning, taken for “What’s On My Work Desk? Wednesday.” (WOYWW is Julia’s weekly blog hop and it is THE event where crafty and artistic individuals around he world share pictures of their desks. Hop on over to Julia’s blog Stamping Ground to find out all about it)

WOYWW #232

Last week, I played with my home made gelatin plate and created a lot of monotypes. I experimented with using stencils from this book together with the gelatin plate… most images on the stencils were too big or had too small ‘holes’ to use with the paint, but the one with the head of a man worked just fine. I used the print on this art journal page and together with the handwritten journaling it turns out into this ‘heavy’ and raw art journal page.

Psyche

Hope you all have a ‘light week.’

Oh, and for Dutch people: voor de live workshop op 6 December in Eindhoven
zijn nog maar een paar plaatsen beschikbaar… wees er dus snel bij.
Je kunt alle info hier op de website vinden.

I wasn’t around last Wednesday but I am in the studio today, so come on in to hear my tale (and see my latest art.)

As always: let’s start with showing you a “Golden Oldie”

(I don’t create ‘traditional scrapbook layouts’ anymore but every Wednesday I dive into my albums and lift a ‘golden oldie.’ The layouts I pick are random, YOU – blog readers – name the number of the album and layout to show. Let me know in a comment which album you want me to open next week – to avoid that you name layouts that have already been requested, you can find a list showing the ‘free’ numbers to choose from on this page.

IKE requested the golden oldie layout that I am about to show by saying: “I would like to make a request please… ALBUM 5… No. 5 since 5 is my lucky number.”

I found one of my fave scrapbook layouts there: Dialogue

There’s quite a story to this layout!
You can find that, along with the complete ‘dialogue’ text and detail photo’s, in this old blogpost from December 2008.

If YOU want to request a ‘golden oldie’: you can find the list of layouts to choose from HERE. Let me know in a comment which album you want me to open up and which layout you want me to show next time…

Wednesday is also another “What’s On My Work Desk? Wednesday.” WOYWW is Julia’s weekly blog hop and it is THE event where crafty and artistic individuals around he world share pictures of their desks. So let us take a look at my desk today.

WOYWW #230

See that book on the left? It is the Dutch edition of Dawn DeVries Sokol‘s book “Art Doodle Love” (The Dutch version is called “This Is Me,”  which is totally weird as that is also an English title. Why translate a book into Dutch and give it ANOTHER ENGLISH title???) Anyway, I had a voucher left over from my birthday and I decided to buy this book. I just had to have it – and that has a special reason because last week I received an email from Dawn saying:

Hello! One or more of your pages have been selected for inclusion in my next book, tentatively titled “A World of Artist Journal Pages”.

WOWZAH!! This is some news – and I received that email only a few days before my  post about me being published in THIS BOOK came online. Yes, I feel blessed and honoured!

Now you would think that all the excitement lead to the next, bright, spread in my art journal that I am about to show. These pages indeed look bright and happy. However, they are from the week before…

The Chronicles of Marit – Week 42

I hope your day (week!) is bright and happy!

P.S. Thanks to all who send me emails to check on me and my family after the storms that hit the Netherlands. The storm mainly hit the coastline – the west of the Netherlands – and since I live more inland, we did not have the heaviest wind overhere. My beloved and I even went for a long walk across the meadows – walking on paths with big trees growing next to it – enjoying the wind. We learned only later that the storm had been that bad and that accidents had happen in Amsterdam… but we are fine here, we do not even miss a roof tile…

*****Please support FEATURING magazine.
Donate a tweet or facebook status update here: http://thndr.it/15OjQip

Today is another Wednesday so grab a cup of tea – or maybe hot chocolate – curl up on the couch and listen to my…

 ..

“Golden Oldies”

(I don’t create ‘traditional scrapbook layouts’ anymore but every Wednesday I dive into my albums and lift a ‘golden oldie.’ The layouts I pick are random, YOU – blog readers – name the number of the album and layout to show. Let me know in a comment which album you want me to open next week – to avoid that you name layouts that have already been requested, you can find a list showing the ‘free’ numbers to choose from on this page.

Because nobody requested a golden oldie scrapbook layout last week, I choose one myself. I went back to my early blogging years to see what I posted on October 16 (today’s date.)
I started blogging in 2008, but that was in November… so I moved on to the next year and found a post on October 16th, 2009 This was the scrapbook layout I showed back then:

Music tapes

[This layout was made from a sketch. You can find that sketch, as well as more detail photos of this layout, in the old blogpost.]

This layout is #18 stored in album 6. If YOU want to request a ‘golden oldie’: you can find the list of layouts to choose from HERE. Let me know in a comment which album you want me to open up and which layout you want me to show next week…

Now that we are in the studio… let us take a look at my work desk because it is yet another “What’s On My Work desk? Wednesday.” WOYWW is Julia’s weekly Wednesday blog hop and it is THE event where crafty and artistic individuals around he world share pictures of their desks.

WOYWW #228

Ha… not much going on here… but take a turn and look to the right…

… there’s a LOT going on on the closet there.

So this is where the action is taking place today.
Here is a closer look.

Do you see that stencil-book that my son gave me for my birthday?
He bought it in Paris and I am totally in love with it! The stencils inside are so different from what you normally see and absolutely gorgeous to use on art journal pages. The image of the girl is from one of those stencils, and I used another stencil in my Chronicles art journal a while ago… (No, that is not what you think… look closer at the man. Those are spray bottles with ink!)

The Chronicles of Marit – Week 40

And that’s it for today then… again, not a long blogpost.
Not much text anyway… but I know that is how most WOYWW-hoppers like it. I will try to visit a whole bunch of your desks also today sweeties, see ya!

Time flies… yet another Wednesday, yet more tales from the studio then…

First, there is today’s golden oldie scrapbook layout

(I don’t create ‘traditional scrapbook layouts’ anymore but every Wednesday I dive into my albums and lift a ‘golden oldie.’ The layouts I pick are random, YOU – blog readers – name the number of the album and layout to show. Let me know in a comment which album you want me to open next week – to avoid that you name layouts that have already been requested, you can find a list showing the ‘free’ numbers to choose from on this page.

John W. asked me to open album 2 and lift layout #10 from it – so I flipped through the pages of that album and at the given page I found this really old scrapbook ‘spread’ (a double-paged layout) that I made in 2006 or so…

Zomer in Zeeland (“Summer in Zeeland”)

Zeeland is the province/district I grew up… and as the name suggests; this region lays near the sea. I combined all sorts of photos on this spread: old ones (me as a little girl and with my friends when we were teens) as well as more recent ones (my son at that same beach.)

If YOU want to request a ‘golden oldie’: you can find the list of layouts to choose from HERE. Let me know in a comment which album you want me to open up and which layout you want me to show next week…

Now that we are in the studio… let us take a look at my work desk ’cause it is “What’s On My Work desk? Wednesday,” Julia’s weekly Wednesday blog hop. WOYWW is THE event where crafty and artistic individuals around he world share pictures of their desks.

The small desk in front of the window, where I usually create, is kinda empty this morning. The big desk however shows all the more… I played with my stencils yesterday (I got some new ones for my birthday, yay!) I had major fun and soaked all kinds of paper backgrounds in ink… I left the last one on the table to dry yesterday evening and this morning I found my desk looking like this.

WOYWW #227

I have not shown you the pages I made in my Chronicles art journal for a long time… so let me catch up a little bit and show you some…

The Chronicles of Marit – Week 34

The Chronicles of Marit – Week 35

The Chronicles of Marit – Week 36

One more thing before I hit the ‘publish’ button… have you seen that widget in the side menu, counting down the days??? It says “12 days left” and “14% completed.”

You guessed it… that number has to go up to 100% and to do that
I NEED YOUR HELP!!!

You probably know that I am the founder of FEATURING magazine. The magazine has a big campaign in the make, starting with a THUNDERCLAP on October 21… but we have to reach the goal of 500 supporters on that date to make it happen. We have only 12 days left to reach that goal and therefore we can use every vote!

Now I could give you a long expanation about the what and how, but I won’t do that here… you can find an explanation HERE.

Read it? Wanna help? Then please  visit our Thunderclap page and donate a tweet or Facebook status update to help us reach our goal!!!

Thanks  – and enjoy your day dear ones.
Make some mess on your desk!

Today is a special day, so I keep it short and sweet – come on in and I’ll tell you why…

Here’s today golden oldie scrapbook layout that makes it clear why today is special.

(I don’t create ‘traditional scrapbook layouts’ anymore but every Wednesday I dive into my albums and lift a ‘golden oldie.’ The layouts I pick are random, YOU – blog readers – name the number of the album and layout to show. Let me know in a comment which album you want me to open next week – to avoid that you name layouts that have already been requested, you can find a list showing the ‘free’ numbers to choose from on this page.

I knew I had this golden oldie scrapbook layout somewhere and I digged it from the archives to show to you today (John W., your ‘golden oldie request’ will have to wait ’till next week)

Yes, right… it is my birthday today… and not just any birthday – I turn (oh-my-goodness-should-I-say-it-is-it-really-so???) fifty.

50

Ouch.

This is not a day to write a long blogpost, so I just show you how my desk looks this morning for “What’s On Your Work desk Wednesday.” (If you have no idea what I am talking about, I recommend you click the link and hop on over to Julia’s blog to find out all about woyww.)

I took this photo from another angle than I usually do so you can see what is going on in the background as well.

WOYWW #226

One last announcement:
the online art journal workshop LET IT LOOSE starts at the end of the month!

October 28 – December 5; 2013

Find all the info and/or register HERE

Enjoy your day dear ones!

Wednesday… “Into the Studio” day… time seems to fly! I did spend quite some time in my studio last week and my work desk is still loaded with stuff (see the photo at the end of this post.) I also spend time at the big diner table in our living room, playing with my homemade gelatin plate. Lots of you were curious about that plate, so come on in and I show you what I created with it.

First there is the Wednesday’s golden oldie scrapbook layout – lifted from one of my old scrapbook albums.

(I don’t create ‘traditional scrapbook layouts’ anymore but every Wednesday I dive into my albums and lift a ‘golden oldie.’ The layouts I pick are random, YOU – blog readers – name the number of the album and layout to show. Let me know in a comment which album you want me to open next week – to avoid that you name layouts that have already been requested, you can find a list showing the ‘free’ numbers to choose from on this page.

The request came from IKE from Ike’s World – who commented last week and asked me to open album 3 and show layout 5. IKE had not looked at the list with layouts that are ‘still free to request’ though… because I showed layout 5 from album 3 in this post already.

Sooo… I got inventive, and turned the numbers around… I took out album 5 and looked for the third layout.

When I saw that layout, the first thing that came to mind was to cheat and show you another one instead, because I so do NOT like this layout… but I have to accept that not everything I create is perfect and I do want to be honest about that. I made this  layout in April 2009 and showed it here on my old blog with some extra detail photos… So here’s for you IKE, from album 5, layout 3.

Oh, and John W. too requested ‘golden oldies’ last week that I already showed before… and the numbers are such, that I cannot ‘turn them around’… so John (and all others) please look at the Golden Oldies: LIST of LAYOUTS to see which layouts/numbers were published in the golden oldies series before already.

Remember the home made gelatin plate I made last week?

Lots of you were curious about that… I do have the recipe to create such a gelatin plate so if you are interested in making one yourself, send me an email at marit[at]maritspaperworld[dot]com and I email you the recipe.

I LOVE creating mono types… it is one of those techniques that cannot go wrong and always leave you with something beautiful, not matter how uninspired you feel… Really, you just throw some paint onto the plate, place a template or ‘draw’ some lines with a stick, press your paper on the plate ‘et voila’…

And here’s my desk how it looked on Tuesday at the end of the afternoon – I did not have time to clean up after me (which I usually do) because I was late to cook diner… I quickly snapped a photo as I have an appointment on Wednesday morning and will not be able to do it then.. so here’s for ‘What’s On Your Work desk. Tues- errmmm… Wednesday

WOYWW #225

I will show you good pictures of my finished art journal pages – the Triptych and the Chronicles Spread – in later posts so if you’re eager to see these, I recommend you keep an eye on my blog or Facebook page.

Last but not least:

When there is sufficient interest to form a group, I plan on teaching the
on-line art journal workshop “Let it Loose” again this fall.
The lessons are available both in Dutch and in English.

This workshop will loosen you up and take you a step further in creating your own, unique art journal pages. You’ll learn some basic writing techniques to improve your journaling and you will get tips and techniques to use your own handwriting (You dislike your own handwriting? You might be surprised what you can do with it!) Furthermore, you will learn art techniques like working with collages, paint, colors, gesso and gel medium.

For more information visit the shop (For Dutchies: click on the
language button in the top menu on the site to read it all in Dutch)

Because this workshop is much more fun if you can share your work and experiences with others,
a minimal number of 7 participants is required.

If you are interested, please send me an email:
marit[at]maritspaperworld[dot]com

I will collect your names/email addresses and as soon as the required number of seven participants is reached you will get a message. I will then activate the store and we’ll pick a starting date.

I did not plan such a long blogpost when I started writing – sorry Julia… I will stop writing now! Hope you all have a good day!