Saturday, May 23, 2009

Pet peeve

Warning: this will be a rant...

About an hour ago I wrote this on Twitter ('I tweeted'? 'I Twittered'?) :

'Pet peeve: Please please please make it so I can have the option of listening to the music on your blog!'

Don't get me wrong, I love music. I do! But I want to pick the music I listen to. So if you put something on your blog and say 'Hey, listen to this band, they are fantastic and I would love for you to hear this song' I will more than likely click on the link and listen. (with headphones on, but I'll get to that in a minute) I would. But for music to just start playing when I visit your blog... Ugghhh...

I like visiting new blogs. I sometimes go through all the links people have up in their sidebars to see if there is something I like. I tend to open a few of those links at the same time, so I don't have to go back to the blog I get the links from and keep going back and forth. (Does that make any sense? I hope so.) And if music then starts to play and I have to go through all of them to figure out which one it is and even worse: find where the damn player is, because they are never at the same place... ughhhh again!

What makes it even worse is that 9 times out of 10 my sweetie, who works nights, is fast asleep next to me when I'm doing all this. At night, when he's away, I watch Dutch tv online, and I sometimes forget to turn the sound off the next day...

So.. Please please please make your music player thingy optional, so I can click it if I want, when I want. It would make me so much happier!

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Eurovision Songcontest



Tonight was the 2nd semi-final for the Eurovision Songcontest and Holland had to qualify to be in the final on Saturday.

Holland sent De Toppers, a group of singers who have been doing really well in Holland for the last couple of years, doing stadium shows that are always completely sold out. They were supposed to have suits that would light up, which went really well with their song Shine. Yesterday, during rehearsals, the suits didn't work, so they had to go with these shiny suits...

I was all ready to vote only to find out that the UK wasn't voting tonight...

Unfortunately, only Eastern European countries went through, as well as Norway, Denmark and Greece...

Guess now I will just have to cheer on Jade, who's the UK entry this year. Yay UK!

Oohhh, white out!

Sometimes a page can look... not done.... and you can't figure out what to do with it.
I got a white gel pen a few weeks ago (why are they so hard to find?) and that has really changed the look of my journal pages.

The background is done in Pearlescents, and I added another National Geographic photo. I also used the Pearlescents with my dip pen, to see how that would work, and I found it not strong enough, so I traced some of the words with my white pen.


Here the background is done in Pearlescents, the girl in acrylics, black ink and Pearlescents, and I then added journaling (in Dutch, it's almost like a secret language...) in white pen. The border was done with left over ink on my brush.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Welcome to my new Art Journal

The other day at the car boot sale, found some Pearlescents for next to nothing. I know, result! Sooo... I've been playing with them in my new Art Journal, one that I made from a card board box some DVDs came in and an Easter egg box.


The cover will more than likely change, at the least I will tie some ribbons to the rings. But knowing me, I will mess them all up with paint, so I will have to wait until the journal is finished.


On this first spread, I used the Pearlescents, just like on the cover, a picture from one of the two years of National Geographic I got at another car boot sale, denim I decorated with the Pearlescents (hmm, maybe I should make myself a denim bag too?) and some babywipes I used to wipe off paint in other projects.





I'm having lots of fun with this Journal already, let me know what you think!

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Finished my Art Journal!



Last night I finished my last pages in my Moleskine Art Journal! Yay!

It's always a bit bitter-sweet to finish an Art Journal. Sweet, because you've done a great job filling those pages with yummmmyyy paints, collages, jouralling, etc. etc., but bitter because you will never get to work in that book again, and it was such a great place to be, playing with paints, jotting down your dreams..

Now, as much as I love Moleskines, and I really, really do, my next Art Journal will be one I made from old card board boxes and Easter egg boxes. Just to see how that will work for me, a journal made from recycled materials.

I will be posting pictures of the last pages I have done soon, but right now, there's a double bill of ER on, with the lovely George Clooney... Gotta go!