That last journal contains ‘fold out’ pages and that’s what I want to show you today, ’cause when you have pages in a journal that fold out it means that several images go work together….

Here’s the spread I created back in November 2017. I added lines so you can now see where the middle of the book is and what part was fold out when I created it.

While creating this spread I already had the folding in mind… I glued the photo of the man inside the line so he would be covered when fold. Although I did not yet know what the next page would bring, I thought that particular part of a map (of the island I live on) would be a nice part to work together with whatever the next page would bring so I glued that on the spot where the back of the next page connect.

When I started working on the next spread, I first folded the page and found an image that would work with both the former spread (connecting with the map-image)…

… and the spread as a whole.

It’s quite a puzzle when you work with folding pages but it’s fun! This spread/page folds out on just one side. I also have journals with pages folding out on both sides – which makes for three spreads to combine together and once, years ago, I made a little book with transparency sheets, which was a big challenge as all the pages and images were visible and had to work together.

I’d say: if you like to try something like this in your journal, start with one folding side. If your journal has no folding pages, just use tape to add an extra piece of paper to your page.

Have a great weekend,
fold a page,
Create!

First, I had a dentist appointment and after that we went to view a house to see if it would be a place we want to live. Yes, we’re planning on moving and are looking for a new home. The apartment we live in is not a place to stay. Although it is a spacious place, it is a concrete block built in the 1970s and therefor very noisy, which means we have a lot of noise pollution from the neighbors and the neighbourhood we live in.

Anyway, we went for a house viewing yesterday but I had a tendency to immediately turn around the minute I walked in… the place was a lot smaller and the balcony made me sad… right at the road and too small to make it comfy, not a place to sit in the Summer. We will probably spend all winter here, listening to the top neighbour walk around, shifting furniture and turn in her bed at night. Keep your fingers crossed we find some place nice to live soon.

This experience made me remember the art journal spread I created a couple of weeks ago. It’s about a neighbourhood that I would love to live… the nicest big Dome Church called the ‘East-church’ stands right in the middle and the streets and houses are beautiful. It’s just a lovely neighbourhood.

I called my spread: Oh, to live near the East Church!

Today is a grey day that I plan to spend in my atelier… at least that is a nice place to be!
I hope you spend your day in a nice place too, thanks for stopping by.

I looked at the art journal spreads that I had not posted thus far, thinking I could write a blog post but the first Chronicles spread in line to post is a page on which I cheer about Leonard Cohen’s latest cd… and I was unable to resign myself to write about that yet.

But here’s a page I created some weeks ago in my ‘Zeeuwse Ziel’ journal (photos of this new bound journal in this post.) It’s an appropriate page to show today, ’cause the text says “That place, where everything is allright.”

I’m in the right place.
The spirit just isn’t here yet,
but it will
in time, it will

Busy, busy, busy… tomorrow starts my Top 2000 Creative & Musical blog party (join us if you are in for a crafty and musical week) and I am creating spreads with the Top 2000 songtitle list right beside me to choose the songs from…  my desk is stuffed with all kinds of materials I could probably need on my art journal pages (and there’s more in my closets, how many tools and materials can one have…???) I even needed to adjust the font on my labeled photo (smaller) to get the text on…

I hope you can still read it  (you can click on the photo to enlarge)

WOYWW #290

The spread I’m working on is with a song that will be on the radio on the third day of the Top 2000 so I blurred it for now (it will be published on my blog December 29.)

Next weeks’ Wednesday, the Top 2000 will still be in full swing and reach its climax on New Years eve, so today is the last photo of my workdesk for What’s On Your Workdesk? Wednesday this year. I usually take a blogbreak in January, but I definitely will be back to join woyww in 2015.
I wish you all happy holidays and a wonderful and creative New Year!

What’s On My Workdesk? Wednesday is a weekly blogseries/hop hosted by Julia in the United Kingdom and lots of crafty people share photos of their desks every Wednesday.

Here’s one last art journal page to close the ‘normal’ posts with this year…

Remember this background? (see this post)

Here’s the finished version (the text is from the song “Oceaan” by the Dutch band Racoon)

Enjoy today, enjoy tomorrow, enjoy the holidays and KEEP ON ROCKIN’ IN THE FREE WORLD!

Wednesday, really?
Is it Wednesday again?
Allrightie… into the studio we go then!

As always to start with: the golden oldie 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 and what layout I should show… )

This week’s request came in via my facebook page where my cousin Mirjam asked me to open album 5 and show layout #15.

Is it a coincidence that I find yet another layout with my friend Lena on? Or are all these random chosen layouts where Lena keeps poppin’ up lately trying to tell me something? Shall we get together soon ‘meis’??

I can't seem to get the colours of this layout quite right 
on the photo ... it looks brighter in real life.

This layout was created in 2007 (?) and I am surprised to see flowers on it – I hardly ever used flowers and although I am a child of the sixties, I still am more drawn to the ‘power’ part then the ‘flower’ part of that era. 😉  The black and white photo – showing Lena (with sneakers) an me (with high heeled sandals that I really could walk on. I was a pro in walking on high heels! Now that I’m older, I choose comfort instead – but where am I going with this story – oh yes, the photo…) must be  from the early eighties seeing the clothes we wear and yes, Lena and I are friends thát long (even longer.)

…and look at that HANDSTITCHING!
I use the sewing machine all the time lately but I cannot remember when I hand stitched for the last time. Maybe it was on this layout? Here’s a detail photo.

Fast-forward to this week… Instead of working on index cards, I created an art journal page in my ‘Zeeuwse Ziel’ journal for Glue it Tuesday. This hand-bound journal has pages that fold, so here’s three photos from the same pages… (You may have seen the right page already in last Friday’s post – the left page is new.)

Left and right pages (same size)

… with right page folded open

Here’s the left page ‘all on its own’

WOYWW #206

Last but not least – a photo from my workdesk for What’s On Your Work desk Wednesday.  The headquarters of this event can be found on Stamping Ground, home of the lovely Julia, where you can also find more explanation about woyww if you have no idea what I’m talking about.

I show a peculiar desk today as it has my beloved’s black jeans on… he asked me if I could repair the holes that were in his pockets… HA, now that I type these words, they sound rather funny, ambiguous…  but you will understand there were REAL holes and I CLOSED them. 😀

What is on your workdesk today?
I’m gonna make me a pot of tea and start nosing around on everyone else’s desks… see you!

Good morning and good Friday you all!

Last week, my book title haiku was in honor of our new King. This week I have again a Dutch
‘event-related’ haiku. May 4 & 5 are “memorial days” in The Netherlands. On May 4th, our country memorizes the victims of war (WW II as well as all other wars) and “V-day” (‘victory in Europe’ or ‘freedom day’) is celebrated on May 5th.

First, here’s my booktitle haiku.

* "Short American" is a phrase that was used for a certain haircut
that became popular in the fifties - it refers to the type of haircut
that American soldiers/allies had.

This haiku is submitted to Haiku my Heart Friday. Go to Recuerda Mi Corazon to find a link-list of all the other haiku lovers.

In my former post I left you with a cliffhanger, remember?
I promised to show you my latest Chronicles art journal spread and the scary photos I used on those pages.

I did work in my Chronicles journal a bit, but I spend most time yesterday on playing with the gelatin plate that sat in the fridge unused for over a week… so there are all kinds of half-finished pages laying on my desk today. It looks like this.

… and yes, I glued the ‘scary photos’ on the art journal page… and I don’t mean the photo of the new king and queen 😉

I mean these:

See… that’s my son up there on the roof!
EEEEECKKKK! What did I tell ya?
Is that scary or what?!

We discovered a big water-stain on the bedroom ceiling some time ago, and when we stood in the garden and looked at the roof, it seemed as if some tiles on the roof had shoved. We were not sure if that was causing the problem though. My beloved is afraid of heights (acrophobia) and I am not much of a hero either… but my dear son was anxious to get on the roof when he heard of the leak! I know he is not a reckless guy so I let him, but still I felt it in my stomach when he went up there! The neighbours were kind enough to open their roof window so he could climb through there.

“… and is it fixed?” you might ask now. My son did not manage to get the tiles straight but he made pictures with his phone, so we could at least have a look at the problem ourselves and still keep our feet on the ground 😉 We then called a professional contractor who put the tiles straight and that should do it. It has not rained much since then, so we are not sure if it is fixed, but the weather report predict some showers in the next days so keep your fingers crossed please!

More water… in my Zeeuwse Ziel art journal

I dreamed of water and floating through a river the other day and I made the next art journal page inspired by that dream.

There is some collage-ing on this page (the ‘blobs’ are cut out of aerial photos from a swampland.) I also used dylusion spray ink, water-soluble crayons and black and white posca pens.

And that’s it for today. [Sorry, no link love… I’ll make that up to you next week.] This afternoon I intend to ‘dive into Facebook’ to find out why it is that I have a facebook page but don’t see a timeline. Neither can I become ‘friends’ with other people. I guess that all has to do with the fact that I do not have a ‘personal account’ (only a ‘page’ account, which probably is seen as ‘business’…) I hope to figure some things out so I can finally and officially ‘like you’ and become your ‘friend’! Ha!

Well, FRIENDS, may you all have a nice weekend.
Don’t forget mom!

Good Friday aftern0on you all! Yes, afternoon… I’m late today.
The weather was too nice to stay inside so my beloved and I went for a walk this morning. When we returned, I searched my book case for a book title haiku and found yet another one. (You can tell these books are really old – coming from the ‘smoking-era’ – all yellow and brown from aging and nicotine… I cannot clean the spines as these are not ‘plastic-ish’* and I would damage the paper…)

*Plastic-ish is probably a non existing word, but you know what I mean, right?

Anyway, without further ado

Haiku My Heart Friday

You foreign readers probably raise your eyebrows when your recognize the first book and read the strange translation… yep, the book is called ‘The Fellowship Of The Ring’ in English. The Dutch translation says (In de ban van de ring) “De Reisgenoten” which translates as “Travel Companions”.

For more haiku, visit Rebecca at Recuerda Mi Corazon to find the linky-list of participants on her blog.

I have not been creative at all last week, but that does not mean I have nothing to show to you…

I hand-bound this new journal a couple of weeks ago. My neighbour had altered a strange-shaped book to use as an art journal, and I liked the narrow and tall pages. I measured her book and made mine with similar sized pages (17 x 30 cm – 6.7 x 12 inch)

Here’s a better look at the spine so you can see how I bound it.

On the inside of the cover (the left side on the image) I used scrapbook design paper. I coloured some of the words and added doodles as a border.

Starting a new art journal always is a bit scary. I find that the best way for me to overcome that ‘fear’ is, to immediately start ‘doing something’ to get rid of the blank page. So I did.

I had old newspaper pages laying on my desk that I use to protect my working surface. There’s ink and paint on the newspaper and I just grabbed a scrap and glued it in my new journal. That’s one way to get rid of that staring blank page!

After that, I just glued, doodled, added tape, cut out words and stamped.

The cut out text on top of the page translates “discover the Zeeland’ Soul” (I was born in
a part of Holland that is called “Zeeland”) so I decided that would also be the title of this new book: Zeeuwse Ziel

Tammy “Daisy Yellow” Garcia started a mission to spread love via blogging this month. I like her campaign to give virtual hugs to our fellow creative bloggers – so I happily commit to posting a set of 5 or more links once a week for the month of April.

You can read all about the Link Love {a mission} HERE

Here’s the links I LOVE this week:

• I am in ooh and awe over this new painting by my bff Lena.  Since it was also her birthday last week, with my first link I send you all over to Six Lilies Studio.

•  Roben-Marie is a well-known art journaler and I, too, am a fan of her art. She uses a lot of layers and colors and has such a personal style… I love this latest page with the owl!

• Another art journaler I admire is Nathalie Nayer aka NaNa – her art is beyond amazing and I am especially fond of her Urban Sketching

• Next, I link you to Eric aka Cerulean. A blogger and artist with a very personal and recognizable style… you can tell a piece ‘is a Cerulean‘ when you see it.

• Last but not least I send you over to Neil (yep, another man!) I discovered his blog Neelz Expressionz only a couple of weeks ago – Neil designs awesome rubber stamps and masks – just click on the links in the side menu on his blog to go to those pages.

Have a nice weekend lovelies!
(Send someone some blog-love.)