I know ....

.... I haven't been around here for a while, again! I have been busy with the garden and with other time consuming activities. I also celebrated my 56th birthday and had my son over for a whole week.

My sweetheart and I made some nice looking square feet gardens that I've put in my front yard. This is the only place around my house where the sun shines for over 6 hours, which is the minimal amount of hours needed to have a good crop! I made lots of changes in my front yard including placing a really nice fence all around it and tearing down a huge conifer which was blocking the sun from entering my front yard a big part of the morning (sorry birds!). 

After the gardens had been put in place and filled up with garden soil and compost and of course some organic vegetable seeds, I covered the gardens with a frame with netting and plastic on top to speed up the growing process of the veggies and to protect the veggies from the cold nights (and cats!).
On the left against the new fence you can see some raspberry plants. I also have 3 new blue berry plants (left and right from the terrace). The plan is to plant some pumpkin and zucchini plants in the garden right behind the square feet gardens. 

Here are some photos of my new front yard!

The first veggies!

Today it more or less looks like this. This photo was taken at the end of the afternoon right before the sun disappears from my garden. I placed the green netting on top of the soil because there are a lot of cats in the neighborhood who would love to drop their needs in the garden!

Because I've been so busy with the garden I often felt too tired to pick up my art gear. However I did find some leftover time and managed to make a couple of pages in my mermaid shaped journal for the Mermaid Circus! Great class BTW!!

Teesha style collage with a little bit of painting (body).

Jane/Teesha style collage with also a little bit of painting (body).

Jane style mermaid.
This one is mostly drawn or painted with just a little collage (arms and fish).

Well, I hope to be back soon with some new art work and photos of my garden, but don't count on it! ;)

Some new and some old

I've been busy with Life Book 2013 and the Mermaid Circus workshop!

For Life Book 2013 I have finished Jane Davenport's Unstumpification lesson and the Quirky birds lesson of Tam. I still have a lot of lessons to finish but I'm cool about that.

This is Jane's Unstumpification lesson. I'm not happy with the background and the modeling paste I used for the blossom was too thick. I didn't have the light modeling paste that was required at the time I made this. Oh well, I know now how to make unstumpification figures! 

I loved making the Quirky birds! I started with Tam's idea of birds sitting next to each other on a small strip of paper (front and back, but I only did the front), but finally decided to make a whole page with 4 birds. 

The background of my page.

Halfway.

Finale!!

And a couple of months ago (before the FM kicked in hard again) I made a couple of pages in the back of my A Lovely Dream art journal I started for Suzi's class. I was inspired by Dyan Reavely's demonstration videos on You Tube for her new Ink Sprays.

I love how the next one turned out!!!

Decluttering in process!!

I know, I know .... it has been a while .... again!
It's because of Kelly Hoernig and her assignment for Life Book 2013: Let the games begin. I had to make a game board and playing cards with my goals for 2013. My main goal/word of the year for this year is declutter and right after I had finished the game board I started with decluttering my studio. I'm still not completely ready with clearing out and cleaning this very important space but it's going in the right direction! The thing is that I wasn't able to do anything creative in this room for a couple of weeks but this afternoon I finally managed to clear my two working tables! I can finally play again and continue with Life Book 2013. Yeah!!! I'm so much behind! And in less then 2 weeks I have this other online workshop starting: Mermaid Circus with Jane Davenport and Teesha Moore!! Very excited about that!!!

Here's my Game board:

and my cards: 

The goals are written on the back of the cards.

Home made reusable Doylie stencil

I just made a reusable Doylie stencil using embossing powder!
It was an idea that I had in my head for quite a while and finally took the time to put in to practice!

This is what you need:

2 papers (one for embossing the surface of the Doylie with the embossing pad and one for the embossing powder),tweezers, embossing pad, clear embossing powder, Doylie, heat gun (not in the picture).

You start with embossing one side of the Doylie.
For the back side of the Doylie you need your tweezers to hold the Doylie up in the air. (It's not working when you lay it down on the paper, trust me!) Just heat one part of the Doylie and wait till it has cooled down a bit. Then you can hold the Doylie between 2 fingers and use your other fingers to hold it more straight. Be careful though, don't burn yourself!! Turn it around frequently.
If you have missed a spot, go back with the embossing pad and some new embossing powder. Make sure that the whole Doylie is covered with a layer of  embossing for the best result!

This is how it looks when it's done!

And here is a background I quickly did to see how the Doylie would react on the ink and the water cleaning afterwards. Just fine!! 

More inspired!!

Finished another assignment for Life Book 2013! I'm not totally satisfied with the outcome but it was fun to do and that is the most important for me at the moment: having fun!

This is called True Intentions and the workshop is given by Monica Zuniga.
Actually I had to stamp all the different stamps on white paper but I chose to stamp them on tissue paper (I used the last layer of a paper napkin!). This is a technique I have just learned last week from Dina Wakley in Creative JumpStart 2013. She also gave some great advice about how to tear the stamped image out of the paper by using a (slightly) wet brush. Works great!! 

For the background I used Neo Color II and some white acrylic paint. For coloring the stamps I used Aquamarkers, Jellypens and Opaque Pigment Markers. The splashes are made with acrylic paint.

I used 14 different stamps. Because I used tissue paper I was able to use the reversed image of the hand and foot. I only had one stamp of each you see.

Inspired!!

Here's already something new to show you! Being on Life Book 2013 really inspires me to be creative!!

This was a very fun page to do and it is all about celebrating what is in your life already and setting goals for this years journey.
My main goal this year will be to declutter my house! I've also chosen this to be my One Little Word for 2013.  
Less than a week to go before I can start with the Body Stress Release therapy! I'm truly convinced that this therapy can help reduce the many physical problems I have with FM!

Life Book 2013

I finished week 3 assignment for Life Book 2013! This was really fun to do and it helped me to get out of my comfort zone a little bit. I worked very fast and tried not to think so much about where to paint, write, splatter and so on.

The flowers are made with ink sprayed coffee filters (the huge round ones) and aluminum foil. For the background I used all kind of different papers, washi tape, alcohol inks, paint, rub-ons, watercolor pencil and staples.

This workshop was given by Christy Tomlinson.