Last one

 

 

Though I have been rejecting the idea for a long time,

I guess by now I have to face it... keeping a blog no longer fits in my life.

 

 

Different from back in 2008 when I started 'Mostly Turquoise" I don't feel the necessity to share my thoughts, dreams and my artistic work on this site. It feels like the end of an era to me!

 

It has been a great voyage while it lasted and I will remain grateful for your visits and comments.

 

While I will continue making art and meeting new people, it will be in the 'real' world.

 

Thanks for your visits to my blog and wishing you all the best,

 

Regina

A break

 

It's that time of the year.

Hot summer nights, days on the beach and hardly any creative action...

 

 

 

So we take the time to explore new horizons and getting inspired while traveling in our second home

 

From earlier I know it may be difficult to post on a regular basis, so for this I apologize in advance. Hope to see you back soon, enjoy summer!

 

Thanks for visiting,

 

Regina

Back! Yes, I'm back!

 

 

Curacao, April 2018

 

 

Hello again,

 

Oh yes, I have to admit I was missing my blog...

 

Missing the platform to share parts of my life, my thoughts and my art with you: the 'rest' of the world.

 

For some time I have been trying to return to my dear Mostly Turquoise-blog, but there seemed to be technical difficulties and it all turned out with not getting into my blog, not being admitted to the dashboard, so not being able to write.

 

This afternoon I was about to contact Blogger with my problem, but after one last try I got in!

And here I am, happy to be back after this half year blogging-sabbatical

 

 

Picture above is of a favorite spot on the island of Curacao, which we visited recently.

It is on the most Western point of the island and we were so fortunate to stay there during the weekend. It is such a wonderful place, it does not have any comfort, just wind, sun and sea but I am sure that does the trick. No internet, no television, just some reading but then that is also scarce because of the effects of sea, sun and wind

 

That's it for today, will be back tomorrow for there is so much to tell...

 

Thanks so much for your patience

 

 

Regina

 

Hello all,

 

After a very long and fantastic trip throughout France and the Netherlands we came back in Spain about a month ago.

 

 

I have not posted since July and have come to the conclusion that this will be my final blogpost.

 

Will I miss it, after over 9 years?

Well, frankly I don't know, but after having had some serious doubts before I am now sure that my blog does not add anything new into the world, not anymore.

 

Somehow my life in Spain and the activities I am involved with keep me from creating at the same level that I was used to while living on our island in the Caribbean.

 

Another thing is, that I am growing more and more reluctant to write about personal/private matters.

 

On the web there is a wealth of beautiful images to swoon over. Sources for inspiration galore..!

 

A special thank you for the people who have been following and commenting on this blog over the years: Thank You!

 

Maybe one day I will join Instagram (if I do miss my blog), but until that time, should you want to connect, I am on Facebook.

 

Wishing you health, inspiration and creativity,

 

Regina

 

A week of blogging

..five days of blogging, a little every day

 

it was not so hard this time; it seems

that once you are back in the blogging mode, the subjects automatically jump into your mind...

 

 

detail of a journal page I once made

 

I even did not use all blogging ideas, but have written them down in my notebook... The future of my blog is save, then!

 

Today is quiet, with some thriftstore visiting in the morning; however, I found nothing this time.

Tomorrow I am going to help with the catering for a friend who will celebrate her birthday, we will be very busy feeding about 50 persons...

Posting tomorrow is very unlikely, but you never know, for now

 

enjoy the weekend, thanks for reading my blog,

 

Regina 

Dots...

 

 

There is not much happening here in our little Spanish fisherman's village on the Medittarenean coast. Now the weather is moving into more 'fallish' temperatures, there is more enthusiasm with me to make long walks and also spend more time inside the house.

 

I look back on a September month with, for me finally, a lot of blogging. It feels as a good decision to make my rentree in the blogosphere, all be it alone for my own pleasure, to record my creative/artistic accomplishments and more general things that take place. And I am more than happy and grateful that a handful of faithful followers have made comments on my posts, thank you so much!

 

Today I started my new painting of the sailing ship, it is in its first stages and will require lots of more paint until I will show it here, but it will come soon I guess.

 

That's it for now, as I already told, not much news but just a little hello from  me here with some details of a photocollage full of dots that I recently made

 

As always, thanks for visiting my blog,

 

Regina

Asemic writing

 

Hi dear reader!

 

 

We had an enjoyable and quiet Christmas and tomorrow will already be the very last day of this year. It is a miracle! Where did all those days go, I mean were there really 364??

 

On the web I see lots of people reflecting; the year mainly, their blog, achievements, did they stick to their chosen word and the like.

 

The only reflection I tend to do, but not only at this time of the year, is looking again at my old blogposts, mostly I choose a category and then the reflecting begins!

 

On the whole this looking back fills me with joy, contentment and sometimes a little pride. And I learn of it, of course. Like today...
 

The other day I discovered a lovely blog about asemic writing. I instantly recognized the topic and felt (not knew) that it had to be the opposite of the word semantic. Now that is a word I do know, since I have been tought the several languages that I speak today.

click the images to enlarge

sample of asemic writing in one of my quilts

 

Of course I googled the word and it was amazing to find that a) the word had exactly the meaning that I expected and b) I recognized that I have been using asemic writing often in my former work, both textile and paper. Now how funny is this? In my art I like to use (parts of) words, without meaning often, just letters or digits and I have always contributed this love for the written to my heritage of being a typographer's daugther. To those of you with an art training that may have been known with the topic of asemic writing: I can imagine that you smile a bit about my 'discovery'. But since my training was in a quite different professional field I learn by trial and error, reading as much as I can and by simply doing what I like... and I am so happy to once again have found a quite new source of information. See more about this topic here and on this site

 

series of six smaller quilts with the use of asemic writing

 

I wish all of you a healhty, creative and prosperous

2014

 

Thanks for reading

 

Regina

Spain. Now

 

 

Long time, no blogging, my friends....

 

After we moved in the apartment in the underbuild of our home, we started renovating. Here is a little update...

 

On mother's day our eldest son came driving on his motorbike, all the way from Holland. He  has been driving through Germany, Luxembourg, France, the Pyrenees and arrived after five days.With his energetic help the old kitchen and bathroom have been removed, all tiles both from the walls and the floor have been broken out and carried away, a hell of a job. Despite the work, we had a very good time together.

 

Now the upper part of the house is stripped and empty, ready to be restored. At the moment the electricity cables are being checked, replaced and extended where necessary. In the meantime we have asked for offers regarding the solar heating system and study the possibilities, differences, look for materials like tiles and how do we want our bathroom, our new kitchen?

 

The majority of this work is being done by my sweet husband, and I take care of the drinks, the calls, run errands whenever something is missing and the like. No time, or energy for blogging. It seems I have nothing to tell you, at the same time a lot, but not in the usual way. I'm sure you understand my temporary absence in this place.

 

But: every day the weather is getting more lovely here in Spain, and we wake up in the morning with sunny weather. In the afternoon, when it is siesta time here, I often read and recharge in our secluded garden behind the house. This might become my most favorite spot here, at least for as long my studio is not ready to move in! The place where we live now is lovely, the coast gorgeous and there are many, many very friendly Spanish people and folks from other European countries around.

All in al we feel already at home and so this has been a good step, moving from the Caribbean to

Spain!

 

I would love to show some pictures from my coastal walk yesterday. However, at this moment Blogger/Internet Explorer does not let me upload anything. Hence the above picture is one of my old collages that was in Picasa.

 

Thanks for visiting, as always!

 

Regina



 

Visiting Rayna!

Long before I started my own blog, I have been visiting websites and blogs of artists in the field of art quilting, collaging, painting and everything else that inspired me. Rayna Gillman is one of these artists and over the years we developed, what might be called, an online friendship by commenting on our respective blogs.

This summer, before we started our trip along the North East coast of the US, I received information on Rayna's whereabouts and some travelinfo, but I had no idea if we were going to make it... To challenge my good luck, I took with me the scarve I won in one of her give-aways (first picture) and it worked!

Since we were in the 'vicinity' of New Jersey before leaving for Virginia, my husband asked if I would still want to visit "that lady", he (of course) did not know anything about Rayna at that time. 'Well, certainly' I said, I would love that!

So we drove to a state park somewhere near her home, called her and she also was enthusiastic to meet us the next day

my good luck scarve on the day I received it some years ago (I lost weight in the meantime and have a different haircut, but you get an idea...)

meeting in 'real life' was so much fun!

We had lunch at Rayna's, talked about whatever topic coming up and then she took us to her studio, a place where she, in her own words, really feels happy. I was too absorbed by seeing the place where everything happens, that I forgot to make any pictures...


It was the day before the commemoration of the 9-11 disaster and we went to a place, called Eagle Rock. From this place one has a spectaculair view on Manhattan and Rayna told that in the days after the tragic event, many New Jersey people came here to look at the other side of the Hudson river. For weeks on an end the view of Manhattan was blocked and diminished by smoke and ashes, just imagine! Eagle Rock has been turned into a memorial since this summer.

we must indeed never forget...

My husband now also knows Rayna, for him she is not 'that lady' anymore... We enjoyed our visit so much, I will never forget this lovely day. Thank you Rayna!

Blogging pauze

We are about to embark on our annual holiday with our camper. From the last two years I know that blogging can be difficult at the places we love to visit like National Forests and Parks, with the fact that I have to share the laptop with my dh during our trip, not having ample possibilities to write about the places we visit and adventures we meet. So this time I decided to stop my blogging for a while. Maybe there will be an occasional blogpost in the months to come, maybe not, at this moment I really don't know.

What I hate to say is that I cannot openly write about the where and when of our holiday, due to security reasons. The situation with crime on our island is not something to think light about, so we took our measures and the house is being taken care off properly.

I hope that the huge heatwave in the USA is on its way back when we arrive, despite the fact that we have an airco in our vehicle, I long for fresh air and being outside!

When I return I will make it up with pictures and experiences of our trip, promised...

Thanks for visiting and I hope to see you back later,

Grtz,

Regina

Printing my art

These are some of my collages and a sepia picture of Sitting Bull Lakota that I printed on
t-shirt transfer paper and then ironed onto Arches paper.
Lately I was browsing Martha Marshall's wonderful and informative blog and I found this method that she described here.

I felt so thrilled because finally this is something I can do here on the island!

We do have a CostULess where they sell the transfer paper andI knew that in our one and only little art shop on the French side of the island (I told you there are lots of artists there!) they sell Arches paper. Photoshop and our home printer did the rest.
Did I ever say I love the internet?

All this information that is readily available, even when you live on a tiny piece of rock with sandy beaches in the Caribbean...

Wishing you all a day with possibly great discoveries,

Regina

gathered, now USE!

Hi all,

I too am one of those people that gather and gather and by reading many blogs I know that I am not unique in this respect.

For a long time this gave me a rich feeling, the idea that I never would have to be bored and would always have plenty of sources to tap from when I felt the need. This habit stems from a period without the internet I am convinced, for from the time that I started to use this medium so intensively the amount of information only grew and in fact for me has become almost too much, it seems to have a negative effect on the artistic output that I like to achieve.

Do you recognize this phenomenon?

You discover a new technique, a new artist, or whatever and you (at least I!) get so interested that you want to read more about the topic and you order/buy the book, because that feels the right thing to do at that moment. Then, when it arrives at your home you browse through it quickly and often have to put it away, because right now there is no time.... Or you stick to browsing and never seem to get any further with really using it, without doing the exercises and workshops that often are so perfectly described.

So during my holiday I , like many others I assume, have been reflecting a lot and decided to change this, to really change it.

My main word for 2010 will be:

USE

... the books I gathered over the past years

... the art materials that are in my studio, the dyes and paints, the papers and canvasses, the stencils and the vast array of found objects, and of course the fabrics!

... and the tools, what about them? My new sewing machine, as well as the old one, my serger, heatgun , brushes and easel.

Somehow writing down my plan makes me feel safe, makes me feel sure and determined to act according to this verb. I am serious about it, determined and driven.

There will be 9 months for me this year to practise and learn art, for we will again travel the USA during two months in summer, and there is of course that other holiday period towards the end of the year.

After browsing my art books i decided to start with the books from the picture above. It may take a month for sure to work them through, probably longer, we'll see. Of course I will post about the results, the sketches/collages, with an occasional digital collage in between.

Other important words will be, but these are not specially art related:

spanish - tao - book reading - swimming and walking - reaching out to family and friends - watching movies - traveling - and of course blogging

Now it's time to start!

Thanks so much!

Jane Royal of Painted Hearts Studio has honored me with a Best Blog Award!

Though I am aware it has been forwarded to lots of bloggers before in the past,

I so much appreciate this gesture of online friendship

Thanks so much Jane, for the award and your ongoing support on my blog!

Go and have a look at her blog, you will be amazed of her watercolour works...

***

Upon receiving this award, I cannot help looking back at the very beginning of my blog and how my life has changed ever since. For quite some time I had my doubts whether I would be able to blog, would have enough to write about as my life here on this so very tiny island is not exactly exciting. That is, if you come from a bigger land (Holland is huge in comparison, can you imagine?) and are not a part of the working and/or artistic society, the latter hardly existing.

In the artistic/creative field I felt very lonely and this has been my big urge to start blogging myself. Quite a confession, is not it?!

Never I could have guessed to meet so many fantastic people and art online.

For this I will forever be grateful.

My life at present feels better than at the start of my blog. I now have a twofolded life (without being shizophrenic, don't worry :)) one where I live and try and manage more and more to be happy in, despite the hot climate and the limitations, and one online, where I have found and keep discovering a community of kindred spirits and friends.

Thank you all out there, thank you!

I have checked with Jane about the 'rules' of the award, about passing it on in return etc. Fortunately she assured me that there is no obligation at all. From the above you may have guessed that I consider all bloggers that have added to my artistic and/or spiritual well-being worth receiving the award, so I pass it on to you, you know who you are, don't you?

And for once, to support this rather personal post, I show some images of our tropical home, the house where we live, from where I love to communicate with the 'rest of the world'

Wishing you a wonderful and creative weekend!!