My mother-in-law

As I told you in the previous post, my mother-in-law is an amateur bookbinder. Which is great for me, because she made me some really nice notebooks over the years. And this year she even made a beautiful Photo album for our wedding pictures. I adore it. The cover is made from hand painted paper that we found in a shop for art supplies. I immediately loved it and thought it matched the wedding invitation that we made very well. So we asked her to make a book for us and she said yes. I know she spend many days to make it, but it is the best gift we could wish for. And she stamped it in the back with the stamp I made for her. Now all we have to do is put photo’s in it.

Stamps I made

Previous posts might suggest that I didn’t do anything crafty since last summer, but that is a bit exagerated. In fact, I made quite some stamps, of which I gave two of the nicest away (without taking a picture). One of them I made for my little nephew and showed a little train and his name. The other one was made for my mother in law and in fact consisted of a set of four stamps. They showed: ‘Ex Libris’, ‘Handmade’, her name and a rose. The idea was that they could be used seperately or I combination to stamp her books or the handmade (note) books that she makes. Because they were presents I glued them to little blocks of wood on which I first stamped an image of well, the stamp of course. I put them in little wooden boxes that I also stamped. They made nice gifts (although I wish I had taken pictures of them). I planned to make wooden blocks for all my stamps some day….

Finally awake!

Since my husband and I started looking for a house in January I somehow stopped spending time reading and crafting. I had been reading almost non-stop for about five years, and since the summer of 2008 I also started to pick up some crafting project that had been in my mind for a long time. But with all the major decisions to make about the new house, like how much to spend, what kind of mortgage, city centre or city fringe, more room or a garden and so on, it seemed like there was no space left in my head for crafting or reading.
For inspiration and to relax, I started reading interior design magazines and blogs and I developed this new interest. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, because I am already interested in so many things, but anyway.
Lately, I have been reading Ninainvorm’s blog. She is a great writer and artist and she managed to wake up the crafty girl inside me. So this week, I started to make some sketches during my train trips to work and although they are nothing special, I am really happy that I have picked up the creative stuff again.