Koninginnedag

Today is Koninginnedag (Queensday) in Holland. It's when we celebrate our Queen's birthday, and everyone celebrates on the streets, dressed in orange, our national colour. We were supposed to be there this year, but due to circumstance, we're not.

I was going to link to some fun Koninginnedag photo's on various newssites, but instead.....

A car ran into the crowd watching the bus with the Royal family passing by.... At the moment I am typing this it isn't sure if this is just a nutter who had a few too many, or someone actually wanting to attack the Royals....

Writing in my Art Journal

Recently, I discovered Michelle Ward's blog, where she combines stories about her personal life and peeks into her Art Journal and lots more.

Then, as I browsed her blog a bit more, I stumbled across her Crusade pages, monthly prompts to use in your Art Journal, on tags, ATCs, etc. etc.

This month, the prompt is about writing in your Art Journal. And guess what.. I've been doing that more and more lately. I used to only draw and paint in my Journal, but lately I've found that it's much more fun if I turn my Art Journal into an actual journal, but with art in it..

Here are my latest pages:


I had to do something special with the ATC's I received in the swap I had done with American 5th graders, so I made a little booklet to go into my Journal.


Sinterklaas is the Dutch Santa. He comes from Spain, does not have reindeer but a white horse and travels from Spain to Holland by steamer. He is obviously real, the Easter bunny isn't..



Oh how I love my Art Journal. This time I used masking tape and wrote on it with a sharpie.


At the car boot sale we found a set of Magnetic Poetry, you know, the one that goes on your fridge. I decided to write the 'poetry' I came up with picking a few words out of the box down in my Art Journal.


Day 100 in my Project 365 was a tough one. I could not come up with anything I thought was good enough, which in turn made me feel.. well.. bleeehhhhh! Best to let it out, and what better place than a colourful page in my Art Journal.

I kinda like this combination of writing and colour and collage. I think I'll be writing a lot more in my Art Journal from now on.

(These and more pictures can be found here.)

Happy Easter!

Or should I say: Happy Chocolate Day! Because even if you don't celebrate Easter, you can still enjoy the chocolate!

Woohoo, Day 100!

I promise I will post an update on my Art Journal soon, but first I wanted to celebrate Day 100 in Project 365. Can you believe we've already had 100 days in 2009? How time flies!

Truth be told when I first started I thought taking 'a picture a day' was going to be easy, but it turns out it's not. Sure, when you're out and about and you've got something to take a picture of it's fine. But when you have to 'hunt' for a picture idea, it's incredibly difficult.

Today was one of those difficult days. I struggled. I wanted to do something special for today, but could not come up with anything. I had thought of letting a balloon with a tag on it up in the air, but today is grey and miserable, so that would not make for a nice picture. Then I thought I'd write down 'Day 100' in chalk on the pavement. I was sure I had some. You think I could find it? Of course not.
The picture of 'Day 100' on a banana peel came out looking rather gross... So then I decided to go with the simplest of ideas; a picture of my calender... Far from original, but at least it's a picture, right?

As I said in my description on Flickr; I should not moan at myself for not being able to think of anything original, but rather be proud of myself for having stuck with it for 100 days.

So here I am, celebrating and feeling proud!

(You can see all 100 pictures here.)

Spring

Oh it's Spring alright. Just look at these brave little grape hyacinths peeking out from underneath the hedge.

Of course, it's forecast to rain for the next couple of days. Oh it's Spring alright....

(This is Day 96 of my Project 365: take a picture every single day of the year and post it on Flickr. Those and other pictures can be found here.)

Bento

Now, I'm not a mum, I don't have a job that takes me outside the home and I don't pack dinners for my sweetie to eat while he's at work at night, but I do love sites about Bento lunch boxes.

They are the amazingly cute Japanese style boxes, with molded eggs and fruit cut into shapes and edible dividers to make sure that your food stays exactly where you want it to stay while traveling to school or work.

Lunch in a box is a great site to get you started. Everything you ever wanted to know about Bento's is right there.

And then there is Maisie eats Bento, a site run by Maisie's mum. She's showing off all the Bento's she's made her daughter, she's close to 100 now!

To celebrate that occasion, she's got a great giveaway at her blog. Go and have a look!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I will win the starter kit so I can have my very own Bento, even when at home.

You can take the girl out of Holland...

..but you can't take Holland out of the girl.

This is picture 91 of my Project 365. Taking a picture a day seemed easy when I first signed up for this, but it's proven to be difficult at times. I don't always know what take a picture of. But so far, I haven't missed a day and I'm rather proud of that.

I'm still not sure what to do for Day 100 though....

Amazing ATC swap

Two weeks ago,
Art2theextreme asked me on Etsy whether or not I wanted to take part in an amazing ATC swap with her 5th graders.
Between projects, she allows her students to make ATCs. They really got in to it, and were looking for adult artists to swap with.

So I sent her 3 cards, hoping that the kids would like them. And yesterday, I got 3 cards and some lovely notes in return.

These kids, one 'only' (his words) 10 and two 11 years old made some very cute cards, and their notes brought a huge smile to my face. They all signed off with 'sincerely', and telling me to 'keep making art'. One girl said that my card was 'awesome'. Yay!

If you are interested, I'm sure you can contact Art2theextreme. From what I can tell this is an ongoing project, so I'm sure the students would love to swap some more!