Happy 2017!

Well, another year has started, and there's one new years resolution that I hold dear this year:

I will try to keep that in mind whenever I'm feeling like life's passing me by. Hope your ride into the new year went smoothly and that you will do at least a few things this year that you've always wanted to do.

I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things. Only three more days and the Christmas vacation is over. I've been wanting to play in my art journal this week, but I only got started today. So not much to show yet. But I did do something artsy. I have some old melamine trays that I've been using since my sister wanted to throw them out last year, and all of a sudden I was wondering why on earth I didn't paint them, since they didn't look very good anymore and were very boring anyway.

So I did. Sanded them, put a base coat on, and painted one with dots and the other one with doodles.
The black and white one still needs to be varnished, the other one is finished.

Here's how they started out:

and after I put a base coat on:

Some progress-shots of the dot painted one:

And the end result:

I completely forgot to take progress-pics of the doodled one, but here are some details photos:

And the complete tray:

That was fun! And it makes me happy when I use it :-)

I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday, click the link if you want to see more art by people from all over the world.

Of course, in 2017 I will continue my funnies. Here they are!

And a more serious one to end:

Take care, thanks for visiting, and have a beautiful day ♥ ♥ ♥

Preparing for the market

As promised, here's the mosaic I made from all the faces I did this month for the 29 faces challenge:

And an overview of the faces from last week:
Number 26: another scribble-face:

Number 27: made with a tool called Harmony: great fun, check it out here. It's free!

Day 28: another rock-face

And the last one, number 29: weirdo :-)

This whole week I have been busy preparing for the market that I will be attending this weekend. I painted quite a few stones:

And tried out something new with dotpainted mirrors:

 

And I also made a new wallpaper for my newsletter-subscribers. And for you too :-)

This is the wallpaper:

And you can download it here!

That's it for this week! I will be linking this for the last time to 29 faces, and to Paint Party Friday and Show your Face.

I will be offline for the next few weeks. We want to move into our new home by the beginning of April, and there's still a lot of work that needs to be done. Plus I need to start packing ... :-p

I want to thank all of you who visit me here. Your comments are truly appreciated. Here's a funny to end this week:

that's me .... ;-)

Wishing you a wonderful day, and lots of fun in the weekend. I'll be back in a few weeks time! 

Take care ♥ ♥ ♥



A bit of a rest ...

Did my last Christmasmarket last weekend so I finally have some more time on my hands :-) Which doesn't mean I did a lot of art this week. But I did throw a few more layers on my big canvas, and finally some figures are starting to emerge. Phew ...

At this moment I'm seeing 4 faces, 1 dog (!) and 2 birds ..... Do you see them? I'm not sure yet whether I'll go with all of them, but I'm so happy they finally showed up. There must be at least 15 layers of paint on there already.

For my markets I made a few more smaller dotpaintings. Here are some of them:

They all measure 20x20cm (7,9"x 7,9"). I really need to update my websites now, haven't added anything in a long time, even though I made quite a few things.

I also painted more of those branches that I showed you last time. So much fun :-)

They are a mixture of collage and paint, and measure approx. 7x5cm (2,8"x 2"). Very small, especially to put quotes on there. We just got a lot of wood for our woodstove, and there are some branches there that are a bit bigger, so I might try to saw those into little slices. Or better yet: I'll ask my hubby or my son to do it for me, since I don't trust myself with a saw ....

Here's a box that I painted to try out a technique that I want to use in our new house. I got the idea here at Sandra Kaye's blog. Have a look there, her blog is colourful and inspirational and fun! I loved it right away, but just starting like that on the walls felt a bit daunting, especially since I don't have much practice in painting flowers. So I tried it out on my box, and this is the result:

It's a very bad picture, the weather was horrible and dark and misty and it's almost impossible to make good pictures now. But you get the idea.... Not sure whether I'll do the walls like this though, I want to throw in some birds I think .... I'll keep you posted ... ;-)

And then last but not least: I got a surprise Christmascard in the mail from Robin from Pink House Studio. I "met" Robin during the 29 faces challenge, where she made the most original, fun faces out of drops of paint and collage. I just loved seeing what she would come up with next. Check out her blog, it's full of whacky funny posts :-). This is the card she sent me, it's one of her own unique designs:

Thanks to the fact that it arrived on an exceptionally rainy day (although, now that I think of it, it's not thát exceptional....) some of the print got ruined a bit, but I just love it. Thanks Robin, it'll get a prominent place in between our Christmas lights ;-)

Well, that's it for now! I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday. Didn't get a chance to visit last week, so I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone's been doing. Thanks for your visit, I hope you're having a wonderful day, and that the weekend will be relaxing and fun. We will be working in our new house again, won't be moving this year anymore ... :-( Oh well ...

Next week I'll be back with an overview of my creative year. I did that last year, and it gave me a boost knowing that I had been doing quite a bit of "work" even though I sometimes had the feeling I got nothing done. Hopefully it'll be the same this year :-)

And here's my funny for this week:

lol :-D

See you next week! ♥ ♥ ♥

summer's almost over ....

It has been raining all day today and there's a chill in the air that promises fall is almost here. Yuk! I certainly do hope that summer will come back for a few more days (or more ☺) so that I stay dry at my last market this Saturday. I haven't been painting much this week, just finishing up some stuff and mostly doing administration. I decided to bring new life to my old website, because it's in Dutch as well as English, and I have always been pretty happy with it before I moved to Australia and had to do everything in dollars. I'll still use my own website as well.

Today I managed to work a bit on my big painting. Frustrated that I didn't  have more time, but ... that's life I guess....

Here are some more products that I'll take with me to the market:

I found 3 old wooden bowls at a flea-market and decided to dotpaint them. I really like how they turned out, but never imagined it would be so hard to make a good picture of ;-)

Here they are all 3 together:

This is a new doodlebox that I painted and took with me to the market last week. It's sold, as well as the little round side-table I showed you last week: 

This is something new I wanted to try out. In my local artshop I found these papier-machee figures, and decided to paint them and put a quote on them:

Not sure whether I'll do them again though. I like to try out new things, but sometimes I just do it once and then decide I don't really want to bother anymore....

A few more of my small dotpaintings (yes, I discovered how much I like to dot all over again ;-) )

And some more rocks:

 This one's a hard one to translate. I think it's something like "everything that's worth something is defenseless". Or something like that ......

And this one means: "everything that has a beginning also has an ending. Be at peace with this and everything will be all right". Or something like that .... ;-)
  
And then I finally did something I had been wanting to do since a long time: I made some designs from my backgrounds and used them in my Society6-shop for all-over-tees. Here's one example:

I love using these backgrounds. Usually they are just a detail from one of the layers of my paintings, I don't even remember which painting this was.

That's it for this week. One more market, a few more days, and then school wil start again. And with school comes the 29 faces challenge. Are you in? I will be participating, not sure yet whether I'll be posting every day though. It's one of my favorite challenges, twice a year (February and September) and I always end up with a lot of material to use in further projects. You can find more information here. Hope to see you there!

Linking this as always to Paint Party Friday and to Show your Face. Go have a look over there, you won't regret it! Thanks so much for visiting. I wish you a happy day and a glorious weekend ♥ ♥ ♥

Oh yes, my funny for this week! I found it on Katie Jeanne's blog and thought it was really funny :-) (and so true ....)

lol :-D

See you next week!

busy with the markets ....

I've been preparing for the markets this weekend and next weekend, and it all took a lot more time than I realized .... But I had fun in the process, so that makes it worthwhile :-)

I'll show you just a few of the things I've been doing this week (amongst many others ....)

Decided to make some small dotpaintings. Here are 2 examples:

They are both painted on very small canvases of 10x10cm (4x4 inches). Love making these small paintings. And I already have some ideas about making them into a pattern too ....

Here are some more painted rocks, with Dutch quote on the back:

 quote says something like: "Logic will bring you from A to B, imagination brings you everywhere"

"Never regret anything that made you smile"

What else did I do? Oh yes, I dotted another sidetable:

This one was really fun to do. Love these round ones..

And since it was my birthday yesterday, I allowed myself to stop doing things for the markets and painted a (little) bit on my big intuitive painting:

I now know exactly which way I want to go with it. Can't wait for the markets to be over so I can spend more time with this painting :-)

I showed you an artjournalpage last week that I made in my new handmade artjournal, and I promised to share some pictures. Here they are:

This is what I started out with: when I purchased a gelliplate some years ago I spent an afternoon trying out different things on different kinds of paper. I also had some new Dylusion inks, so not everything is done on the gelliplate. I ended up with a whole pile of painted papers, some beautiful and some not so. What to do with them? I decided to fold them in half and make an artjournal out of it. And then left them for I don't know how long. In the meantime I used some of these papers to draw or paint on. And before we went on holidays a few weeks ago I decided it was time to finally do something with it. I found this tutorial on the internet and followed it more or less.

 gelliprint with a piece of thread. You can get really fascinating patterns with that.

 

 you might remember this one: it was a face for the 29 faces challenge last year. I now used the paper she was on (it was folded double) to put in one of the signatures

I'm very happy with it, but must say I'm a bit intimidated by the pages I really like. Don't want to "ruin" them by putting something on top. Which is silly really, that's what they're there for, so I'll just have to get over it ;-)

That's it for now! I will be linking this to Paint Party Friday, and to Show your Face. Show your face this month is about making a face that is inspired by another artist that participates. I'd love to do that but haven't found the time yet. Hopefully next week.

And here's my funny for this week:

hahahaha! Mind you, I have no idea how these machines work either, but I'm pretty sure this is not how it's supposed to be :-D

Thanks so much for visiting! Hope you'll have a beautiful day  and a weekend full of warmth and smiles. See you next week ♥ ♥ ♥