55th wedding anniversary

Today it was the 55th wedding anniversary of my parents. I made this canvas with their wedding photo as a present. They loved it!!

Look what I found!!!

Today I went to our local recycle store and found this wooden case for records. It only cost me one euro!!!

I took off all of the old cover. Luckily that went very easy because it wasn't made of paper but of some self adhesive material. I have to repair the inside just a little bit. I have to take it completely out anyways, because I want to decorate the inside of the case as well. I'm not sure yet if I want to make it a scrapbook project or a mixed media art project.

I'm still busy reading and watching videos about Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth. At Oprah Winfrey's website you can watch a couple of videos of her and Eckhart talking about A New Earth. Really interesting!!!

Yesterday I went to Utrecht to pick up Zander and his friend Manuel. They stayed with Zander's dad during Fall vacation. When I arrived Zander was really in a foul mood. He constantly picked on me without me doing or saying anything. I tried not to react in the hope he would stop. But he couldn't stop himself (he also wouldn't listen to his dad), and so I decided to leave earlier than planned. In the train I sat a couple of seats away from him. At home he went to his room right away and he stayed there most of the time.

It makes me sad that he's picking on me so often. When he was younger we had a great relationship but nowadays ...... big sigh!!!

Finished my 2 goddesses!!

Finished my 2 goddesses today!! I added a couple of more layers using gold leaf, little metal hearts, beads, rhinestones, stars, flocks, some thin paper with texture, darker paint (hair red girl) and at the end painted all over the surface with pearly paints mixing it with glazing medium.

Newest projects

Yesterday and today I worked on the 2 heads that I drew and wood burned on my exercise piece of berch plywood. First I colored (with water color and color pencils)and painted the heads. The paint has to be translucent.

After that I painted the hair and background. Drew in the wet paint with the back of a brush and added some glitter in the same color as the paint. Then stamped on the dry paint using distress ink.

For the girl with the blue background I made her top out of patterned paper and collaged it on the wood using mod podge.

On the red background I used a paper doyle as a mask with plum acrylic paint and a french lily stamp with antique gold metallic acrylic paint.

On the blue metallic background I added some small pieces of a paper napkin (only the top layer) using mod podge and added some silver acrylic paint using a piece of mesh (?).

I think I'm ready for a complete girl now. Can't wait to start!

Bike trip

Today I went on a bike trip to a heath nearby where there's also a dolmen. It's only 10 km from my village. It was such sunny and warm weather today that I didn't want to spend all day inside the house. I left quit late so I had to stay closeby. I'm so glad I can make biketrips like this again!

I took my sketchbook for the Suzi Blu workshop and a book of Eckart Tolle (A new Earth) that I'm reading at the moment. I also took my patchwork blanket to sit on and of course my camera.

I first went to see a heath very close to my house. Somebody wrote about it's existance in a local newspaper this week. The heath was a bit of a disapointment because there was only sand and no heath at all. But the small path I took to go there was really beautiful because of the Fall colors.

When I arrived at the other heath (near Gasteren) I went to the dolmen right away and found myself a nice spot in the sun.

I started to read in A new Earth. I have just started to read it, together with a friend. He already read the book 4 or 5 times and is still having new insights every time he reads it. I read chapter 2: The ego, the current state of humanity (this is my own translation in English). My friend and I will be discussing this chapter next Tuesday. It's not easy to read and it's even harder to explain what I've read in English, so I won't do it, but let me tell you that I find it very interesting!!

I stayed on the heath for almost 1,5 hours, just reading, taking some pictures and drawing. It was very calming. Sometimes there were people walking nearby but it wasn't annoying.

On my way back home I stopped to take a picture of a brook called Drentse Aa and I also took a picture of me in front of the brook. There was a lot of wind so my hair looks like shit!

When I almost arrived at my village I saw a buzzard on a pole. I had to use my 12x zoom to get a better look at it. It was really far away and this was my best shot. You can see that the buzzard was looking right at me.

First sketches Suzi Blu workshop

These are my first sketches I made for the Suzi Blu workshop. It's my homework for this week. Today I drew 6 new faces that I need to practice color shading. So that's what I'm going to do after I finished this post.

I also have to make a Healing Art Journal. I already started to work on it but I have been too busy the last couple of days to find the time to finish it.

Zander has been ill for the last 2 days. Just a sore throat, a head-ache and belly-ache. He will be going back to school tomorrow. He and I are doing much better these last couple of weeks!! All the people who work with him noticed it. He's doing so well at school and he has become more involved with his schoolwork. Today he told me that he asked one of his classmates in an e-mail to tell him about the homework he missed on yesterday. He did that all by himself!!! For a kid with autism - and maybe especially for Zander - that's awesome!!! I'm so proud of him!!

Workshop Suzi Blu

I've treated myself with a workshop from Suzi Blu for just 55 US dollars. I found her through Rianne who's also a member at SIStv and I completely fell in love with her mixed media art work. The workshop is all about making pretty looking doll girls (see photo above for one of Suzi Blu's art work). She is teaching us all kind of different techniques. There's a lot of stuff to download. I just love her PDF's!!! She's using videos to show how you have to make the girls and so on. For now, I have to draw eyes, faces and gestures in my art journal. I also have to keep a Healing Art Journal. That's probably the first thing I'm going to do tomorrow morning.

Last Thursday I have also treated myself with a new winter coat at H&M and some other new and warm clothes. And today I bought new shoes. They were a bit expensive but I loved them sooo much that I couldn't resist. So for the next couple of weeks I have to eat bread and drink water from the tab!!

I'm feeling great at the moment!! I have a new bed (see photo above) with new matrasses. My old matrasses had spirals in them and according to the therapist I went to see over the last couple of weeks these spirals made me feel very tired because of a spin-off reaction. Normally when we sleep the body is resting and loading itself with new energy. But in my case, because of this spin-off reaction, my system was working all night long and so in the morning I always felt sooo tired. With the new matrasses and the treatment I got, I have more energy and I don't feel so tired anymore!! Even the fibro bothers me less. Normally when it's rainy and cold weather my muscles ache a lot more, but the last couple of days I felt great, in spite of the rainy weather and the cold wind.

And just a couple of days ago I noticed that the pain in my shoulder was gone and I can move my arm freely now. (I have had a frozen shoulder in 2004/5.)

The pain in my lower back has also reduced. The last time I went to see the therapist he did a treatment to lenghten my right leg which was a little bit shorter than my left leg.

So, I'm very excited about this treatment!!!! There's a link to the website of my therapist in an older post.