Huge GiveAway Pre-Announcement!

My blog is nearing it's 500th post. 500. I can hardly believe i got so far. I'm proud of myself. And of all my readers. Those who just recently found my blog and those who are with me from the start. I love all. Those who only read and those who leave comments and emails. You are all appreciated!

And now the blog is almost reaching the very big 5-0-0.
Can't let that go by in silence.
So i'm thinking GIVEAWAY. Major Giveaway.
To celebrate 5 times 100, there will be 5 (!) giveaway packages. I'm not sure yet if they will be given away all at once at the 500th post, or some before that, as sort of a count down, but one thing is for sure, there will be a lot of goodies up for grasp!

So stay tuned, tell all your friends, or if you want to increase your chances, keep it a secret! ;)
Counting down...

Cute stamps

Bought during my trip to Amsterdam. Cute tiny stamps with 3 stamppads all with four colors of ink!

(Hema is the name of the store. Sort of department store, large but not huge, fast changing inventory, great home decor items with lovely colors and designs and wonderful office/school supplies. I wish NY had a Hema!)

Ohoh...

More new hardware needed. Just when you think you have everything up and running with a new desktop computer, of course there's something else. My camera broke down. Ohoh. I knew it was going to happen, i have it for a long time already and noticed it sometimes just made up strange color combinations. Now it just makes up colorful photos by itself. It has something creative, but i do also need it to take pictures of what i want to capture.
Got to say goodbye and get a new camera. It's time.
I do have some other things already photographed and never shown on my blog before, so there's still posts coming with pictures, but there are also new felted friends that need to be shot to be able to appear on the blog.
Ok, tomorrow i'll go camera shopping.

Sunday Collages

As promised, i have taken pictures of the pages from my collage journal. Since it is so thick it didn't fit under my scanner anymore and i had to put a piece of glass on top to keep the pages flat. This doesn't improve on the quality of the photos. I'm sorry about that. But still, here are the first four pages for your viewing pleasure!

1. This page was shown (in a smaller size) on my blog before. Back then there was a blank space on the lower right corner. Now a cute shiny dog found it's way there. The small photo on the left page shows me with my mom and older brother. If you could see my face close up, haha! I think i was looking into the sun and maybe i wasn't having a very good day, i don't look amused. (will post a close up of the picture another time, just to make you laugh)
The stamp on the left page is a very old Dutch stamp, from way before the Euro time, when there still was the good old Gulden currency and the face of the former Queen Juliana. The monkey is a vintage sticker i found in one of my old school workbooks.

2. Fabric scraps adorn the right side. The collage photo on the top right of the left page is a small version of an oversized collage i made a long time ago. A bigger version can be seen in my gallery pages. The photo on the right page is Woogie, a crafty creation of mine in front of a estate garden backdrop. Large version appeared on my blog before too.

3. I like doing color coordinated collage pages. (you will notice as more pages follow) This is a somewhat blue/brown composition. The deer and bird image is an illustration i did called 'i dreamt about a forest'. The Asian girl sits on a striped fabric swatch. The borders on the left and right came from the packaging of a set of candles. I love great designed packaging!

4. As i said, packaging. I am a sucker for packaging. The Pillsbury dough boy is something you don't have in the Netherlands, so when i was here in the States on one of my trips i had to get the package of Banana Bread with the cute dough person on it! Celestial Seasonings is just great tea and when there is a pack with a sleeping panda i have to get it.
Mona Bitterkoekjes Pudding. How to translate that for the non Dutchies out there? First of all, now that i don't live there anymore i really miss all the wonderful puddings and yogurts the supermarkets sell there. Mona is a brand with lovely (large) puddings. Bitterkoekjes are somewhat oldfashioned cookies (shown on the box) which they incorporated into the pudding. Nice!

As always, comments are very welcome. Questions about what you see are welcome too!
More pages next Sunday, so collage lovers, stay tuned!

New Hardware

My laptop screen was not feeling well!
It was sooo time for me to get a new computer. It arrived yesterday. Sleek, shiny and full of power. I love it. Got a wonderful working screen too.

What i really don't love is Vista. C'mon Microsoft. I didn't ask for a new windows version, that was your decision. Why not make it somewhat more compatible with XP? You know everyone has to make that switch.
Anyways, the last two days i have been working on getting my files from my old laptop onto my new comp, re-installing programs and so on. I am not a huge whizzkid, but i do know quite a lot about how to work with computers, but still i had some struggles getting all my email files from Outlook Express into the new Windows mail (OE doesn't run on Vista) and installing all my fontfiles was a total disaster. After hours of frustration i now found a crazy time consuming workaround, but at least i will be able to have my beloved fonts again. But during that struggle i accidentally deleted some standard windows fonts too and they seem to be really gone now. Oops. Got to find something to fix that. Fixed! Happy again.
Well, besides that it seems that i'm getting a good start, email is back and up and running, favorites are where they belong, photoshop and illustrator are working, most of my files are transferred.
Just a couple more files and then cleaning up my laptop. Yeah, the screen is not how it's supposed to be, but the machine itself still works (a bit slow, esp now that i have this new supadupa fast huge harddrive computer to compair!). The laptop will be used by my Love for his music in his studio. Recycling baby!

Sneak Preview Book

When you think you're done, there is always some more unexpected work still to be done.
A couple of additional projects were needed to fill the pages of my upcoming book, so i found myself thinking of new things to add again. Here is a sneak preview of what i'm doing. (another one here)
I so hope it gets the needed approval. Planned release date is still fall of this year as far as i can see now.
Yesterday i received the first draft layouts for the project pages and it's making me really excited. It's starting to look like an actual book!

Something Orange

Happy Queensday to all Dutchies out there!
This is the first time in my 31 years that i won't be there to celebrate. Besides this post i'm gonna try not to even think about it.
So in honor of Queensday this is my orange post. A blittle bit sad. My all time favorite bowl did not make it in one piece from storage in Amsterdam to my new home in New York. And i was so looking forward having it here.
Hooray for superglue. I got it all back together. Not completely smooth, so i won't be eating my noodles from it anymore. Now it's just a decorative bowl i guess.
Happy Q-day!

Raining all day

It's raining all day here. No fun. What better to do than get to work on the promise i made to make pictures of the collage pages inside my beloved collage journal?

While going through the pages i started to think how to actually go about doing this. It's a project on its own. I did decide to just show everything! All pages. The ones i absolutely love and the ones i think could have turned out better. Maybe hearing what my visitors think will even change my mind on how i feel.
All these pages won't be piled into one blogpost obviously. I'm thinking of picking a certain day each week to post a couple of pages.
Then there is the question if i should talk about the pages. Like the process of making the collage, where i found particular scraps or images, some pages have messages or themes, others are just collections of images.
Should i talk or should i just show the pages and shut up? ;)
Not sure about this last question. What is sure is that as of next week i'll be showing off the collage pages! Maybe Sunday is the perfect day to do so each week. Sunday for collages.

Now, can the rain stop please? I want the sunshine back!

It's been a long time

Since i last did some decent embroidery work.
I did do some detail work in the projects for my upcoming book, but that was just some stitches and lines here and there.
I enjoyed taking out my pink embroidery hoop and spend a bit of time working on this embroidered kokeshi doll. It's based on an illustration i did for another project and it was well suited to use as a pattern for embroidery. Not sure what i will use it for or if i will use it for anything for that matter, but it did put me in the mood to draw up some more patterns and do some more embroidery work. Wonderful way to stay productive while lounging in front of the tv.

Gansevoort and streetart

Just the other day we met up with some old and new friends and had a very delicious dinner and cocktails at the restaurant of the Gansevoort hotel and afterwards went upstairs to the rooftop bar for even more cocktails! Lots of fun and a bit of a hangover the day after... oops...




Me and Love arrived a bit early so we went for a stroll through the meatpacking district and came across this huge piece of wallart! I don't know the artist, but how i love and appreciate discovering great streetart. Which reminded me of my walks through Amsterdam on the hunt for new pieces. And how i still have a lot of unshown discoveries on my hard drive. So added to my to show on my blog list. Maybe a couple pics on a weekly blog post or something.