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!

She got lost

Finished my first Suzi Blu mermaid painting in my art journal a couple of days ago. I had so much fun making this!!

It is not difficult at all to make. Just make a background in the art journal with alohol inks and spray paint. Add water and dab with a tissue, add alcohol drops and dab again. Add some drops of bleech and let it rest for a while. Draw a mermaid on another page of the art journal and take that page out of the journal. Cut out the mermaid, color and paint it. Put some green seaweed made of thin paper on the bottom of the left and right page. Glue down the mermaid and add some more seaweed on top of her. Add some fish and seahorses and glue down some small crystals as air bubbles. Put a flower in the hair of the mermaid and also some crystal stars. I made green pearly lines in her hair with 3D fabric paint from Tulip.
The title of my page is: She got lost. It's about losing your own spirit growing up. You can loose your own true self in so many ways and get lost. But can you see that my mermaid is swimming out of the seaweed? Soon she'll be in the open water and free to move around as she pleases! That's where I'm heading too!!

Fairy jar

A couple of days ago I made this fairy jar.

It's a project I saw at Suzi Blu's Les petit Academy. Just watch the video here for the instructions.

Mermaid background techniques

This is what I made thusfar for Suzi's mermaid workshop! It's so much fun playing with paints, water, alcohol inks and spray paint. I love it!!!

I made a collage with arcsoft collage creator of several techniques I worked on yesterday. (click on the photo for a better look)

Today I made this one using sea salt.

And on this background I used several of Suzi's techniques. 

I'm going to use this one for my first mermaid painting.

What can I say ...

... I'm a bad blogger (again!!)!!!
I could say that I was away on vacation, but I can't, because I stayed at home whole Summer! It has been a bit of a hectic period though with lots of things going on with both my parents and with my son. I (still) get overwhelmed quickly by things happening around me which affect me and makes me feel stressed and tired.
And although Summer started with lots of sun, these last few weeks, there has been a lot of rain and it makes that I can feel that the fibro is still active in my body. I try not to pay much attention to the pain and the fatigue (not to feed the negative) but sometimes it's hard to not think about it when I feel like an old lady of 80+!

I try to do something creative as much as possible and that helps most of the time to forget about the pain and the fatigue. So, I finished the pages in my art journal, made 2 angels on small wooden embellishments boxes and recently started a new online workshop (about mermaids) at the Suzi Blu Academy.

This is the final result of my art journal page. I called it love, freedom and aloneness! It's the title of a book from Osho. These three words mean a lot to me. IRL the colors are way better and also the shading of the face, but for some reason I can't make a good looking picture of my page.

I made this angel on the back side of a small wooden embellishment box. I like to work on small surfaces. For the background I used a page from Shakespeare's work. The dress of the angel is made with vintage fabric. I gave this one to Cor!

This angel is also made on a small wooden box. The big heart is actually made of felt which I covered with modeling paste and after it was dry I painted it. The bird is a print out which I gave a little touch of red paint.
The words are cut from a vintage book. For this angel I used techniques from Suzi Blu and Kelly Ray Roberts.

PS I'm so happy with the changes at Blogger. I can finally put my photos wherever I want to!

Working in my art journal

I've had a busy week with my dad suddenly taken to hospital on Wednesday with a high fever and being very confused. He ripped out his drip 5 times! Luckily the fever dissappeared overnight and he could leave the hospital the next day. But he still was very confused!

On Friday there was a bonescan planned and he had to go there with an ambulance. I went with him because he was still confused and very tired. The doctors wanted to get him the bonescan as soon as possible because of the pain he has from the cancer, so that's why they decided to let him have the bonescan despite his condition. Luckily he's doing much better now!

However I was feeling very tired over the weekend and decided I needed a break and do something I like to do and which gives me energy and pleasure. So, yesterday I started working in my art journal again. It'll be a page about love and freedom, two very important words to me!

I also went to see a friend who recently was on a holiday in Denmark. Her sister also dropped by and she used to work with my son so it was nice talking to her too!

When I went for a walk I stopped by a small birdsnest that Cor's dog molested on Sunday, hurting one of the still naked birdies. I managed to repare the nest and put it back on a small branch in between the stinging nettles with the 2 birdies in it. Today I discovered that there was only one birdy left and that the mother was still taking care of her little one.

Bees on lavender.

Still enjoying the warm weather and taking it easy. I was glad with some heavy rain-showers Saturdaynight and last night. Although last night the water came dripping into my son's room. This morning a guy from the house-renting company (?) came over to look for the problem . There was a lot of mud, leaves and other rubbish on top of the roofwindow in between the window and the roofing-tiles and the water couldn't run down anymore and found itself the easiest way to escape: into the house! He had just finished his cleaning job when another rain-shower came pouring down and it seems that the problem is solved.

Cor and I had a quiet weekend. We went swimming on Saturday evening after we went to his house during the day to take care of the animals and to visit his mother. I also took some photos of bees on lavender in Cor's garden.

On Sunday we slept in and went to see my dad in the afternoon. We found out that he has an urinary tract infection and he was feverish and confused. Last Friday we went to see the urologist together and he was just fine that day. Things can change so quickly when people are as old as my parents and not in a very good health. The urologist has decided that my dad needs radiation treatment on his back. They already give him 45 mg of morphine every day and his back still hurts him. He now has to wait for a new bone scan and a visit to the radiologist. I hope that he doesn't need to wait too long!!

More butterflies

Yesterday I took some other photos of the same butterflies at Cor's. We think that they were busy making love. What do you think?

All kind of different creatures

This Saturday it was time to shear the 3 sheep of Cor. He didn't let them shear last year and they looked like 'rasta' sheep. We managed to put them in a small shed just before the sheep-shearer arrived. He took them out one by one and put them on their behinds and then started to shear them. In just a couple of minutes the job was done and the sheep was naked. Cor now has 3 large and very thick fleeces which we're going to wash and then probably use for felting.

Very close to Cor's house I also took some very nice photos of a small butterfly called in latin Zygaena trifolii. In Dutch it is Vijfvlek-Sint-Jansvlinder (literal translation in English: fivespotted-Saint-Johnsbutterfly). It actually is a night butterfly that lives during the day. In this part of the country it is called a rare species.

On the same plants we also noticed 2 big green grasshoppers. We could see their jaws moving when they ate from the plant!