Winner of the One World One Heart Blog Give Away

There were 269 comments left on my blog for the post of the Give Away for the One World One Heart action. I had the Random Generator at Random.org calculate a winner for the two little books. The number that was generated was 146. Trying to count down the list, the number was matched with Marie S. She posted this:

Congratulations Marie! I will email you (found the email address already) and ask you for your snail mail address. Thanks to all the bloggers that participated in this event! Can you believe that over a thousand bloggers joined in? Wow, very impressive!

The Kuler Game of Colours

I can't believe that many creatives don't know this colourful website yet! I am talking about the Kuler website.
In case you want to jump over right away, here is the link:
http://kuler.adobe.com
Since mentioning the website in one of my earlier posts ( http://exploringart.blogspot.com/2010/01/colour-combinations-from-photographs.html ) I received a few questions about how the site works.

First of all, it is free for anyone to use: no restrictions, no hidden costs, no nagging for contributions! This is a website for creative people where you can browse colour combinations, save the ones you like, create combinations according to the colour wheel rules, or, and this is the best part: create colour combinations from your own pictures (stored on your PC) or from the best photographs on Flickr.
I think I have your attention now!

To get an idea of how the website works, this video will show you some of the many possibilities:


To help you understand how you can bring the Kuler colours into your own Photoshop or Photoshop Elements program, I have written a short guide. You can download this guide in PDF format for free from this link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/193547437/67e3d493/Kuler_to_Photoshop.html

In this guide I also refer to the template that I made as a sort of inspiration reminder. It looks like this when you fill it up with the colours from the Kuler site:

The photograph is the image that I used on the Kuler site to extract a colour combintaion from. It is a photograph of hand dyed yarn from Scotland that I weaved in a little swatch. I loved these warm colours so much and wondered which colours would be found by Kuler.

If you want to make inspiration cards like this, you can download my template for free from this link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/193369666/22510360/5SwatchTempEmpty.html
It is a psd file (photoshop file) that you can open in Photoshop (Elements) and fill with the colours and pictures that you have found with Kuler.

If you want to save the colour combinations, you will have to sign up - again, for free. If you already have an Adobe ID, use this login name and password. You can browse the collection of colour combinations and save them in your own account. There are so many of them, that you will never find them again a few days later.

Here is the one I made today from a picture of three little books that I made for a swap.
OK, don't say that I did not warn you, but believe me, Kuler is highly addictive... So don't blame me for any burnt dinners, forgotten tasks, and missing kids! :D

One World One Heart

A few weeks ago I read about this event: One World, One Heart. An effort to try to connect bloggers from all around the world. And make some friends along the way as well.

One of the requirements to enter the event is to offer a blog giveaway, preferably handmade. So I found these 2 little books I made a while ago and since they are so small and wonderful - and handmade - I thought that they would appeal to a lot of people.

The books are very small! The size is 10.5 by 11 centimeters. One cover has only book linen, the other one is also decorated with book paper printed with the autographs of famous artists of the past. The books are filled with strong pastepapers which I also made, every page is unique. The backside of each paper has been lightly washed with acrylic paint. You can draw, collage, paint (acrylics), stamp and journal in these little books.

The only thing you have to do to get a chance to win these little books, is to leave a comment on this entry of this blog. Don't forget to leave your name and blog address or your email address.

If you leave your email address, be sensible and write it down in separate words. Don't use the @ sign so that bots can't find your address and use it for spam! So instead of me@gmail.com, use: me at gmail dot com.

The event will run until February 15th, and I will use a random generator to draw the winner. The winner will be announced on this blog, and I will contact you. Either by visiting your blog and commenting on your last entry, or using your email address.
This little pair of books will then be sent to you - worldwide - wherever you live. So join in the fun and leave a comment!

A Little Red Book (part 1)

I can't resist wired little books - they are just begging to be altered, aren't they? This one was given out as a free gift by the post office. The papers were thin, but I glued several together so that they were thick and would not wrinkle.

Then I started painting the pages with the last paint on the palette left over from other projects. To be honest, I had no clue in what direction I wanted to go with this little book. Then I started to work on the cover, and wrote a message in the layer of gesso that I laid down first. From that moment on I knew that this was going to be a kind of journaling altered book.

I liked the idea of adding text to a page with a personal meaning to me, but not obvious for the reader. Leaving the reader the freedom to add his own meaning and interpertation to the page, the words and the images. While altering other books, I sometimes cut out a line of text. Something that triggered a memory, or a wise saying.

Or I tried finding poetry in a piece of torn text: found poetry. Like in this page (above) which I tore from an old book about a woman growing up in the previous century. The lines say:

finally

I would

meet
beneath an umbrella
the whole world

A little poem made up from almost one sentence alone. I like simplicity...

And sometimes I started with just glueing in images that I altered a bit and as serendipity occurred, within a day or so I would find a line of text that would just fit in.
Easy and simple. Not too much thinking. That is how I like it.

Trail of Inspiration

This week I was challenged in a class on Inspiration to draw inspiration from a Beatrix Potter image. I did not grow up with these drawings, so the stories are not familiar to me. What struck me the most was the detailing and the amount of work in these paintings.

My first thought was: water colours (the paint, you know)  and soft tones. It had been a while since I used water colour paints and I wanted to get started again with them! Even though I am not an experienced painter and certainly don't apply these classic rules, like you cannot use white opaque paint in a water colour...!

The mice in the drawing made me think of something I did years ago: making finger prints (with ink or paint on paper) and drawing a long tail and ears, eyes, add some whiskers, and there you have it: a little mouse!
With an inkpad I tried to make the prints - felt a bit like a criminal - but the ink did not transfer very well. So after three attempts - they looked more like cats than mice anyway - I stopped.

Then came the thought: I have water colour brushes in Photoshop, how can I use these in combination with photographs? I started stamping the marks of the brush down in Photoshop. Soon it resembled a sort of 'photo mask' and I put a picture of my daughter's dog in it.
What a coincidence: I took the picture the day the dog learned to swim in the river - again that water connection!

The next idea was developed when I came across the artwork of Stephanie Levy. She uses black to make line art illustrations of interiors and colours them in with paint. She then adds patterened papers as a simple collage. Very clean and modern.

This reminded me of the spread I did in Julie's Altered Book about Historical colours. For her book I made a drawing of a French antique chair and outlined it in markers in a suitable colour.
So some decorating magazines came out and I started to trace lamps and chairs. Using coloured or black thin markers to outline them, filling in the colours with water colour paint.

I can understand why Stephanie likes to make this kind of work, it is fun and quick to work with. And I would love to experiment with pictures of my own interior! Well, only the nice pieces of course. On the other hand, I can just leave out the cracks and the dust bunnies!

The water colour inspiration trail did not come to an end yet. The next idea that turned up was painting swatches with water colour and tearing them in simple shapes, like petals, to use in collages or turn them into an illustration. Maybe have these tall childlike flowers reaching out to the sun? (I must be longing for spring).
Or I could use tissue paper and paint those - that would crumple up the paper and make a nice texture too.

So this is just an example of how one image can trigger the imagination and inspiration, if you just try looking behind the image itself. Even when that image has no special meaning to you.
I think that concentrating on inspiration these last few weeks made me so much more aware of how the things I encounter in everyday life can trigger so many new ideas.
And all I need now is the time to try them all out!

Rainbow Colours

I was looking for different objects around the house to photograph. The idea was to use objects in the colours of the rainbow. I did not have to look far: high up on the last shelf were some boxes with embridery floss that I have there for years - the dust on the lid poved it.
The colours in one of these boxes were somehow ordered in a rainbow sort of way: nice picture!

Then I selected some of thethreads and took seperate pictures, then placed them in one image. Maybe I should make a round shape with them? It will resemble a rainbow even better then.

Colour Combinations from Photographs

At the moment I am using photographs literally as inspiration for colour combinations. One of the easiest ways to do that is with the Kuler website:

http://kuler.adobe.com/

You can let the website do it for you, but to be honest, I'd rather help the software to adjust it to the colours I like.

After working with these images of winter, I needed pictures with warmer colours:

Can you resist colours like this? Not me!
And a landscape photograph of Scotland in the autumn gave these colours to play with:

It is a highly addictive game to find these colours in your own photographs. But it is inspiring, so what other excuse do you need?

Happy New Year!

Wishing you all a very happy New Year filled with the good things of life!

Days of September (part 5)

Here are the last pictures of the pages of my 'September Journal' that I made following an online class at Shimelle.com. Everyday we were sent a prompt to think about and to record it with photographs and text.
After the first two prompts or so, I just noted down what happened that day, or captured a moment and made a page about it. I used to be such a good student when I went to school, but nowadays I might be the teacher's nightmare. Always going astray. And often getting lost. Well, the latter did not happen in this project.

This page is about the day Yoga classes started again. It seems so simple: breathe in, breathe out. Move slowly and concentrate.
Concentrate. Don't think about other things. Forget about the ToDo list. Better still, don't think at all. And that is hard. My brain does not like to be shut up. It loves to wonder off. And off. Again. It is December now and I think I am able to learn this. Give me another year or two!

We hate traffic jams, hubby and I. They are just plain boring. And annoying. So we kind of make it a sport to avoid them and use the smaller country roads to get back home. Hubby has a thing with ferries. And he knows most of them on the Rhine, Lek and Maas river. So here in land which is divided by many rivers, the solution is to use a small ferry instead a large bridge on the highway.
And as a bonus you get to step out of the car for a minute or two and enjoy the fresh air!

This is a page about just a horrible day. There is not much to tell about it. These kind of days are the days you just want to avoid. Way too stressfull. Too bad you can't avoid these awful days, they are just as much part of life as the happy ones!

Another way of relaxation for me is sewing by hand. Doing a bit of patchwork, or in this month, making a quilt. The soft texture of the cloth, the movement of the needle putting it all together. There is something magical about it. Or maybe it is not magical, but so simple, easy and relaxing. After all these years I am still trying to figure this out!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Yesterday the temperature dropped below zero (Celsius) and the cyclamen and winter pansies dropped their colourful heads.
This morning we woke up in a true Winter Wonder land with snow everywhere! And it doesn't even melt. Can you believe that? Melting snow is what we normally have here in the Netherlands.

So I went outside, cleaned out the bird feeding houses - the birds had quite some trouble getting to the feed, man they are sometimes fighting to get some seeds - and took some snapshots of objects covered in snow.

And the blue bistroset in front of the house (don't you love that splash of colour in winter?) seems to be totally out of place!

The garden, which is normally a big mess, looks even beautiful today! Snow covers all the flaws. And the mess... You've got to love snow!
Unless you have a perfectly manicured garden maybe?

The christmas tree is still outside and covered in snow as well. I was planning to take it inside and start looking for the boxes with the lights and ornaments. But I think I will delay the decoration for another while. No decoration can match that snow on its branches. Way too beautiful!

Days of September (part 4)

More pictures of the little journal that I made during September. First I tried following the prompts of Shimelle.com, but life caught up and I decided to forget the prompts and make a page about my days.
Let's start with one of my addictions: book stores and art material stores.
I admit it - I am addicted to these stores. And when I enter, all my common sense is left by the door.

I truly need that marker, or that colour paint is exactly what I am looking for. And does one ever has enough paper? Of course not!
Books? You need books cause they make you smarter, isn't that so? And if it turn out to be a boring one, I can always alter it anyway...

Dyeing fabric yourself is a fun process: you can never predict the outcome of the results. I like that. Well, at least sometimes: not knowing where you are going. Untill I am lost, but that is a different story.
Back to the fabrics!
Patience was what I really needed when I started rinsing the fabric. You have to rinse it untill the water runs clear. Several times, after hours of rinsing, I thought the pieces of fabric were ready. But by laying them aside, they started to loose more dye. Arrrggghhh.

The Lesson I learned? I like dyeing the fabric - just not the rinsing... I don't have that kind of patience.

This day a small miracle happened. Nothing that changed the world though, but something ordinary turned this normal day into a great day. My mother said my name out loud.
I know, most mothers talk to their daughters. But this was special.
Very special.
Two weeks after the major CVA which left her even more handicapped than before, my mother knew who I was. Not just a stranger next to her bed, but her daughter.
When she said it, I realised that saying that one word meant the world to me.

Driving around in the Netherlands can sometimes be a great and boring adventure. In September lots of roadwork was going on and we sneaked to Breda using smaller roads and thinking we were so smart to duck the traffic jams.
We managed to escape two major traffic jams but in the end we drove into other (smaller though) traffic jams. It was a hot day and I was frustrated. I did not want to spend the whole day in the car.
I got a bit irritated. Especially when we were so close to the end point and drove right in another one. I looked in the rear window and saw Ashley enjoying the ride and being relaxed as one (dog) can be.
Sigh, sometimes I wish I was a dog.

I think this page needs no explanation. Under pressure: these two words say it all.

Days of September (part 3)

As promised, more pictures of the little art journal that I made about my life in September. This page was about the spiders that I scared away (in other words plainly killed) when cleaning the shutters outside. I know, spiders do a good job by catching all kind of insects. But I needed to do my job too!

I don't know why I was so upset when someone said that I was a chaotic. Maybe because I do my best to organise and structure life in my family. So for this page I rescued some of my ToDo lists from the waste basket and tacked them messy on this page. As proof that I am not? Convincing myself? Anyway, every time I see that page I have to smile!

Painting class started again in September and I was eager to get some serious painting done. But starting up again after a long summer was not that easy. I started with a painting of flowers, then changed my mind, covered it in gesso and started on a bird in the sky. And changed my mind again... And to this day the painting is still not finished! :D

I enjoyed the warm and glowing days of September so much that I did not notice the changing colours untill I went out with Ashley, our dog, to one of our favorite places! Time really flies.

I captured Coco in a crazy, lazy position on the couch. She was not feeling well and I took her to the vet (miauwing all the way down there). One shot of antibiotics was needed, because Coco does not do pills!
I have tried several times before getting her to take tablets: wrapped in liver, grounded and wrapped in ham. But whatever trick I try, it always ends with me being scratched by a very determined cat to spit out tablets as soon as possible. So now instead of getting scratched by her every day, the lady gets one (expensive) shot of the vet... Well, at least I don't get caught in her nails!
Special cat food should prevent more trouble...

On this day a telephone call that seemed so unreal. My mother had a cerebrovascular accident: a severe haemorrhage in the brain. I was told that she was blind according to the doctor and her blood pressure over the top. It seemed impossible to get well and we prepared for the worse.
But against all odds she did survive! Later that day she reacted on my hands in front of her face - her (poor) sight came back. And the next day she could take her medication again because the 'swallow reflex' came back. She did not recover fully and I feel like I am loosing her bit by bit.
On this day I learned that letting go was harder than I ever thought.

Days of September (Part 2)

At last, after 3 weeks my computer is back from the repairshop. Next time a fuse is blown, I will check the electric appliances in the house right away! My DH casually announced that he had blown a fuse but there was nothing to worry about.
The computer had been turned on when the fuse went down, but since it was protected by a power surge I never expected to smell something burned when I came back in my room. Sniffing like a dog I went around the outlets. The scent came from the corner where my computer stands. At that moment my heart skipped a beat. I turned on the monitor but that seemed OK. I just assumed that the computer was all right as well and that the burning smell came from the socket which DH had used.

A few hours later I turned on the computer. No way. It did not turn on. I had enough hope though that only the power unit had been burned. Since I also had problems starting up Windows Vista, I saw this as a good opportunity to have these problems fixed as well.
But one setback after the other followed. Like: power units not available for this casing, new casing needed, start problems due to bad memory chip.
To make the story short, it took 3 weeks to get the computer back.

But I was happy as a kid when I picked up the computer and gladly payed the bill. The joy did not last long. After two days the old start up problem accured again... I phoned the store and asked them to fish out the 'old' memory chip from the bin - which they did - and asked for assistance in solving this mystery.

Now the problem seems to be in my anti-virus software... You know, that piece of software you can't use without cause it protects the computer. Well, only if it works smoothly with Vista, it is. For now I try to solve this problem with the people of Kaspersky.

So here at last, are, as promised, some more pages of the journal that I made in September. Well, better late then never... :-)
Since I had extra time left when the computer was in repair, I reworked most of the pages during these past weeks. I will need to shoot new pictures to show you how they really look. So I only upload two pages today. Hopefully the rest will follow later this week. If I can keep that *#@!*&* computer running!

These pages were made when I enjoyed the last warm days of September: quilting in the sun, taking pictures of butterflies and enjoying the many birds in the garden. Life's little pleasures...

The Days of September (part 1)

Last month I tried to keep up with the online class from Shimelle.com. But I ended up making most of the daily pages in October. With more free time and without the pressure it was easier to make new pages and work on the earlier pages that were 'finished'.

On a sunny day in September I managed to dye the fabric that I got as a gift. The dye solutions were made several weeks before and should have been used as soon as possible, but that did not keep me from trying weeks later.
Several pieces were tied with elastic bands, a few were hand-stitched in some fantasy forms and the rest was scrunched up before dipping them in the dye.
I learned that I made too much dye solution! There is still enough left to dye another batch of fabric.

The page about Healing was made after a visit to a massage therapist who managed to relax the tied-up muscles in my neck. The result: finally being able to sleep after weeks of interrupted nights. What a luxury!

This is the page with a picture that I took back in August, leaving the train after standing still for 2 hours while firemen and the technical service of the railway company cleaned up the train: someone had jumped in front of the train on purpose.
The idea that when the train hit the breaks so suddenly, someone lost his or her life kept me haunting for such a long time. People with plastic bags searching for the remains, checking the undercarriage with flashlights...
A few weeks after the incident I was meant to go the same route with the train. But that night I woke up around 2 a.m. and could not go back to sleep anymore. I did not travel that day.

It was not the first time that it happened - earlier this year my train was late and someone jumped before the oncoming train. We also had to wait in our train for two hours before the track was cleared and it was back then that the conductor explained about the procedures. The first priority is to find all the parts of the body...

A week after the sleepless night, I found my common sense back and boarded the train again for that same trip.

Luckily there were some very special enjoyable moments in September too. This day I was sitting in the garden, ignoring the usuable weeds and the work that had to be done.
The sun shone and I just love the sun in the autumn: warm and inviting but not so overpowering as in summer. The garden was filled with birds, bees and even butterflies enjoyed the weather.
This one probably thought I was a flower and landed on my shoulder while I was sewing a quilt. I did not move and could see him so well: his eyes, the long tongue that he rolled up. What a little miracle it was to have him near me.
Eventually he flew away, but stopped by every now and then to sit on the little table next to me to warm up his wings. It was then that I was able to take a picture of him - he was asking for it!

A New Month, a Better Month?

September has not been the best month of the year for me. The weather was umbelievably wonderful and kind, and did its best to cheer me up. But most of the month felt like being in a storm of little and big life events. At one point my hubby and I looked at each other and asked the same question: What is going on?
Where is this all coming from?

Anyway, I had started the month with good intentions: Doing an online class from Shimelle.com and trying to make a small page about the things you can learn from that day. It seemed such a good way of getting myself in the habit of actually being creative every day. But boy, did I overestimate my ability.
What I learned most, is that I can't make a page every day! Sometimes I can make 3 pages on one day, but most of the time I had to push all the ideas forward (I did make notes though). And this means that up to today I have finished 17 pages, including the cover, which BTW might need some extra work, and makes me probably the slowest student of the class.
Is there an award for that?
Or maybe I should say that I just prolong the fun?

Here are the first two actual pages that I made. The other pages will get a place on this blog as well. Even though I did not follow all the prompts and ideas. In retrospect, I might have skipped all the prompts after the first week...