More cards...

Remember this art journal page, with my colorful hummingbirds? (Read more about it here.)

I turned my birdies into a stamp...

...and made three cards with it:

I stamped my birdie on some waterclor paper and colored them with my Inktense pencils. I love these pencils although I have to practice some more for better results in blending the colors.

I created another birthdaycard last week. I can't show you yet because the lucky girl who will get it is reading my blog too...and it is long before her birthday...But I just couldn't resist playing with my images after I found some 'red socks'! (Hint!!!)

So I'll give you a sneek peak...

TFL!

Sandra

Happy Birthday, dad!

Today is my dad's birthday. He is turning 70 !! I'm glad he is still around, healthy and enjoying life together with my mom.
I made him a birthday card, size 8,5x11 inch:

Background: acrylic paint

Image: the body is a magazine cut out, the head is my own picture!

Quote: inspired by Dyan Reaveley. I don't know if it is her quote..

Of course, I will deliver the card myself ! I already framed it for him...I know how he is...

So let's eat cake!!! Even better, my mom's 'appeltaart' (apple pie) !!!

TFL!

Sandra

Happy mail

Today I received a beautiful card from Marit!...It was for my birthday and (as she says herself) because she is waaaaaayyyy older than I am she forgot my birthday was on the 20th instead of 26th! Of course, I don't mind that she forgot because now I feel like celebrating again, a sort of second birthday without getting older!
And you know what??! As an act of revenge I punched a series of holes in it!!!!
No!!....
Yes, I did!!!!...
No, that is awful! You don't punch holes in artwork from others, artwork must always be appreciated!!!...
Well, I'm sorry, I still punched holes in it...!
Why??? Didn't you like the card?...
Yes, I loved it...very much...
So why did you ruin her card?...
Because it became the cover of my smashbook!!!!

Thank you so much, Marit!

TFL!

Sandra

Turning 40 and my own smashbook...

Last Wednesyday I reached a new milestone: my fortieth birthday!
Exactly at the first second of my birthday my hubby surprised me with a big bouquet of 40 big red roses:

The mail brought a lot of cards, most of them home-made cards thanks to the swap-girls from Scrapfever and my mother (lol):

The rest of my birthday was a normal day as always. I didn't plan a big party, my hubby had to go to work, my kids argued all the time as always and there were some household chores to do as well. I went to puppy training with Timo in the evening and I had invited friends to have a cup of coffee later that evening.

But turning 40 is also a great startingpoint for new intentions: I decided to be more active on my Facebook account. Facebook is all over the internet nowadays and I have tried to ignore it for a long time. It is a great way to stay in touch with friends after all!

And I made my own smashbook! I saw this Youtube video about K&Company's Smashbook a while ago:

And I thought: Fun! But why on earth should you buy a smashbook if it is so much more fun to create your own?? So I collected all my scraps of scrapbookpaper, cut these into smaller pieces and used my BindItAll to bind the pages. I added some journaling tags, created pockets, added plastic cardholders and more. I glued down some words from magazine to use as prompts.

Here are some pictures:

(the front...still to be decorated...)

(I already filled one page!)

My intention with this smashbook is to jot down thoughts, memories, quotes, etc. the next 365 days. It must be fun to read this book again when I'm sixty or even older and to see how I looked upon life when I was forty! I plan to write something every day. Someday this will only be one word or a ticket or a picture glued down, other days I will write a whole story. I can add pages, tags, envelopes...anything so just let see what happens!  

I have been carving a lot of stamps this week. Can't show you yet...but I can ensure you....I had a lot of fun!!!! To be continued!

TFL!

Sandra

New guide for (dutch) art journalers!

Have you always wanted to start an art journal but never knew how or where to start?
Do you wonder what supplies you need? Are you looking for techniques and inspirational ideas?
If you are a dutch girl (or boy!) stop looking, wondering, hesitating. Your art journal journey starts here:


Ilse Hobbelen has started this guide for art journaling and I think she did a great job! Everything you need to know is in this guide and there is coming more....this is only the beginning!!
Go check it out!!!!

TFL!

Sandra

A week captured...

Yes, I'm still here! Just haven't found the time to write a blogpost...
So here is my week captured in one big post!
My hubby had some days off last week which means that all the structure and regularity in our normal daily life is gone for a while...lol. We spent time together of course and we painted the house...half! Father and son worked together on painting part of the house. (Sorry, no pictures...) Halfway they must have disturbed some nasty wasps living under our roof, because both got stung in a short time. Now we have to wait till the wasp's nest has been removed by some professional before they can finish their painting job. To be continued!
Unfortunately the weather was pretty lousy this week, lots of rain, so our plan to go to Toverland (a themepark with rollercoasters and lots of other fun stuff for kids..) had to change. We spent our day in Sportiom (a big tropical themed swimming pool) instead and afterwards I got a chance to visit the artsupply store De Kwast too.
My son started his weekly newspaper route this Thursday...exactly on the day that it just didn't stop raining! When I was a 13 year old girl I also had a paperroute like that so I had told him earlier that he had to learn it from a pro...me! So I spent about two hours in the rain, together with my son, to bring the weekly newspaper here in our neighbourhood....It was a trip down memory lane, I can tell you! Including the feeling of being soaked from head to toes...
Of course, I made sure to make some time to create in my art journal, although it mostly were short periods of time with lots of interruptions.
Here is a page which I created in my 20x14cm watercolor journal:

I was inspired by this image in my big A4 sized art journal:

I traced the part with the entrance on a piece of white tissuepaper and Mod Podged it in my watercolor journal. The little boy is a stamp from Stampotique.

I colored the page with my Neocolors II. I wasn't happy with the result because of the layer of Mod Podge underneath but I really wanted to finish my page...

So much inspiration was bubbling inside my head that I wanted to go on to a new page...This was the reason:

I have been waiting for my order with Derwent Inktense pencils to arrive for weeks and finally they arrived on Friday! And while we were in Den Bosch on Wednesday I bought a carving set to make my own stamps. I was so anxious to try these new goodies!!!

Thanks to Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's tutorial on how to carve this stamp, I made my own:

And I used it on this page:

I made the background for this page while I was with Marlies. We met at the forum of Scrappers Anonymous and we decided to go to the Mixed Media Circus in Hamburg together. Of course, we wanted to meet in real life too before November, so that happened last Friday. Of course, when art journalers come together to create...most of the time it is more chatting and laughing than creating...which happened to us too!

I finished the page at home...

By the way, the heart and the green border on the right is made of the remains of a kitchen towel, which we used to wipe our hands and all the paint and inks on our pages. The text on the bottom and the pink dots on the left are printed transparent tapes from Prima.

And finally I could finish my page with the Stampotique mermaids, completely inspired by this page from Kate Crane, thanks to the arrival of my new Inktense pencils.

I made the background with Adirondack Colorwash, a few weeks ago. (Even before I saw the DVD's of Kate!!) I sprayed the top of my pages with blue ink and lots of water and let it drip down.

Then I turned my journal 180 degrees and did the same with the green ink.  After this layer dried I sprayed blue ink over a stencil with circles (TCW of course!). I sprayed some yellow ink on top and added some golden, black and white accents with acrylic paint. The seaweed is stamped with two colors of green chalk ink (Colorbox) and a Heidi Swapp foamstamp.

I enlarged the mermaids and printed these on watercolor paper. I colored the girls with my new Inktense pencils...and what a great pencils these are! It was worth waiting for!!!

I cut the girls out and glued them on my pages. I grounded the images by shading with my charcoal pencil.

And the quote? It says:

Of course it is happening inside your head, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

If you are a fan of Harry Potter you must have recognized this line! It is a line from the last book and movie. I went to see part two of The Deathly Hallows together with my son yesterday...in the IMAX 3D in Amsterdam! I wish all the Harry Potter movies had been made in 3D...Really, I felt like I was there, standing next to Harry and Voldemort! I forgot about the rest of the world for two and a half hours...which was also obvious when we left the cinema: I ate some nacho's with guacamole dipsauce during the movie...and my sweater sort of looked like one of my backgrounds in my art journal...

I was a little bit sad that this last movie is the end of an episode of more than 10 years in my life. I have loved Harry Potter's adventures from day one. I have read the complete series of his books in Dutch, English and Swedish, all at least twice...(except for the Swedish ones...I finished the first three books...the other parts are waiting for the moment when I have 48 hours in one day!) I have bought all the DVD's as soon as they were released. Yes, I'm a fan! And that is the reason why I wanted to use a quote from the movie on my mermaids page.

And now it is Sunday...'Our normal daily life' starts again tomorrow, although the kids are still free from school of course. Tomorrow I really need to do all those neglected household chores...so I think I will enjoy the rest of my day by doing nothing!

TFL!

Sandra

Breaking the rules...

OMG...the great Dutch artist Anton Pieck must be turning around in his grave when he sees my next page...I completely wrecked his artwork and I enjoyed it!

For those who know who Anton Pieck is, you know that his drawings are mostly nostalgic and fairylike and with lots of detail. I sort of transformed this drawing of the Begijnhof in Brugge (1979) to a more twentyfirst century look.

My art journal is an A4-size book about him and his artwork and this drawing was a full page in the book. Normally all his drawings are covered with gesso and paint. Now I was playing with the picture of the girl (which is a Stampotique stamp that I first enlarged on my computer) thinking what to do with it. The girl wasn't meant for this page at all, but it didn't end up where I meant it to be either...So, while I was going through my journal searching for a background I bumped into this drawing and than it happened!

I broke the rules by wrecking a great artwork which wasn't mine...

Suddenly the old lady in the back wasn't there any longer to fill her bucket with water but to clean the graffiti on the wall! The waterpump turned into a Coca Cola machine...And that freaky Stampotique girl does look sweet, pretending she is just playing but those pencils and paint in the background makes you think, huh?

I added my journaling on an empty space on the side. My scanner is a bit smaller than my art journal so I couldn't get it all on the picture but it is about me, how I'm a good girl most of the times but that I love to break the rules now and than...Just to shake things up!

TFL!

Sandra

Take me as I am...

...or watch me as I go.
As I promissed you in my previous post I added a little bit more 'Me' in the mix, for my newest journalpage.

My background is (again) inspired by Kate Crane, but this time I collaged the image from my own stash of magazine cut outs to add the 'Me'-factor. The flowers on the woman's head are inspired by Terri Kahrs. And the letters come from my own collage sheet..so even more 'Me'!

TFL!

Sandra

Believe in yourself...

...before somebody else does!
It is a quote I saw on Julie Balzer's blog a while ago and I loved it...so I wrote it in my notebook immediately. And now, on today's page it fits very well, don't you think?
As some of you can probably see my page is completely inspired by Kate Crane's work (The Katryn Wheel). I bought her newest DVD's about art journaling on which she explains and shows a lot about the techniques she uses.

Mushroom: Lisa's Altered Art

Rest of the images and borders: Tumblefish Studio

Although I love how my page turned out, I still feel a bit like a copycat. Yes, I know, it were my hands that got dirty, my words are on the page, etc. but still...

I loved the background techniques and everything she told about grounding an image. So I promiss, for my next page I want to add a little bit more 'me' to the mix!

TFL!

Sandra

Life is art, paint your dreams!

Another page inspired by Thomas Sabo! This time I drew octopusses...

I colored my 'creatures' with Adirondack colorwash on watercolor paper and cut them out. The background is  a 'mop up'-page from my little screen I created last week. (I used a page in my journal to whipe off the ink from my stencils and not to waste any paint I painted the rest of my paint on the page too.)
I love it when things like this come together!

TFL!

Sandra

Frogs

A new page inspired by Thomas Sabo. This time I used a frog from his collection of charms.

Sometimes you have to take the leap and build

your wings on the way down!

I sketched the frogs first, just like I did with the hummingbird in my earlier blogpost. I watercolored the frogs in all colors of the rainbow...why only green, huh? Paint your dreams!

The green background is made by painting colorwash with a brush. For the journaling I used a black Sharpie and a white Uniball Signo pen.

TFL!

Sandra

Hummingbirds

For this page I was inspired by a brochure of Thomas Sabo, which my hubby brought home for me. I love it when people think of me and my art when they see inspirational brochures and think: Hey, let's give this one to Sandra...maybe she can do 'something with it'! This brochure is loaded with colorful inspiration!!!
The first thing in this brochure which immediately started bubbling in my creative mind were the 'Tropic Attack' hummingbirds. (You will see them flying by in the promotional video if you follow the link above..)

I sketched the birdies and colored them with watercolor paint. I cut them out an glued them on my background. The background is painted black with acrylicpaint and I wrote a poem in white.
The poem isn't completely visible any more so here it is:

With wings spun of silver and hearts of gold,

these tiny creatures our hearts behold.

With angelic features and colors so bright,

make even the heaviest heart seem light.

The magical way they flit through the sky,

they appear, than vanish in the blink of an eye.

They're sending a message for us to retrieve.

Anything's possible for those who believe!

(I found this poem on the internet. It is written by Christophe Griffiths.)

You will be seeing more of these birds in the future. That's for sure...I have so many ideas to create with this little birdie!

TFL!

Sandra