On the road again

And we will be travelling in this beauty, our second home on wheels!

On our itinerary are national parks and historic places, all in and around the Rocky Mountains both in the US and in Canada, plus a few big cities like Seattle, maybe Portland, Vancouver and Calgary.

as space is limited, I will have to make do with materials I gather on the way, no problem, as I tend to see possibilities in almost everything :-)

So except for scissors and a new journal, some needles and fabric snippets, I take nothing with me. For in case of emercengy there are Joann's, Michaels, bookstores and all other 'heavenly' shops that we are missing so dearly on this island... My photoshop programm is certainly something I will miss most, but maybe I can download one of the free programms on DH's laptop, maybe. For sure I will shoot plenty of pictures and I will try to post about my adventures very regularly!!

oh, and maybe I should take my Spaceball tool with me, we'll see! On our way home we will have a stopover in Miami again and I look forward very much to the most beautiful sea-motives that are copperinlaid in the granito floor in the transit part. I made just a few shots of them last October, and have been using these images ever so often in my digital collages. You can see one of this motives in the third picture which is actually a fence I saw in Marigot (the capitol of the French part of our island) and the sea motive is in blue behind it.

The last photo is composed of a picture of the hillside behind our house as seen from the veranda, then one of these delicious mango's and finally some stamped motives:

My life here, my art, all in one.

See you!

I love...

Gates and fences

and spot them everywhere I go

fancy and well maintained

(Kura Hulanda Curacao)

or simple and dilapidated
(Grand Case St. Martin FWI)

artful
(Miami Beach FL)

stylish and functional
(Public Library Miami City FL)

or now a remnant of busy days gone by
(Saba DWI)

What do you love?

Thanks for reading my blog!

Monday collage

Take care, my child

Four days to go, before we start our big USA-trip! My days are now filled with a little bit of this and that, you know what I mean, all the things you have to think of before you leave home and island for a big holiday. This morning I took a walk along one of our lovely beaches, it really was fantastic, the scenery and the sky; that is certainly something I am going to miss...

But hey, what about all the new impressions and experiences that await us on our route through New Mexico, Colorado and all the way to Canada! As you can imagine I look forward to this two month-trip very much. Now off I go, packing and preparing, looking for some creativity materials to take with me, for those days when the input of inspiration simply has to be met with some output.

Have a good Monday everyone!

Today's collage

From seas to pueblo

In this digital collage I combined images of urchins, fabric printed with handcarved stamps and found objects, and a picture of a pueblo painting in the Buffalo Thunder Casino near Santa Fe

Now I know...

why I love these old metal pots and pans!!!

detail of journal pages I made before

I received the beauties above

So this is how inspiration works (with me, that is)

Thank you Nature...

for these sugar bananas,

the first ones after having planted these trees

(originating from the isle of Dominica) three years ago

for this year round beauty that always makes me happy

and for these d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s. mango's that we were
able to harvest before the wild monkeys discovered them,
thank you!!

Wait 10 more days

Santa Fe Man

Monday digital collage

It's a sunny day!

Brocante

Last week I received a great gift!

A friend who is moving into a smaller house, wants to get rid of most of her home and garden furniture and surprised me with these old metal pots and pans.

When I lived in Holland, we used to go to thriftstores and brocante-markets very regularly, but here on the island we have nothing of this kind.

Can you understand why I am so happy with these?

detail of a kettle

That patina, whether it is real or old crackled paint, I love it!

part of my new collection

These pictures are wonderful to play with in PS I guess...

Weekend...

Let's have some fun!

GPP Street Team Crusade no. 31

Michelle Ward has challenged us once again with an interesting theme:

Read all about it here and join the team if you feel challenged too: it is fun, open to everyone and you will meet such nice people there!

Thethird picture I showed in yesterday's post, was the beginning of the digital collage of today.

The possibilities it had were clear to me from the areas with high contrast in the bows and the balcony. After having photoshopped for almost a year now, the layer and blending function of the programm is beginning to feel as a tool I can handle. And for the time being there is enough to explore and play around. Shooting pictures simultaneously has changed too!

Before I started this blog, I hardly ever touched the camera, but these days I always take it with me. Because even a trip to the supermarket could bring me a surprise... One thing I am very reluctant to do until now, is taking pictures of people. Very often I see people walking or sitting along the road that are so beautiful, wearing clothes in colour combinations that really pop into your eye, but they are so picture perfect, these island people. For privacy reasons I am hesitating, have to find a solution for that, but I digress!

The above picture is an example of how I look at my surroundings these days. It was an ugly building, over there in Grand Case, but the billboard held this symbol of creativity (my definition), others say it is a symbol of eternity, but whatever it is: I like it and cropped the photo for the collage below.

Then I browsed through my picture collection and rediscovered this one, fabrics dyed, stamped and painted by 'moi', I layered it with the two mentioned before

and, after the oh so exciting playing with sliders, channels, filters and actions in PS
here it is:
Grand Case
digital collage

I hope you enjoyed this little disclosure of my process of digital collaging, I am certain there are more, much more ways to do it. In case you don't have access to Photoshop, I know there are some free photo-editing programms that might give you similar possibilities. Not sure they have all the functions, but you can always give it a try: one of them is Picnic

A nice and playful weekend everybody!

Grand Case (part II)

It could as well have been along the Cote d'Azur in France

but this, however, is a very Caribbean house!

this could be a lovely picture for one of my digital collages, mmmm, have to try it soon...

outside a little boutique: not fancy and expensive, but tasteful and happily combined

the same for this restaurant, lovely colours and shades

(to be continued)

Bonjour!

(all images are clickable)

After having enjoyed our morning coffee and toured the Colombier valley, we continued our 'sigthseeing-our-own-island' tour.

Our next goal was Grand Case, an old fishing village on the French, west side of St. Martin. While it is off season, hardly any visitors on the beach and in 'main street'; plenty to look at, to discover ánd to photograph however.

Suivez-moi...

as a true francophyle, I love little surprises like these

Grand Case is being called culinary capital of St. Martin

Always a good advice!

the island in the distance is Anguilla

Caviar d'Aubergine: delicieux!!

I feel limited by Blogger a bit, since I have so much more to show you. That will come in future posts, I promise, and in collages both paper and digital

Mapping my SXM adventures...

(click the image for details)

This map shows the biggest part of St. Maarten/St. Martin. I thought, since I post about my trips on this island on a regular basis, it would be nice to show our island map for once. Yesterday's post was about Colombier right in the middle of it, and because it is situated between the hills, you do not have the usual vista's of see and ocean that are often so stunningly beautiful and soooo turquoise. But that's why I suppose you get the offlandish feeling when you are in the Colombier valley, I think that is how the human brain works, in mental pictures and certain frames (mindmapping is the official word for it I guess). Back to the picture: the red numbered dots on the bottom and the left are diving spots. The red lines are mountain trails, of which I unfortunately did not hike any, maybe I should set that as a goal for after my vacation! The turquoise trail to the south-right side of the map is a coastal hike that is my favorite walk, I wrote about it in this post.

And: if you are a francophyle like me, and would like to see more of La Douce France on this island, come back again tomorrow for some eye-candy!

Thanks for your visit, have a wonderful Tuesday

St Martin's countryside

I invite you to join me to this beautiful valley on our island...

Last week I took a trip to Colombier, on the French part of our island. Colombier is a valley almost in the centre of the island, where you cannot see the sea or ocean, which actually makes it a very special area. As you may know St. Martin/St. Maarten is a very small island in the Antilles and it is possible to completely drive around in let's say about 2 hours. Fortunately we do have traffic jams and rush hours here, so that makes it feel like a bigger place!

The valley of Colombier has been a sugar cane plantation in the past and the basic product was used for rum production in those days. Today it is a very green and lush landscape which reminds me of certain parts of France, when you drive on the Route National which runs parallel to the autoroute du Soleil. It seems to have the same kind of feeling, of atmosphere and you can imagine I enjoyed being there.

Day at the beach

Digital collage

Have a wonderful Mother's Day everybody!

La Fonda Santa Fe

La Fonda hotel

(in the old city center of Santa Fe (New Mexico)

This hotel, like all buildings in this city, is (re)built in the mandatory Adobe-style

There is more information on Adobe here

La Fonda hotel

digital collage

Today's flowers

Since I started blogging almost a year ago, I take lots of photo's to spice up my posts. In the beginning I just posted them, but the real fun came when I learned to use Photoshop. No, I did not follow a workshop of training, and I certainly wouldn't say I am experienced, but I know far more than when I first used it...
For my digital collages I usually combine several pictures and layer them, after which I play around with several blending modes, colorchannels and opacity until the new picture looks attractive to me. I combine pictures of my paper collages, quilts, shells and other sea treasures, travels and flowers etc. and can now better than in the very beginning 'predict' (only just a little) what the outcome will be, what the effect will be like. I try to use only pictures that are made by me.
This morning I took a picture of the tuturutu flower (I only know its Papiamentu name) and layered it with a picture of one of my paper collages The first picture is what came out of this experiment!

There you go: words!

GPP Street Team Crusade No. 30 theme was on using WORDS or USING words in your creative work, journaling, painting or even photography.

Usually I just go for the eye candy and I also never ever kept a journal as an outlet of my sometimes overbusy brain! Which does not mean I have nothing to say, oh no, not at all!! Being alone in my home almost all day, I'm actually thinking without stopping, I think the whole world over, about the people I know, I meet, love and remember, what not can you think and ponder about?! So allthough words definitely are my thing, using them in my work is something I am not used to. But I made a promise to myself to at least join crusade no. 30 with one entry with words. And today I decided I had procastinated enough.

So here are my words!!

One thing I remembered from Michelle Ward's introduction to this challenge is that it does not matter what you write down, it could be anything. So when I listened to music from my blog's playlist, I just jotted down words from various songs and artist names, quickly, without too much thinking and here are the results:

from 'Hands' by Jewel

from 'Dream walking' by Toby Keith

from: 'Clocks' by Coldplay


Journal pages 6 May 2009 (all pictures are clickable)

It's history already!

(click picture for details)

SXM Carnaval 2009

digital collage made in

Photoshop