And the winner is....

Last week I did my traditional birthday giveaway where you could win this beautiful colouring book by Johanna Basford.

I used a random number generator to pick the winner from the 22 commenters. The winner was number 4 and that is P. Welch. Here's what he/she had to say:

Looks like you have to get into the colouring book trend now! Congratulations on your win.

Now if you want to claim your prize please contact me either through the contact form on the side bar or through regular e-mail at c.m.j.winkelman[at]home.nl with your snail mail address so I can have the book sent to you. Please do so within two weeks. If I don't hear from you before May 2, I will pick another winner from the original commenters. Comments for my giveaway post will be closed for that reason. But I'm sure you would like to claim your prize so a second draw won't be necessary. ;-)

As for the rest of you, thank you so much for participating and for your kind birthday wishes. Hopefully next time it will be your turn to win, be it on this blog or another.

For now I wish you all a wonderful and artsy day!

Take a walk on the west side

The west side of my island is absolutely stunning. I don't go there very often, because it's more of an undertaking than just stepping out my door and walking away. Since I don't drive I either have to take a bus or a bike and I don't really bike here at all (I hate riding a bicycle in the harsh winds we have).

On my birthday last week however my sister and brother in law and I took the bus and went on a short walk along an area called Kroon's Polders and Posthuyswad. I may be yet one year older, but I did not forget to take pictures so I can show you just how pretty it is there. You're welcome.

Every time I go there I am amazed at the beauty of the place and pretty much want to kick myself for not going there more often. So for the  hundredth time I have vowed to more often step on the bus and take the trouble to walk there. Let's hope I keep my word this time. :-)

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy weekend!

A word of advice...

Go on, just do it:

You'll be glad you did.

Have a wonderful and artsy day all!

It's my birthday and you know what that means! Giveaway time!

Hello my wonderful blogsy people!

Today I celebrate my 46th birthday (yes yay!) and it has become a personal tradition to do a giveaway on my blog on my birthday, so pay attention and you might win something (yay again!).

I have been wondering about what I should give away this year and I decided to simply go with something I have fallen in love with, namely adult colouring books!

I have bought quite a few colouring books over the last year or two and here's the weird thing I have to confess: I don't really colour in them! You see,  I buy them mostly because I am infatuated with all the beautiful line drawings and patterns in them. So to me they are more like art books than workbooks. When it comes to the actual colouring in, I always prefer to colour in my own drawings, so for me colouring books are mostly just a source of inspiration. But far be it from me to prevent anyone else from colouring their hearts out, I certainly see the appeal.

One of my favorite artists for making colouring pages is Johanna Basford and I know I don't stand alone in this, because her books are super popular. I have all her three colouring books and for this giveaway I have decided to give one of her books away. No, not my copy (nobody is touching that!), but a brand new one.

I have decided on this one:

It's I think her third colouring book and it's absolutely stunning!

Here are some pages from the inside:

Isn't it gorgeous?
If you would like to win this book all you have to do is comment. That's all. No strings attached.

The winner will be drawn a week from now on Monday the 18th of April. Please be sure to check back whether you have won. I will then give instructions on how to get your prize. Please do keep in mind that if you don't check back I will (after a reasonable amount of time of course) pick another winner.

Well, I hope I will make somebody very happy with this giveaway and I wish you all a wonderful and artsy and colourful day! Oh and...Happy Birthday to me! ;-)

Update: comments for this post have been closed as a winner has been picked.

The last of the Adori, well...for now anyway

It's already been three months since I finished my previous journal, the Adori, but I had not shown you images of the last insert yet, so that's what I will do today.

The Adori is a handmade traveler's notebook that I ordered custom made from the wonderfully talented Anja Verkooij last year. It holds inserts the size of moleskine cahiers, but instead of those I used Tinne+Mia notebooks that have the same size, but much much better paper.

In previous posts I have shown you spreads from the first two inserts and today I thought I'd show you spreads from the third and last insert. So here we go:

Now the journal is full I have put it aside for a while, but the cool thing about these traveler's notebooks is of course that you can reuse them, so at some point I am going to remove the current inserts and fill it up with new inserts so I can start all over again. I actually already bought two more sets of the Tinne+Mia notebooks, because I loved them so much.

So this is probably not the last you've seen of this Adori journal. You know however how much I crave variety when it comes to my journals so right now I am working in something completely different. But that's for another post!

If you want to check out these beautiful Adoris you can find more info on Anja's website here. And if you are curious about the Tinne+Mia notebooks, you can find them here. On the site it says they are A5 but they are slightly less wide than that and exactly the size of moleskine cahiers.

Hope you enjoyed this peek in my journal and wish you all a wonderful and artsy weekend!