My bedroom

I took some more pictures of my bedroom to participate in a give-away for window decoration. I've showed you the room before, when it was empty, but now there's furnitue in it and we actually sleep there. I think it's the best room in the house!

Stamps for kids

I made these stamps a while ago, but never pubished them. In fact, the stamp for Bram, my little nephew, was the first kids-stamp I made. But I forgot to take a picture or to make some prints for myself, so I had nothing to publish. Lately, when I visited him, I made some prints to show here.

The other one I made for a collegue, but I guess I just forgot to publish it here.

This is rain

I recently bought some funny colored stickers in all kinds of shapes. I had to make this collage with the coloured drops.

Swedish Hasbeens

Another great brand: Swedish Hasbeens. I wanted to buy these last year, but I couldn't find them. And ordering shoes online, without trying them on, scared me a little. But 'De Klaproos' in Amsterdam has them in their collection, so now I own a pair of exactly these.

King Louie

I love the clothes by King Louie, don't you? Especially the skirts and dresses. I recently bought this skirt and top, cute, don't you think?

Quick collage

A couple of months ago I quickly made this collage for a colleague who was leaving our team. It is inspired on Java-eiland, an island in the part of Amsterdam where we work and he also lives on his boat. I wanted to post this earlier, but I made the mistake to scan this in high quality on my then new scanner. Now it is 173 MB large and I can’t do anything with it. I tried many things to make it smaller, but it didn’t work. So now I just copied it to Paint by using Print Screen. But if anyone has a better idea to solve this problem I love to hear from you.

screen printing class (1)

I have attended my first two screenprinting classes. The first lesson was filled only with screenprinting theory, showing how the machines worked and all that. At the end, my head was spinning of all the information. I was afraid I would forget everything before the next class.

We were asked to bring a black and white image for the next class. I didn’t have much time to draw anything, so I just stamped a pattern with my orange slice stamp. During the lessons everybody seemed to have forgotten some things, but together we managed to make our own screens with just a little help.

I had planned to buy some tea towels or anything to print on, but I didn’t have time for that, so I use some scrap pieces. I really like the result though, so kept the screen and paint for the next lesson. I hope I can find some time to buy tea towels or cushion sleeves this time.

I made the photos with my mobile phone, so don't mind the quality...

Thrift store finds (2)

Again, I found some nice children games. I am not sure what I am going to use them for. I might use the pictures for collages and perhaps the throwing marbles game for making a coat rack.

And I found two lovely children books. They both are written and illustrated by Polish artists and transelted to Dutch. I had never heard of them, but I am very happy with them. Especially the left one has beautiful pictures.

Graduation gift

A couple of months ago one of my best friends graduated from Uni. Me and my friends wanted to give her a special gift and planned to buy her a nice piece of art. We all looked at hundreds of pieces on the internet, mostly on Etsy and Poster Cabaret. In the end we decided to buy this beautiful testprint by Strawberry Luna, with whom I had a very nice email-conversation by the way. As I had to pay shipping fees anyway, I decided I could buy something for myselve just as well. So I bought the V is for Vulture screenprint.

Both items are lovely, just as all the extra's Strawberry Luna sent me, and Luna herself of course. In fact, the whole thing got me interested in screenprinting so next week I am starting with a course myself. I am so excited about that.

postcards

Recently I needed some postcards but I couldn't find anything good in the shops here. Of course, that's what happens when you need a card right away. So I decided to buy some on Etsy for future purpose, because next time I don't want to buy too expensive Hallmark cards that I don't even like.

The set on the left is by Ninainvorm, the set on the right is by Bangbangyourethread. And the little painted stone I also bought on Etsy, it's by LillaJizo

New couch

I haven’t posted for a while, because I have been so busy working on the house and unpacking boxes (again). Last weekend we bought this couch at Depot Rotterdam. Only ours is made from red felt and has just one arm-rest. But I’ll show that later. It's the Rambla by Sur&Plus. We both felt in love with it the first time we saw it. Only it was one of the first couches we saw, so we kept looking but we just couldn't get this one out of our minds. So after a couple of months, we just decided to buy it.
Depot Rotterdam is an amazing shop, it definitely is my favourite in Rotterdam. The owner is very nice, and he even drew a very inspiring lay-out for our living room. Great service! The photo is taken from their website.

This weekend we have sanded the floor and window-stills in the living room and bought lots of paint. So next weekend we can finally start painting!

My Valentine

After spending so much free time working on my new home, I decided I really needed to see something of my new town. So I went shopping, which was a good idea, because it reminded me of why I wanted to live here in the first place. And that is good to realize since I'm getting a little tired of all the hard work in the house. But Delft is such a cute town. I wish I could send it Valentine's card, I'm totally falling in love with it. I found many nice shops. In one of them, I started chatting with the owner and it turned out we live in the same street.
Anyway, I also found some nice thrift shops and there I thrifted this small glass and the little game.



The glass would look nice in our bedroom I think, because the wallpaper also has orange in it.




The game I might cut up for collages. When I opended the box, I did not only found the game inside, but also a poem. As it turned out, this game once was a Sinterklaas gift to someone. (Sinterklaas is a Dutch tradition in which we give each other gifts accompanied by a poem).

By the way, I've tried to edit the pictures in the online version of Photoshop. It was my first attempt to edit pictures, but I was not happy with all the results. I feel I really have to learn this, to show the colours and brightness of the items photographed, especially when the light is poor on grey days like these. What do you think, how does it look? They are all edited, beside the last one Any tips? Which program do you use?

colourful hypes

Before I entered the blogging world, I didn’t know even colour can be subject of hypes. But now I think there is a little hype going on about turquoise. After I saw it on many blogs about a year ago, often in combination with red, I felt in love with this colour. I bought some artworks in which this colour combination is very prominent and I planned to sheer up our black and white kitchen with this colour. And now The Bright Side Project is giving away a turquoise cooking pot. I would love to win one, because it would look great in our kitchen!

In progress

Spend another weekend sanding, painting, wall papering and shopping at Ikea, but we're getting somewhere!



By the way, as I told here before, the wallpaper is bought at Swiet.

What we are working on

The attic looked like this when we bought it

I am staying behind on my posts, because I am still so busy painting the new house. Last weeks we have been working on the attic, which will be our bedroom. I never had expected that painting takes so much time. We had some hard lines though. The red bars needed four layers of white paint (and sanding in between all layers of course) to become as white as we wanted. The walls were almost white already, so we expected to need just one layer to make them really white. But then the old paint started to come of. We had to remove all the paint, put a special layer on the bare walls and than paint it three times!
Anyway, it's still not finished, I hope next week I can show you pictures of the finished room.

New house

First of all, a happy new year to you all. I have been away for a while and the reason for this is that half november we got the key of our new house and since then, we have been removing walls, stairs, sanding, painting, packing and moving every free hour, The whole christmas holidays, even on christmas day, we did nothing but working in our new house. But that's okay, because it is starting to look great. In the following days/weeks I will show you how the rooms looked like when we bought it, and what we are doing now. We are still using every free hour beside our full-time jobs, so it may take a while, but I'm sure it will be worth it!



For now, only a picture of the front of the house (it is the white one next to the red one) and on of the backside and the garden. Later on, I will post some pics from the inside.

My first graphic design

I wanted to show you some designs I made before I started this blog, and I figured that now is the time to do it, since most of my new stuff is packed in boxes for moving to my new house.




When we found a nice place on the beach decorated retro style for our marriage over a year ago, I new immediately I also wanted a retro style wedding invitation. I have no clue about graphic design, so I made it in MS Word and printed it on sand coloured paper. The original cards are packed as well, so I coloured the background of the original design in MS paint. it is not the exact colour, but at least you'll get an idea of what it looked like.

How to and where?

Since I started this blog, I get many questions on stamp-carving techniques. So when I stumbled upon this video I knew I had to post it here. Geninne basically uses the same technique as I do. I found out she also has a very nice blog, on which a 'Hand carved stamps' tutorial can be found.
When i started making stamps, I learned a lot from this website.

However, I also get questions by Dutch readers, who want to know where you can buy Straetler or Speedball rubber in Holland and I don't know the answer. I buy it at Stampeaz. Does anyone knows a shop in Holland which sells stamping materials?

vintage wallpaper

I've been away for a while. I went to Morocco and when I came back I had to start preparing for our new home. This Friday we finally get the key. We bought it more than 5 months ago, so it took a lot of patience. Last weeks I have been busy with selecting paint, wallpaper, floors, a couch and find some good professionals who can help to fix the stairs and walls. The top floor of our house, which is quite large, will be used as our bedroom and we want to style it in retro green with sand colors and some nice retro furniture. I would especially like to have a hanging rotan/rattan chair. Anyway, we first have to paint, place a floor and put some wallpaper on the wall before I can start thinking about furniture.
So, I bought vintage wallpaper for our bedroom from Swiet. It arrived today, but as it turned out, there were two different prints. I've send Swiet an e-mail and I'm sure they will take care of it. However, the colour of the wallpaper is exactly what I hoped for, so I am very pleased with it.
By the way, to colours in the photo are a bit different from the real thing. I just made a quit photo (with flash) to show the difference to Swiet. in real, it is, sand, lime green, olive green and orange.I'll show a better picture later on.

Edit 14/11: I chose the left one. Luckily, Swiet had still one (1)in stock, which arrived yesterday.

Learning the hard way

With every stamp I carve I learn something, usually because of the mistakes I make. For example, I forgot to take pictures of the first stamps that I gave away and stamp any prints either, which I now regret I little, because I would like to keep an ‘archive’ of the things I made. So when I made the stamp for Siep, I quickly took some pictures.



It gave me a good purpose for the ‘Floddertje’ notebook that my husband gave me a long time ago. (I will tell you about ‘Floddertje’ later). I can use it as an archive by stamping prints in it with every new stamp I make. My last post shows the prints I made with the Siep stamp.



As it turned out, you can make really nice patterns with stamps, another good lesson. I adore the Siep pattern. It looks like those little images they make for children to learn reading.
So yesterday I decided to make some patterns with the stamps that I have. Some turned out really nice, but I also learned another important leasson: don’t stamp on the backside of a page, because it will show through the paper. The Siep-pattern is ruined, but at least I learned a lesson!

Smile!

Now my stamp-making skills have developed a little, I felt confident enough to make a stamp for a gift for someone who is not family. So for Siep, the new-born baby of my sailing loving friends a made this cute stamp. I had to make the whole stamp in one night, and by hurrying so much I cut a little too much off the 'e', but I still think it is very cute, and my friends, who love handmade stuff, really appreciated it. And that feels so good, when something that you have made by hand put a smile on someone's face.

Learning by doing

For two of my favorites stamps I preferred a better looking solution, so I sawed two blocks of nice wood, sanded it, stamped the picture on it and varnished it and this is the result. I think it looks much better than the previous ones, although I think I still made some small mistakes that I hopefully won't make next time.

Practical practise

I am still learning the basic techniques of rubber stamp carving myself, but I can tell you a little bit about the material by now.
here are different types of rubber. I use Staedtler MasterCarve, which is white, or Speedy Carve, which is pink. The white stuff looks and feels exactly like eraser. My experience is that the white rubber is more flexible than the pink rubber. The advantage of this is that it cuts more easily. However, there is also a little down-side. Because it is flexible (and thicker), it happens easily that the rubber twists or wobbles a little while stamping. On a stamp, there are always parts that have ink on it, but that are not supposed to touch the paper. But because of the twisting, it might just touch the paper and leave some marks. For me, it is part of the charm and character of stamping, those little carving lines, but too much is not pretty. Mounting the stamp on wood is a way to make the stamp less flexible and improve the stamp. So last week I tried this with some stamps I made earlier. I had done it before with stamps that I gave away, but I didn't have stamps mounted on wood myself. So this is how they look.
It is very practical, but it doesn't look very nice, so that is something to work on.

Dooo yooou speeaak whaalee?

Last summer I bought the book 'Softies' by Therese Lasky. Shorty after, i discovered stamp carving and never got to make one of the cute Softies. At least, until December, when i got a sewing machine for my birthday. Of course I had to try it immediately and I made this cute whale. I think it looks cute for a first project. The bird on his head was to small to sew with a machine, so I did it by hand and now it looks a bit like an old seagull, all battered and plucked. i am not sure if they are a happy couple, they seem to be on a different level...

As original as can be

When I read the funny story about Nina’s seven Dala horses I immediately knew I wanted to make a Dala horse stamp. Later I learned Nina has one of those too. That made me doubt for a while if I still wanted to make one. But I guess this is what happens when you see a lot of creative work on the Internet, you learn soon enough that your ideas are seldom very original. And because I didn’t want to kill my renewed love for crafting even before it came fully alive, I carved my own Dala horse stamp. And while I was carving, I decided to make also a two sided ‘orange slice’ stamp and an ‘&’ stamp.

Since Ninainvorm inspired me anyway, I thought I could just as well try to make some little collages and so I did. I am quite happy with the result. My only handicap was that I had hardly any nice piece of paper in my house, so I immediately ordered some Japanese paper from CraftingBug on Etsy. They arrived this weekend and I am very happy with it.