Making cards

 

Hi!

 

 

We returned home from our two month Europe trip several weeks ago. Once more it has been a wonderful experience!

 

 

 

 

We first visited a part of Spain that we had read about, but heard of no-one we knew who ever visited it. The countryside reminded us somewhat of South Carolina, albeit that it is mainly used for growing 'arroz bomba', the kind of rice that is being used for the famous 'paella'. This Ebro delta was a superb start...

 

Then came the Pyrenees and we spent two weeks in France before we arrived in the Netherlands (needless to say I love France!). Visited our children, relatives and some friends, which of course is always very good and fun.

 

Then came Germany, the region right across the eastern border of Holland. Went to a huge campershow in Dusseldorf. Lovely weather throughout the weeks, I don't remember a sunny summer in northern Europe like this.

 

To make a long story short, it was wonderful and I will certainly get back to it every now and then.

 

But today is for ART!!!

 

 

Recently I stopped singing in a choir, so instead of our rehearsal morning I decided to claim this extra time for art experimenting.

 

I started right away when we came back and it seems to be working:

 

Currently (or should I say finally?) I started with Gelli printing. A way of printing that I wanted to try since a long time, but never did.

The good thing is that there is a lot of info to be found on the internet. So I made a durable gelliplate myself, discovered the superb blog of Linda Germain and others and started.

 

 

Made a series of postcards this weekend that turned out pretty cool (IMHO)!

 

It is a start; it feels so good to be back again!

 

Thanks for your patience during my absence, and thanks for reading this post,

 

Regina

New work

Three of these squares were the design for the work below


Translation series #8
I started with plain white pfd cotton, that I painted with textile
paint and diluted acrylic, stamped and stencilled and
finally raw edge appliqued


Translation series # 9

This one came out more neutral, which was one of my goals
Normally I work in bold colours, so it was pretty hard for me to stick to
my original plan,maybe that's the reason that it has much contrast.
I was told the design looks like a bird in flight, which I can see also,
but it surely is not intended to be 'something'.
To me it is abstract, the letters are not words either, you can make your own!

Translation series # 10

The fragment with text was added by me,
because I thought the design was missing something.
This decision appears to have turned it into a tree,
with a giant piece of fallen fruit on the ground

Originally I was going to make four pieces that could be hung in a square.
The fourth did not cooperate, I tried and I tried, but it did not please me at all.
Too havy, to dark and all my attempts to bring some light in it, failed.
I then jumped to a very simple solution: "Just forget it, throw
it away!", which I did.
Having worked sufficiently outside my comfort zone for the moment, I am looking forward
to the next one which is forming in my head

Thanks again for visiting!

Morning in the studio

translating whitePFD fabric into subdued colours,

difficult for me, not feeling comfortable at all...


toning down the too 'apricoty' colour by adding stencilled
details and bits of fabric.

Slowly the fabric is giving me more satisfaction when I look at it...


Meanwhile thinking about my inner voice, do I have one?
What does it tell me, what does this piece of fabric tell me?

Listening to peaceful music by Karunesh, this morning in the studio...

such precious time!

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)

Sea urchins (1)

My creativity level these days is not too high.

It has been a while since I worked in paper, since I have glued, painted and sewn (a few weeks is a very long time in this regard!)

But this caribbean island, and more especially the surrounding beaches and tropical waters, is constantly inspiring me. If you are a regular visitor of my blog you might have noticed that I am completely in love, in awe I must say, with the wonders of Photoshop.

I admit that I'm just a novice, but the possibilities that are within reach seem endless. So I am trying to make a combined kind of 'soup'' today of all things mentioned above.... caribbean, fabric, tropical etc.

Come and join me on my search for inspiration...

sea urchins, found on the shores of St. Maarten. If you see the amazing pattern of the little calcium dots up close (click the picture) then you can only admit there must be something more...

inspired by these urchins,

I made a stamp some time ago and printed this piece of cloth. Hand dyed first, then stamped and stencilled with my own 'products' and fabric paint. The turquoise motive is from a pod of the Flamboyant tree. You can read more about these stamps and stencils here and here

Thanks for visiting my blog today!!

(to be continued)

Making collages

Happy

collage

picture: 5 x 7"

paper: 9 x 12"

I started with gesso and paint on a big sheet of paper

glued on text and images quite at random, stencilled a hint of gold
and then the above collage emerged

Happy creating!

GPP Crusade No. 29: more playing

Caribbean waters are too rough for swimming today, so I tried the brush theme once again!

Started with a waxy paper that was a bag for a surfshop in it's earlier life, tore it open, crumbled it and folded out again. I tried to imitate the batikked tablecloth of my second GPP entry, initially...

dry brushed Paynes Grey, Brilliant and Cobalt Blue

and here it is!
I listened to some of you and carved a stamp, applied it with white acrylic paint and across the surface it went

awaiting my punchinella, I made some p-ish myself with freezer paper and my
Crop-a-Dile

pounched gold paint through it at some places

and finally monoprinted the back of an alphabet stencil

in brown, hardly any letter visible, but brush effect all the more

(all pictures are clickable)

Have fun brushing!

Are you in for some COLOUR?

Since I expect to be very busy next week, and have an unexpected evening to spend on my own as my husband is stuck on one of the neighboring islands, I thought: let me try to do my brush-thing right now! Here is my process of something old, something blue and something new:

I started this experiment last year, really don't know what I

was thinking...

a la kindergarten cut out some freezer paper and used both stencil and mask...

though it's not clearly visible, I really used a brush with the acrylics,
then went on in my newest
addiction, playing with Photoshop

detail of a tablecloth we used with yesterday's lunch!

used layers, colorburning and what not in PS!
(I only just started learning, hence the word process, would not call it art, but I was having fun!

Portion Control 2

without realizing it: would this be Portion Control too?

(detail of this journal page)

detail of

Yesterday's work


Julie Prichard of Land of Lost Luggage has written a splendid tutorial about Portion Control, which is the subject of this month's GPP Crusade No.28. Michelle Ward is the very inspiring person behind these crusades (she is a super talented lady, you really should visit her blog!)
Yesterday I showed my results in this blog entry and Julie encouraged me to play in this Crusade. I am now a proud member of the GPP Street Team. Go and take a look at this fantastic blog, there is such wonderful work to admire!! You can find the participants and contributions here.

Have a very good Thursday!

Julie Prichard van The Land of Lost Luggage heeft een heel goede lesbrief geschreven over Portion Control, dat het onderwerp is van GPP Crusade No 28. Michelle Ward is de drijvende kracht achter deze 'crusades' (zij is een super getalenteerde vrouw, je moet echt eens op haar blog gaan kijken!)

Gisteren heb ik mijn resultaat in dit bericht laten zien en Julie heeft me aangemoedigd om mee te spelen in deze Crusade. En inmiddels ben ik een trots lid van het GPP Street Team. Neem maar eens een kijkje op dit fantastische blog, er is zoveel mooi werk te bewonderen!! Je kunt de deelnemers en inzendingen hier vinden.

Maak er een mooie donderdag van!

Portion Control (non culinary!)

Tuesdag 10 feb

I was following Julie Prichard's tutorial on Portion Control in painting, in making journal pages. Decided to use some aquarel paper that already had been gessoed. I even made a similar color choice, or my work probably would have resulted red or blueish again (hope you don't mind Julie!). So, an extra challenge for me.

I used some snippets of a wallpaper sample from my recent trip to a building market in Holland

If you are a regular visitor of my blog, you may have noticed that my work is rather colourful.
I really like bold, strong colours, but I'm equally fond of stark contrast. And where do you find that better than in black, white and neutrals? O.k. on a safari perhaps, spotting zebra's and other wildlife :)

Back to the process: this is my stencil collection, it is rather limited, I have to order or make some more.. until then you will often find the French lilie in my work, since I like it very much
( I am/was a true francophile when living in Europe)

And this is the result !

I had some old experimental work (pre www) in this frame, took it out and put my new art in.

To me it looks pretty 'artsy', what do yo think?

You can find the tutorial on Julie's blog Land of Lost Luggage.

Once again many thanks to you Julie!

PS 1: Looking at my work while typing this post, I doubt whether the Portion Control aspect did succeed as it is rather busy with all the lettering and flowering...but alas, it was the very first time I heard of it and tried, other than in eating!

PS 2: does anyone of you know where I can find/order punchinella scrap/sequin waste?

Have been looking for it at Michaels, in Holland, on Curacao with no result and thought maybe you can help me.

Thanks for visiting my blog!

My very own fabrics!

While looking for something in my fabric stash, I noticed these pieces, dyed and painted by me during the past year. It all started with plain white fabric...

Arranged in this pile, I can see some art quilting coming in the very near future!!

Op zoek naar iets in mijn lappenvoorraad kwam ik deze stukken tegen,

het afgelopen jaar door mij geverfd en bewerkt. Al deze lappen

waren aanvankelijk gewoon wit...

Zo opeen gestapeld, zie ik een paar art quilts er aan komen in de zeer nabije toekomst!!

SXM Le Gout du Vin...

I have been focused on working with fabrics for two

weeks now and 'treated' myself on making an art journal page

this afternoon

Gedurende twee weken ben ik alleen met stoffen bezig en

vanmiddag heb ik mezelf getracteerd op een bladzijde in

mijn art journal

First results

A week ago I decided to work with fabric for some time to come. Inspired by nature: by the pods of our Flamboyant tree, the sea urchins and starfish of the Caribbean Sea, I made some stamps and used them on previously hand-dyed fabrics. The outcome is not what I was looking for, I suppose it takes a lot of trial and error before the results are somewhat to my liking! But since I decided that I will only work with fabric for the time being, I trust that it will improve...

On another note: our daughter had surgery in Australia today. While the operation took 4 times longer than anticipated, she is very groggy and not many details are available at present. May be tomorrow will bring more news. All this is surely affecting my creativity, it seems to be of less importance right now. Hope you understand that. If you read this, please feel free to leave a comment, as I feel somewhat writing into the big wide atmosphere without getting feedback.. Thanks in advance!

\Een week geleden besloot ik om voorlopig alleen met textiel te werken. Geinspireerd door de natuur: door de zaaddozen van onze Flamboyantboom, de zee-appels en zeesterren van de Caribische Zee, heb ik wat stempels gemaakt en ik heb ze gebruikt op stof die ik al eerder had geverfd. Het resultaat valt me tegen, ik veronderstel dat er veel experimenten nodig zijn voor het me bevalt! Maar omdat ik me voorgenomen heb alleen met textiel te werken, ga ik ervan uit dat het zal verbeteren...

Iets anders: vandaag is onze dochter in Australie geopereerd. De operatie duurde vier keer langer dan was gepland, ze klonk nog behoorlijk 'groggy' en nadere bijzonderheden ontbreken nog. Misschien dat we morgen wat meer weten. Dit alles is niet bevorderlijk voor mijn creativiteit, dat lijkt nu allemaal zo onbelangrijk. Hopelijk begrijp je dat. Als je dit leest, voel je dan vrij om een reactie achter te laten, want soms heb ik het gevoel maar een beetje in het grote heelal rond te 'zwetsen', vooral als ik geen feedback krijg.. Bij voorbaat dank!

New art journal

Some pages in my new art journal; started journalling in January this

year and the first one is full!

Een paar bladzijden in mijn nieuwe 'art journal' (weet er eigenlijk geen

goed NL-woord voor, een gewoon dagboek is het niet)

Ben in januari van dit jaar met deze hobby begonnen en het eerste

boek is vol!!

Printing stuff (continued)

I made these pages in August, using material from yesterday's post.

Do you recognize it?

(you can click picture to enlarge)

Made with commercial and self cut stencils, watercolour

magazine cutouts and markers

Deze bladzijden heb ik in augustus gemaakt met materiaal dat ik

gisteren heb laten zien.

Herken je het?

(klik op de foto voor een vergroting)

Gemaakt mbv gekochte en zelf geknipte stencils, waterverf

tijdschriftknipsels en stiften