A short visit to Belgium.

My sweetheart and I went for a short visit to Belgium last weekend. We rented a small studio in Blankenberge with a nice view on the sea and the beach from Friday 15.00 hrs. till Monday 11.00 hrs..
On Saturday we visited Brugge which is one of the oldest cities of Belgium. Lots of old houses and canals. We even didn't have the time to visit one of the many museums because there was so much to see in the old centre of the city.

We were both exhausted when we returned to the studio and went to bed very early.

On Sunday we woke up very early and went for a walk along the beach to see the sun rise. I took some really cool photos.

After breakfast we went for a car ride along the Belgian coast. We stopped several times to take a walk on the beach. We even went to France to have a drink in the first village au bord de la mer: Bray-Dunes.

After we had returned to Blankenberge there were still some shops open and we went to a small shop where they sold all kind of products from Indonesia, Bali, Thailand and Nepal. I bought a sarong with batik motifs from Java. The lady who ownes the shop told us that she and her family used to live on Bali for about 8 years before they returned to Belgium 6 years ago. They still go there to buy the products they sell in their shop from the local people.

On Monday we went back home, but not before I bought my quilt-iron in Turnhout. I'm going to use it for waxing my paintings. I had been looking for the quilt-iron in my country but it was very expensive. In Belgium I payed half the prize!!

Latest projects from La Sirena class

I have finished 2 new projects from Suzi Blu's La Sirena class!
The first one is a folk art mermaid which I wood-burned on an old cigarbox. This was a fun project although the wood was very dry and hard to work on. Next time I'll use clear gesso and sandpaper to make the surface smoother and easier to work on! But I like it anyways and it's a great box for keeping my pencils.

The cigarbox before I started.

The wood burned mermaid with her face and body colored with pencils.

She's finished!! Added a little star-fish as a knob.

The inside of the box, painted and collaged with paper.

The second project is a painting of a folk art mermaid. I'll show you a couple of the stages it went through before I liked it and started with bees waxing it. It was my very first time to use bees wax on a painting and I LOVE it. I used an ordinary old iron (with no holes in it) which I bought for just a couple of Euros at a fleesmarket. The 100% bees wax I use is in thin sheets and are normally used for making candles. This is very handy because I don't need to melt the bees wax first. Next thing I'm going to buy is a small quilt iron!!

Just the background and the mermaid figure made of paper.

Here I added modeling paste on the hair and star-fish. I used self-made masks for making the dolphins and plants.

Here I added some blue sand and made more depth in the painting by making shadows with a purple pencil.

I wasn't pleased with the first color of the tail and experimented a bit with different colors. I ended up with a purple tail with pink scales.

This was the mermaid before I started with the waxing.

And voila here she is!! I ended up covering the dolphin at the bottom because I wasn't pleased with it. IRL she looks even better!