A new start

A Happy and Creative New Year!

Dutch houses

The city of Zevenaar, where we're staying with our son, is small and quietly situated near the German border. Unlike our island Sint Maarten, where lots of people we meet are from far away, the people in this Dutch city are grounded and tied here. You can feel that when you walk the streets, the people seem to see that I am not from here. This afternoon, on my daily walk, it was slippery and at an unexpected moment I fell, out of the blue. Immediately people came and offered to help me, to give me a ride, and I was not even injured!

I had brought my camera and this is what I saw:

I was so used to this kind of house, but after having lived abroad for several years I now know that this is truly DUTCH style

as is this door: simple yet stylish

and this facade made in brick stone...

downtown Zevenaar...

thanks for joining me today!

Regina

Hello from Holland

Today we went to the market in a city in the neighborhood. On our way to the railway station we came along this old mill. It is situated in a street behind our son's home, it dates back to 1560 and looks very, very Dutch!

We sometimes notice that people from abroad expect the Dutch to walk on wooden shoes, well they don't! Except for farmers, they still use them during their work on the fields and in the stables. Yet they are readily available for everyone, especially in this part of the country (the East of the Netherlands)

and this was the view from the train this morning.
This is the Holland that I know from my youth, the Holland I love!
Thanks for visiting,

Regina

Wishing you all...

and thank you so much for your enduring friendship and attention!

XOXOXO

Regina

Collage (continued)

Almost finished with the X-mas preparation;

I remembered that there are a few collages laying around that I have not showed till today. These are the last ones of our journey this summer from Billings to Buffalo, here's the first one:

Greater Toronto
original collage, 4 x 4"
recycled tourist brochure

Just black and white please

maybe because the Sint Maarten weather is grey these days,

as much as I love colours, sometimes it is only neutrals that I want...

driftwood from the beach

detail of a journal page

Australian island with river

detail of safari style cushion

and finally some other beach finds

Thanks for visiting, enjoy your day!

Regina

My sewing machine and I...

are best friends!

This has been so already from when I was 15 yrs young and owned my first Singer.

Though I neglect my machine sometimes for a short period because there are so many other passions within me, I could not live (me think ;-) ) without this favorite tool.

And as always, shortly before I will miss it for some time because of traveling and I come to realize that, I get the spirit and start sewing like crazy. Just like today!

I got up early, simply started and by now I have made 5 of the fabric baskets that are on the pictures.

the ocean themed fabric hads been laying around for some time and I decided to start my basket tryout with these. The lining is a pretty flower cotton I bought online at Pink Chalk Fabrics and this lightly red/pink colour gives the baskets just the little warmer feel that I was looking for

the one with the turquoise lining was too thick at the side seams to stitch by machine, too many layers also, so I hand-slipstitched it in the meantime and it too looks neat now.
The fabric mountain that is left will allow me to make lots more, it could be another addiction, oh boy...

Hope you all have a very creative day too!

Bye, Regina

In the garden today

click the image for details...

Look at these dots!

Enjoy your weekend,

Regina

My world

as it is at the moment...

living in this beautiful Caribbean region;

communicating in several languages, ranging from American English via Dutch to Papiamento and Patois;

spending my time with recycling many oldish necklaces into new jewelry, together with making panels for my fiber art and digital collages like the one below:

life is great!

My World

digital collage

Today was for shopping

and this was what I saw when I left our street...

Rumor has it that the farmer that once owned this land, when the valley was mainly consisting of agricultural terrain, refuses to keep his cattle in a fenced meadow. So now we see them wandering, sometimes on the main road, sometimes outside our property. Sint Maarten really is a weird mixture of high-end development and undeveloped country!

this is also clearly visible in the little streets of the French side's capital: Marigot

Very fashionable boutiques with the latest clothes from the catwalk in Paris, almost side by side with this kind of building. Shopping in Marigot: o la la!

this is my favorite, I love the stylish yet functional ironwork

the guy in the black shirt is selling tropical fruits from the back of his truck, he seems to do good business

dinghies in the marina,waiting for their owners to bring them back to the boats and catamarans after a day of shopping

Thank you for coming along with my shopping tour in Marigot,

Regina

Current work

It all started some weeks ago with discovering a how-to of making shishas.

(you can read more about them here)

Since we do not have much possibilities to buy this kind of materials on the island, I started to look at what I could use for the big mirrors instead. Scarcety can be good for creativity...

Instead of the large sequins I now use the bottom of peanut cans, the Pl-brand that is. I draw tiny circles with a small Antillean coin and cut them with an old pair of scissors. To make them less sharp, I sand the sides et voila: mirrors!!

The cushion above is one of my first completed works and boy do I love it!

I can not show it in full, because it might be a Christmas gift or something for sale at Art in the Park next February, don't know yet...

detail of another cushion, cotton and silk, rather earthy colours, machine applique and hand worked sishas. This work is not finished yet, some 20 more shishas to go...

detail of a more contemporary panel, inspired by one of the 'bols' at this site,
ready to be made into a wall hanging

On another note: we are approaching the end of the 2010 hurricane season and I am glad that we only had Earl passing the island. I cannot even imagine the damage a category 4 or 5 hurricane might cause, seeing what already this one did to infrastructure and houses.

Another reason to be very thankful!
And now we have winds again, and cloudy and greyish weather some days, that are good for getting back my energy and inspiration!

I hope you have a wonderful Sunday,
thank you for visiting today!
Regina

The ocean today

Yesterday night I had my yoga lesson at this beach and lost something, so I went back this morning and yes, it was there, lucky me! And because the ocean is wild these days, I had brought my camera and made this little movie. Despite the noise in the mic, you get an idea of the rough waters, the beauty also, enjoy!

Regina

Working

on this, now ready for the next step

feeling full of energy and inspiration...

more after the weekend, so please keep coming back and in the meantime:

have a great weekend!

Regina

Our island

today I had to drive my car a lot and because of the congested roads there was plenty room for making pics ;-)

view on our neigbouring islands St. Eustatius and St. Kitts, seen from the 'over the hill road', the image is clickable

one of the many, many little restaurants (it is said we have over 350 restaurants on the island). It may not look very fancy, but everything looks better when the evening has come and the red lights along the roof will give the business a cozy feeling...

What to say?
Infrastructure is a big problem on our little and I dare say even poor island,
it is all about priority I guess

idem dito. Everyday reality, everyday nuisance, but always colourful, that is Sint Maarten, today, ever...

A true discovery!

The Wednesdays in my life are for exploration

Exploration of the island, of silent beaches and roughish trails, of unknown places that still can be found today; they are not known to the general public and there is no or hardly writing about them in tourist brochures either...

Some examples can be read about here and here

Will you come and explore with me today?

some time ago, when the weather was not too sunny and a day at the beach did not feel attractive to us, my friend A. and I decided to find the place that we had heard of...

we had to take a mud road that had a sign: prohibited, for residents only etc. At the end of this road we came at the above place, it is on the island's (French) west coast.

Remnants of what once must have been a big building, a resort we found out later; the image is clickable and you can see Marigot in the distance, the green hill in the middle left is Point Bluff, a point of St. Martin that sits in the Caribbean sea and can only be reached by crossing the ruins of the building, plus by sea of course

the place we were looking for had to be somewhat to the left, it is hidden from direct view and once again you have to cross some rocks by foot

but it is worth the effort, for there it was, finally, Devil's Hole!

I fell silent when seeing this, a treasure of light, of structure and natural beauty

and in my fantasy I could see other explorers, fishermen and adventurers, bringing ashore stuff that better be hid from the daylight... in ancient times when the seas of this splendid Caribbean had a different meaning than it has today in the age of tourism

Thanks for joining me on my exploration,

Regina

While I am exploring

the beauty and possibilities of making shishas, turning them in newly, adapted to my style, artwork, I want to show one of my latest collages in the Discovery series

Exploring the seas
original collage, 5 x 7"
recycled magazine papers on cardboard

Have a great Wednesday!
Regina

Experimenting

and playing with my favorite photo editing program, browsing through plenty of pictures of old and recently finished work. Experimenting with fabrics, old linen and velvet, gold and thread. Nothing to show yet on this very rainy day in the Caribbean. Perfect weather to stay inside an enjoy and cherish my freedom, being grateful

Little circles

keep playing an important role in my work.

In the shisha's that will find their way in an embroidered throw cushion (India style), in a painting I recently did...

It has been a good week; a week of variation, of moving between helping other people and all kind of activities, good for everything but for my art. I find it difficult to focus at the moment, with so many things going on. The tropical weather has been a constant item with all the rain that has been falling. Helping out a friend that is without a sewing machine while she has to finish a piece for an exhibition in December. All this keeps me sidetracked, but I hope to get back on track the next week.

Have a great Sunday!

Recycling and learning

Below is a fancy shirt I was given by a lady that owned a very chique boutique at the time we were living in the Netherlands. The shirt had not been sold and since she knew of my interest in all kind of textiles, she asked if I could use it for the materials. Now I can imagine you don't want to wear something so heavily worked with sequins, but of course it became one of my hidden treasures that I kept on my shelves for over five years.

Lately I have been diving into all kind of things Indian (from yoga to food and everything in between) and these glimmers certainly play a role in that: time to recycle!

the shirt in all its glimmer glory

it is heavy!

I only took off a small part one of the sleeves' sequins and

this amount will probably serve me for a long time ahead. Anybody interested? You understand I can't simply throw them away...

I am a fan of Mary Hettmansperger's metal jewelry and like to browse the pictures of this book every now and then. Now, to start another passion would be crazy with all I already have and want, but by recycling the above shirt I got inspired to transform a little piece of the glittery fabric into this pendant.
It is chique for the evening and really a troublefree piece of jewelry, no need to rob me for this one...

On to the learning part:
- I found an excellent workshop on the web to learn making brushes for Photoshop. Brushes, you know, the swirls and the flowers you can see on many magazin covers and other pictures. This workshop was very clear and easy to follow, and I made a personal motive that you can see in the corners of my present blog header. It is an old motive from the Carib Indians that lived on the neighbouring islands.

- and then there were these: shisha's (mirrorwork)
Many of us remember them from the flower-powerperiod (I guess), but they can be seen in Indian embroidery like pillows and bags. I was visiting 'I'd rather be in India', Tiggy Rawlings' blog and she showed a few rope birds that she had made. It was there and then that I discovered that these tiny mirrors are called shisha's and of course then the googling led me to another workshop: making mirrorwork.

this is what I made until today and you can see the progress when you click the image

As this new extension fits in my already existing textile passion, I will give it some time to incorporate it into my work. Though my new sewing machine can make a lot of beautiful embroidery stitches, I think it can't beat the handwork.
That was last week: a week of making collages, of recycling and learning, of brushes and shisha's
I am so grateful for all this learning material that people put on the web, thank you, thank you!

See what this week will bring!

Discoveries

For Arawaks and Saint Martiners
original collage 5 x 7"

magazine papers on cardboard

Having fun with paper

Finishing the evening bag

has been a jumpstart for creativity in my mostly turquoise world.

Yesterday morning I made a new series of collages, of which I show the first one today.

I called it the Discovery series, because they all have a part of an ancient map of the Caribbean. Islands always seem to represent discoveries in some way or the other, from the discovering of new land and new people in the time of Columbus to discoveries of treasures like wonderful shells and sea-urchins today

Discover your treasure

original collage, 5 x 7"

magazine papers on cardboard

E ta kla!

which means: it is finished

(in Papiamentu, one of 'my' 5 languages)

detail of the antique patch of embellished fabric

that I wrote about in this post

(the first two pictures were made in daylight on the veranda, the next ones inside my studio)

Because I expected the fabric to be rather fragile,
I sewed it onto a backing fabric with tiny running stitches first


an easy, natural choice for me would have been to add some black
or anthracit fabric around it, since I love black and love wearing it too!


But this time I chose this deep purple velvet that I had on hand.
It is a beautiful complimental colour for the rich dark orange/golden swatch


Some of the paillettes on the big circle were missing
(if you click the second picture you can clearly see this)

I had been recycling an embellished bag before and found similar
ones to restore the embroidery.

For this I used gold metallic thread.
The little bag is bordered with a purple linen
and is finished now.


This is going to be my favorite evening bag (or do you call it a purse?) this year!

It feels good that I finally finished something, at last, a fabric item,
made by hand and on my sewing machine.


Think I must leave that machine out on the table some more...