Inside and outside my house

Inside the sewing is going on; it has been quite a long time since I have made

clothes, so I started with this little baby kimono. It turned out very cute and the baby's mother was

happy to receive it. The fabric is a replica of famous Dutch traditional costume fabric

You can find the pattern here:
http://habitual.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/habitual_simplekimonov2.pdf

Then, also on the internet, I found  this tutorial and I simply had to make me one.

It does not take much time, requires not too much sewing skills and makes a nice little gift. Use them for all the small stuff in your bag, or make-up, or for money, you name it!

My next one will be in a bigger size...

and finally I want to show this gorgeous July tree (click for a better view).

This one is at the entrance of our neighborhood,

but similar trees are in bloom all over the island at the moment.

Question: does anybody know how to remove the white border around my pictures? I chose the newer, upgraded version  for writing posts, but my old 'trick' for removing the borders does not work anymore.

Anyhow: have a creative start of September!

Lotus pods...

combined with silk

Remnants of a journey (1)...

(click image to enlarge)

Digital collage

More subtle colours

(click picture for details)

Some posts ago I wrote about my attempt to work in more subtle, less

abundant colours.

At present I'm merely sewing practical stuff, but in shooting pictures

I managed to maintain this goal,

helped by the sea and our island.

Do you notice the pattern of an Agave leaf underneath the leaf that is above?

Surprise no. 1!

while walking on the beach I found these little treasures.

Sometimes there are a lot of them, sometimes nothing.

They are treasures to me, because they have holes and are ready to be sewn...

and finally this: very mundane, these spatters of paint on

the same plant, but still I like the composition.

Sometimes it is good to be without all kind of cultural stimulus,

you really 'get an eye' for beauty in the ordinary

Colours of the ocean

my daily walk was at Guana Bay today. It is situated at the east side of Sint Maarten

the high swells caused by hurricane Bill last week brought this huge fishing net ashore, this is just a detail.
It must have been a huge swell too to throw it on the beach

when I headed to my car, this giant agave plant caught my eye.
It had some beautiful surprises, which I may show in future posts...

and waiting in a traffic jam on my way home,

(yes, we do have them even on our island!), I looked to the right and

was happy to spot this! The house itself is ugly, and its surrounding even more, but this detail wanted to be noticed among all the ugliness. Seeing beauty in everyday things, it still works!

Colourful

this detail of a journal page I made last year

this flower in our garden, it is blooming year round and is called
Pride of Barbados (or tuturutu in Papiamento)

and these fabric baby balls I just finished!

Playing, anyone?

Wishing you a wonderful Sunday

Regina

Paint, paper, picture and some sewing...

I just placed a paper collage on a painted canvas board and shot a picture. Put a smaller photograph over it and played around in Photoshop CS and voila!

Merci Camille

Discovered the simple pleasure of sewing again, this has always been good therapy for me. A few friends are pregnant and I made some nice goodies today for presents. When I'm finished there will be pictures, of course!

Grand Case SXM

digital collage

An image of my favorite village on the island, combined with the spiral motive of a shell, were the inspiration for this collage

There is rest in the area again, now the threats of both tropical depression Ana and hurricane Bill are over. We can put everything on the veranda and in the garden again, making it more comfortable and cosy, until new ones develop,

or not...

Have a great day!!

Hide and Seek

My 10 days workshop about Deeper Creativity has come to an end.

I have always thought that I was pretty much aware of my personality, who I am, not always sure of myself, not that, but thinking I kind of knew myself.

It is not that by following this workshop my whole world is tumbling down, or that I feel completely lost, feet in the air as opposite of down to earth (oh I feel my English is poor at this...). But the content of the lessons introduced me to the phenomenon of Inner Self, the part of us that lies deep within us, in which we unconsciously bury the stuff we don't want to be seen on the surface of our lives.

What we see at this surface level is how we have learned to behave and feel, influenced for a very big part by our environment, our education, and the society as such, this resulting in more or less desired behaviour. The inner self seems to hold the more obscure, less beautiful parts of us and the workshop is trying to bring them out and let us eventually love our whole being (surface ánd inner self).

This is how it works:

You make a very simple collage in the morning, just a few pictures and some words. Not focused on beauty, design and all kind of other art rules, no just ripping or cutting and glueing the pictures on a small piece of paper. Then you have to let the collage 'speak' to you during the day and possibly it shows a meaning somewhere in the evening. I admit, it may sound very spiritual, and yet I feel it could work.

Now what does the collage above tell me?

My love of flowers is known to me, as is my love of colours, and to some extent my love for the unknown, possibly represented by the Chinese (?) text.

But the words were initially chosen without any meaning, I just liked the words, but on second thoughts these words seem to describe the essence of this workshop:

Hide and Seek

-what is it that lies Hidden within myself?

-and how do I Seek for it deep down?

Maybe the next collages reveal this secret source of creativity for me,

maybe ...

Getting to know my inner self

by making a small paper collage everyday, without thinking.

Yes indeed, I try to switch off that thinking and just collage.

Not in search for

nice pictures,

good colours,

the right balance and

beautiful results

This is a first one, I am not sure what it wants to tell about my life, I try to listen.

More will follow...

Sunday collage

always looking for inspiration

I saw this magnificent detail of a handrail in a Canadian museum

I combined it with this picture of

Emerald Lake

Kootenay Rockies, Alberta Canada

and played around in Photoshop until this

emerged:

Sunday

digital collage

On another note: we are preparing for bad weather that is supposed to come our way. Tropical Storm Ana is expected tonight in the early hours. Bill is still said to be a tropical storm at present, but seems to have the potential to grow into a category 3 hurricane within a few days. And surprise: a third one is forming near the coast of Africa. All these weather conditions might lead to rain (of course, lots of that), storm (strangely that is not always so), but for sure into some interruption of internet service, television, telephone and power outages.

You see, I'm not always feeling happy being here...

But on the other hand: it could be worse, far more worse, I know that and try to think of that while feeling the blues

Santa Fe Woman

I am

cutting

sewing

thinking

studying

and reading

=

trying to get into normal life again

Ages ago...

in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, near Fort McLeod in Alberta, Canada, the Blackfoot First Nations practised an effective way of hunting large numbers of buffalo at one time.

In short: herds of grazing buffalo were lured and directed into a stampede, using cairns and human decoys, which led the animals to a steep rock formation, the

Buffalo Jump.

After their fall, the legs of the buffalo were broken and they could not move forward anymore, thus enabling the hunters to kill them with their spears. Each and every part of the killed animals was used by the Blackfoot: the hide, the bones, the bone marrow, the organs.

Now this may seem very cruel today, but imagine those people living without any other source of food, imagine the harsh winters in the open plains, the need of warmth and shelter, there were no horses at that time either, just the buffalo, the people and their spears.

And, there were so many buffalo at that time, so history tells, that the green foothills looked completely brown by them.

Buffalo are hardly seen in nature nowadays, but this dramatic decrease only happened after the Europeans crossed the Atlantic and discovered the West of Canada, after they organized many huge hunting parties.

However, during the time of the Buffalo Jump the number of buffalo was kept rather constant

We visited the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump during our recent trip and I was quite impressed.

Close to the rock formation itself, there is a splendid interpretive center, where you can learn and see about those ancient times, the Blackfoot people, their way of life

Year round there are activities in and around the centre, like this Drumming & Dancing

the Head Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

Is it a blanket, a quilt?
I like the bold design and colours

Archeologists must have seen something like this
when they discovered the Buffalo Jump

This trip made me, once again, very much aware of the richdom of our times, the food choices we can make, the luxury of our homes and transport.

In 1981 the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump was established as a Unesco World Heritage site.

In more subtle colours...

click image for details!

Until today my attempt to work in less vibrant, more subtle colours seems to

be working all right, it is not as difficult as I anticipated!

Whether you, my blog visitor, like it, that's quite another thing, since I did not get any comment

on my last posts, I'm in total doubt about that...

But: this blogging is for a good deal about my development as an artist, and as such

it helps me, especially when I reread my posts, which I sometimes do. Trying to get this development clear is important for me.

In the meantime I am following a 10 days online workshop offered by Shelley Klammer. I found this free workshop about "Freeing Deeper Creativity" and decided to give it a try. Shelley compares the inward images we see just before falling asleep or having just awaked with a spontaneous collage. So far I have been making about five very quickly done paper collages, just using two images from an old magazine and some words. There are hardly directions given, one simply (for me it is not simple at all) has to listen what this collage tells.

Today I had to collage about what I did not like, which is rather tricky, as I always look at pictures for their beauty, their wonderful colours, the balancing together. But I did it, this collage is built from things I despise: two men, father and son, of an important family (they are from a line of antiquedealers, at least they think they are important, one even met Queen Juliana of the Netherlands the words in Dutch say! So what, I then think). Well, all in all this picture of these men reminds me of the Calvinistic mood that reigned in Holland in my youth and can still be found in certain regions, the attitude against people from far away, looking for a better future, the not spoken of, but always present Old Boys Networks: things I obviously hate and have buried deep inside me. Just working with this picture brings it all back, so one could say my deeper creativity is there, and it has started to get out of every nook and cranny of my soul.

We'll see where this will lead to!

Out of consideration with the two men, I will not post this collage here, but I wanted to write about this, for I consider it as much part of my development as an artist as working in more subtle colours.

See ya!!

Lake Louise

Still speechless, such beauty...

Lake Louise, 8:00 pm, two weeks ago

Banff National Park

Alberta, Canada

Yesterday's collage

(you can click the image for more details)

was made of these pictures:

we witnessed this gorgeous sunset near a place called

Head-smashed-in Buffalo Thunder

in Ft.McLeod, Alberta, Canada

It is a very special place, of which I will write a separate post one of these days
Yesterday's digital collage started with this sunset picture,

then I added

this drawing.

It is situated in the interpretive center that is part of this Unesco World Heritage site

The first result was too dull, there did'not 'happen' enough for me,

so I added this guy

which in fact was an ugly wooden statue at the entrance

of a roadside visitor center where we had coffee. When seeing it, I was immediately

intrigued by his barb of nails, seeing possibilities for use in my collages.

As I wrote yesterday, I try to make my digital collages in more subtle colours for some time. I am a selftaught PS-er, far from experienced, and by setting this goal I hope to expand my knowledge bit by bit.

One thing I''m wondering: did you like my explanation of how I compose collages?

I would love to hear from you, I really do...

Enjoy your day!

It feels so good

to be home again, to be able to use my own computer, the internet and

ps!

I started making some new digital collages, all using pictures I made during our recent trip.

Working in more subtle tones is a goal I have set, the collage below is a first attempt. Not sure how long I can follow this, because something inside of me always needs the more vibrant colours, maybe it is influenced by this Caribbean environment...

However, I do like this one, it could be a colour scheme for my winter clothes, should I be living in a more harsh climate, hah!

Tomorrow I will show the original pictures it is composed of, together with a story of one of our daytrips in Canada, so stay tuned...

Welcome back!!

May I introduce you to my daughter Laura?

Today one year ago she left the Netherlands for a year of backpacking in Australia. You can read some more in this post. The backpacking adventure came to an early stop because she got ill and eventually had to have a major surgery, of which she fortunately recovered well. Due to visits to doctors and recovering, she has been living in Cairns for the biggest part of her stay in Australia, where she made friends quite easily and has been enjoying the incredible beauty of the Great Barrier Reef as much as she could.

And now, today, she is returning to Holland!

And just like last year when she left, I dread the fact that I can not be there to welcome her back. This is, again, one of these moments that I hate to live so far apart from my children...

But hey, I live on Sint Maarten, which still is a DUTCH island after all, so from this overseas part of Holland I say to you, my sweet Laura,

WELCOME BACK IN HOLLAND

!!!!

We hope you can settle down again without any trouble, and we know that your many Dutch friends will certainly do whatever they can to assist you if need be.

After 9 weeks

we are back on our island, in our house, in the Caribbean!!

My head is full of impressions, of inner pictures of beauty we have seen on our way, of such nice people we have met. The impressions and memories will quickly fade, I know that, but hey: the pictures and music will easily bring them back, at least that's how it works with me.

So for a few days I have to spend some extra attention to our house (this really is a euphemism) and then I start the job of organizing all pictures on my computer, that will take a considerable amount of time too.

But most important:

we are back again, safe and sound!

In the meantime I leave you with this digital collage that I made some time ago. It is composed of pictures of my collage and paintwork. Regular readers of my blog might recognize some familiar ingredients, just click on it to see more details.

You all have a wonderful day!