From the White Book

Time for a peek in my everyday journal The White Book. It's still filling up nicely and I keep hoping I will finish it within this year, but I'm making no promises, haha.

Here are some of my latest spreads. Sorry about the glare here and there. I have to take pictures with artificial light these days, 'cause it's just too dark otherwise and it reflects on some of the imagery.

I have picked a book that I want to turn into my next journal and I've even already started prepping it, but I'm still not completely sure, because I'm also drawn to use one of the bigger moleskine cahiers for my next one. Sigh, choices choices. These are the kind of choices where you can't choose wrong and as far as I'm concerned those are the hardest to make. No matter what you choose you always lose another great option. Oh well, time will tell what I'll do. We'll see. ;-)

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy Wednesday!

My first gelli plate experiments

Well, I finally got myself a gelli plate! After printing with just a sheet of acetate I got really curious about this product and wanted to see if I liked it, so I splurged on a medium sized plate. And well, yes, I do like it a lot! The plate is much more pleasant to work with. Everything prints a bit clearer and more controlled. The surface of the plate is really nice. It 'gives' more than an acetate sheet, think very sturdy gelatine instead of hard plastic.

Anyway here are my first experiments:

I just played around with the same techniques I used for the acetate prints. You can read about those here. I really like some of the results and I really like how you can take a print first and then make a ghost print with the remains of your first print. I'm not sure if the results are better than the ones I did with the acetate sheet, but the way of working is more agreeable for me. Still, if you can't afford a gelli plate or can't get one, an acetate sheet or other flat non porous surface will get you far.

Now I've done my first rather random experiments I want to try more deliberate monoprinting and go for specific effects. But that's for another time and I'll keep you posted. For now I have some new pretty papers and those are always welcome in  my house!

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy week.

Giveaway winner!

So today I picked a giveaway winner for the extra stamps I got for free at the Kreadoe last weekend. There weren't as many contestants as when I put up a journal to give away but I'm thinking that's only positive, since the fewer contestants the bigger the chance you'll win, right?

Anyway, I wrote down all ten contestants names on a piece of paper:

And here are all the contestants scrumbled up. (Um...'scrumbled' is not really a word is it? Well it should be!)

On the next phase you're just going to have to trust me. I picked a winner and tried to take a picture of it, but my phone just wouldn't focus. Anyway the winner is: Nely!

Here's what she had to say:

She's saying I scored well on the Kreadoe and that she would like to win the stamps. Well, Nely, you got your wish. Please contact me on c.m.j.winkelman[at]home.nl and let me know your address and I will send the stamps your way. Hope you will enjoy them.

As for the rest of you: sorry you didn't win. Better luck next time!

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy weekend.

From the pattern book

Slowly but steadily my Moleskine sketchbook is filling up with patterns. I'm halfway through now and I have so far done over fifty different pattern drawings. Yes, I counted! ;-)

Here are some of my latest:

As always these are drawn with a Pitt drawing pen with brush tip and then coloured in with Pitt Big Brush markers. Sometimes I will outline things with a pencil and ruler if I want very straight lines or need guidelines. It's always fun to pick shapes and colours and experiment with different approaches.

I already look forward to the time when this book is fully filled with patterns and colours, because just flipping through it now already makes me happy. All that colour! Yum! ;-)

Hope you are doing something that makes you happy and wishing you a wonderful and artsy Wednesday!

Kreadoe 2013 + a giveaway

Time goes too fast. For what seems like ages you look forward to something and then in the blink of an eye it's already history. Oh well, isn't that always the way it is? Sigh...

Last weekend it was time again for the annual Kreadoe fair in Utrecht. This is a huge arts and crafts supply fair where hundreds of companies and stores come together to sell their wares. The Kreadoe celebrated its 25th anniversary and since my sister and I have been consistently going since almost the beginning you can say we are veterans. ;-) It's a standing arrangement. We don't need to ask each other if we want to go this year. We always go and we always go on a Saturday. This means we already know when we will be going next year, haha.

Anyway, here's my little report of the day and my loot! At the end there's a little giveaway too, so keep your eyes open!

First of all let me apologize for the grainy quality of some of the pictures. My camera phone has no flash and it's a dark day, so it's hard to get nice and clear shots. But I think they're clear enough for you to tell what's on them. ;-)

Let me introduce you to my travel companions: 

There were five of them. Almost all family. One sister, three cousins (sisters to each other) and one friend of a cousin. This and the train trip there was the only time we were all together. It's impossible to walk this fair with more than two people at once. It's just too busy and there's too much to see.
We got to Utrecht extra early so we had some time for coffee or tea before we got up the courage to walk into this: 

That's the entrance hall at opening time. Hundreds of women and a couple of  brave men ready to take on the fair. It's also the place where we pretty much lost track of our travel companions. We walked the fair in pairs of two. Sister was of course my companion.

I didn't take many pictures of the fair itself. It was just too crowded to really focus on that. But here's an impression of the halls and the people in them: 

Just like previous years there were two big halls filled to the brim with supplies and materials. It's interesting to see what is in 'fashion' each year. This year there was a lot of emphasis on knitting and crochet. Don't get me wrong, there was plenty of other stuff and just about every crafting hobby is represented there, but you can always spot the current trends by the amount of stalls that are dedicated to them. We've had years when there was a lot of focus on card making, years when it was all about scrapbooking, times when natural decorations were in style and even a year when apparently beading was the thing.  Last year there was a lot of interest in cupcakes and cake decoration.

As always sister and I thought we would not be able to walk the entire fair within the hours given (we were there for seven hours straight), but as always we managed to finish the thing just within minutes of closing time. I  still don't know how we do it, but we always do.

So without further ado, let me show you my loot of the day!

Textured synthetic fabric. This was my first purchase of the day and it cost next to nothing.

Easily removed fabric markers for embroidery, a small pair of scissors and some paint retarder for my printing experiments.

Pretty tapes. I was sad they didn't have such a huge selection as last year, but these are cute nonetheless.

Kraft paper, a small pad of decorative paper and a small Dylusions journal that may one day replace my carry along sketchbook.

Stickers and label cards.

Templates. A wooden one for envelopes and an acetate one for labels.

Stamps with a postage theme. Loved these!

My major wish for this year was getting lots of stencils. I got my wish. These are the big ones...

....and these are the small ones.

Unlike other years I didn't get much decorative paper and not even one book. I saw plenty of nice things, but nothing I really wanted. And let's face it I have so much paper and so many books I could open a stall myself!

All in all I'm pretty pleased with all my goodies. They will now find a home in my studio or around my journaling table and be incorporated into my artsy stuff.

Now onto the giveaway. At one of the stalls I purchased four stencils and they gave me this gift with purchase which was a set of pretty stamps: 

They're cute alright, but they are not anything that I would have bought myself, so instead of letting them collect dust in my stamp drawer I thought I would give them away on  my blog, so you all can get a little out of my Kreadoe loot as well. So if you like these stamps and would like to win them just leave a comment and coming Friday (8 November) I will pick a winner.

Hope you enjoy my little show and tell and hope I will make one of you happy with this stamp set!

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy week!