Spread for Peace&Hope Round Robin

For Glynis' Hope and Peace book, I made this spread. Not visible on the picture is the wrinting: Seek hope and you will find peace. I really enjoyed working on this spread - I guess the book begins to speak out loud now....

Tip In Swap

Here are some of the tipins that I did for the TipIn Swap from ABEurope at Yahoogroups. The theme was Lazy Summer Days.
Most of the time, I use double folded pages to make the tipin. It is easier to collage these pages.
Also, you don't have to worry about glueing the tipins in a book.

Colourful Booklets for Swap

This month our group at Art_By_The_Month (on Yahoo) decided that June's theme would be trying a new technique or materials, or using materials that you did not use for a while.
Since it had been a few months since I made a book, I decided to go back to bookmaking. Too bad that sending selfmade books to the other side of the world was not an option for my budget, so I kept it simple and made smaller booklets.

The covers are from backgrounds that I was making for paintings which never worked for a painting - but works pretty well as a book cover!
There is just one signature of light paper, sewn with linen. The signature is connected to the cover with a ribbon. A closure was made by sewing buttons on the cover and twisting some hread around it.

They were fun to make. I might make some extra for little gifts.

Simple pictures

I like my life when it is simple. Simple pleasures, simple things. This is a simple shot of just one eye of one of my cats: Pico. She was named after Picasso before we found out that she was female.
She looks a bit mean on this picture, but that is because she is mean! She is constantly in fight with her (lovely) sister Coco and regards the garden as her terrotority. Coco can count on an attack from Pico when she is not careful in the garden! And this has been going on for the last 10 years.....

Iris in oil

This painting was finished in May, but it took a while before I took a photograph from it. It was done in oil paint, which I like to use for flower painting. A bit different is this painting though. I tend to make softer paintings, but this one has a lot of movement in it.
I made it after working on a larger soft painting of another iris, and wanted to make up all the paint that was left on the palette. Maybe that explains the difference?

Clematis from the garden

I had been working in our garden and could not resist picking this clematis. I put it in a simple glass and took several photographs with my favorite lens: a macro lens (105 mm Sigma).
Often, I like to capture the 'feeling' of a flower, its colour, shape or just the rippling of the petals. That is why most of the picture is soft, out of focus. What do you think, do all pictures need to be clear?