Reflecting

 

Hello everyone,

Or should I say: anyone? Is anyone still interested in the good old crafty arty blogposts? I have to admit, I don't visit them anymore. Then why would you write a blogpost yourself, you could ask. I don't know, I just felt like reflecting on the years I spent here and the art journey I went on because of starting this blog.

It was 2012.

I stumbled upon a book called The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt.

Simply Neutrals 52 and happy New Year

Happy New Year dear friends!!!

And a warm welcome to our (very blue here) Simply Neutrals gathering of January 2019!

May 2019 be a blessed year for you. A year full of love and joy and interesting adventures. Do you have plans for the coming year? Or wishes or dreams or goals?

Besides doing a lot of illustrations, I'm learning how to make pattern designs. Both surface pattern designs as well as patterns for embroidery designs. I have this dream of having my own fabric line and using my own fabrics in my needlework projects. I love creating with threads and fabrics and it will always be a big part in my creative life. And I also really love illustrating and making pattern designs, so I thought, why not combine? I have a lot of ideas and plans, a bit too many really, so we'll see how it goes. I'm looking forward to seeing everything materialize! I'll keep you posted :)

One of the things I want to learn is how to quilt. Do you have tips and tricks to share with me? And where do I start??? I know how to embroider, but my sewing has never been very neatly done. I'm a bit of a messy stitcher. As you can also see with my project for today. I call this my crazy collaged little quilt thingie.

Er... it's far less neutrally coloured as I had in mind, lol!

The quilt thingie itself has a lot of neutrals, so I thought it would do for our party. But then I added it on a very blue page of a fabric book of mine, and well... It will have to do though, because everything else I could share is all very colourful.

The fabric journal is one that I had started a looooong time ago, but never came to work in it. It is meant to become a heirloom book. You can find the beginnings of it HERE.

I gathered some scraps of fabric. Some come from old blouses, some from an old pillow case, and some is new (or was new I should say, it's been around here for a while already). I collaged these scraps on a piece of white muslin, keeping the raw edges visible. And then I started to embroider and add some embellishments. I let my intuition guide me. The embroidery stitches I used are daisy stitches, French knots, (double) feather stitches, satin stitches, bullion knots, whipped backstitches, ... I think that's it, but I have the feeling that I'm forgetting one or two stitches...

Anyways, on to the party of this month!

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FEATURE OF LAST MONTH

Dear Alison was really on the roll with neutral projects last month, which she shared with us. One of these is the feature of last month, because it reminds me very much of a vintage Winter with a hint of Spring. (And I do long for Spring!!) And the tags she created are just gorgeous! Plus, I really loved the story she shared with them, how they came to be when she was creating with others. I so much enjoyed their creative gathering story, you can read it HERE.

Simply Neutrals #39 - Signs of Early Spring

Hello dears, welcome to Simply Neutrals!

For dear Suzy of suziqusthreadworks I created an embroidered fabric heart, inspired by the hints of colour of the Crocuses in the winter garden.

For the background (only the top) I used a stencil I hand-created earlier and which you can see in a post HERE. I then added some fabrics, laces and netting (don't know how else to call it), tea dyed fabric leaves, a piece of handwritten paper on which I put some bee wax, a piece of brown netting that Suzy had gifted to me earlier, and then I embroidered by hand.

I also created a tag for her, with the intention to write on the back, which I then forgot to do before closing and sealing the envelope... oh well.

For the background of the tag I used a piece of a digital scrapbook paper I created earlier and which you can find HERE. I added some netting and laces, inked the edges, and added dried and pressed Hydrangea petals. I had shown these earlier on my blog. They still had such gorgeous colours, even after a year. But when I added acrylic medium to secure them to the tag... poof, gone were the colours...





The original petals above, and the glued ones below.

On top of the petals I added a piece of plastic wrapping, to protect the petals, plus I thought the shiny effect was nice too.

Next project to be finished is the embroidered little birdie journal that you see a part of in the photo below (and that I also shared earlier here on AppleApricot). But you never know how things go with WIPs... High on my to do list however are the promised giveaways and artist interview! I haven't forgotten them ;)

Oh, and I'm also going through my own blog posts (here and the freebies one) to see if there might be copyright material in it that's not owned by me. I already saw there is, so I hided those posts or deleted the copyright image.

I really want to be careful in this and will do my best to avoid copyright material in the future. After reading some articles on this, I'm convinced we all do well to avoid using copyright material or images, photos and text that we are not sure if it has copyright or not.

***

FEATURE OF LAST WEEK

I was completely in love with the beautiful studio photos dear Nancy of Sugar Lump Studios showed us, with the lovely boxes and suitcase, the birdhouse and cage, her gorgeous art work, and so many more beautiful things to look at and be inspired by.

The stillness of early Spring

I'm having fun experimenting with several media. I think I will do a whole lot more experimenting because I'm really enjoying it! First of all, earlier I had tea dyed some papers for a junk journal (of which I'm still in the progress of editing the video footage I took of it). I thought this was so much fun that since then I'm begging everyone's used tea bags when their tea is still hot, lol! Then I run upstairs to "paint" with these bags on paper and cloth.

When doing so, a flower head of a bouquet dropped on one of the papers and I noticed the colour the stamens were making on the paper. So I started rubbing some of these on paper and cloth. (Some result are on bottom of the photo above, both left and right.)

I also started experimenting with the copier machine. I copied a bird illustration I painted earlier and really love the result. And when I saw two little leaves that had fallen from house plants, I picked them up, put them under the copier again and again, creating a pattern. I then copied some vintage French text on top of that. (See top right of photo above.) I think this is so cool and will definitely experiment more often with the copier machine!

It's freezing cold outside. We had a tiny bit of snow a couple of days ago, but it's all gone now. The howling wind is icy. "Wind is spoiling skating fun, natural ice still very unreliable" the news headlines read. Dutch people love to skate on natural ice. Well, many of them do, not all.

But the sun is shining happily, making my room comfortably warm. If I didn't hear the howling wind, I would say it's a nice Spring day. But it's not, it's still Winter. There are some first signs of Spring though. In a neighbouring garden the ground is littered with Crocuses. Happy little dots of purple in a neutral coloured surrounding. This gave me the inspiration for an Early Spring fabric heart. Which is finished, but I cannot show it to you yet because it will be send to a dear friend. So you'll have to do with a little sneak peek for now. See on the left of the photo below.

On the right is the beginnings of a small journal, with a birdie I embroidered.

I also gather flowers and press them. Not flowers from outside, not yet. But from bouquets that are on their return. And I have so many flowers and leaves dried and pressed last year. Here are some Hydrangea flowers that I used on a tag. The tag I will show you later, cause again this one goes to my dear friend. Patience my dears :)

More experimenting: I made my first two erosion bundles and put them in the garden. I wanted to try this for some years now, but never did. So here's my first attempt. Now I have to wait two or three months and see what the elements of wind and moist create with it. In the bundles there are papers and fabrics, pieces of lace, flower heads, rusted iron and copper bits, and some cheap water colour paint splashes here and there. I hated painting with this paint and thought this would be a fun way to try something different with it in stead of disposing of it. (Update: I had put them in a little cardboard box and someone thought it was garbage and did dispose of the little packages without me knowing... sigh.)

And then of course there are some of the photos I promised earlier, of the walk we did on the Utrechtse Heuvelrug. In the land of bogs and woods and heather fields. It's such a beautiful area and it's not far from where we live, so we love to go there often.

There was a thin layer of ice on the water then.

I'm sure it's grown much thicker now with this icy cold.

But the strong winds make it treacherous to walk or skate on it.

In the woods we found beautiful textures of bark and fungus.

 

And I love the beautiful mirroring in the water.

There was no wind that day, so the water was peaceful, like a giant mirror.

Small fungus growing on fallen bark.

You know what I forgot to look for?

Skeleton leaves!

I'm sure there must be skeleton leaves now, don't you think?

Well, it doesn't spoil the fun I had :)

I was just thinking, funnily I named this blog post the stillness of early Spring. But indoor as well as outdoors it's not so still at the moment, with my happy experimenting and the howling wind, lol!

Wishing you a beautiful day!

Big hugs xx

Wen

Embroidered Matryoshka doll ornament

Last Christmas the fiber art facebook group Rag Bag Gals held a handmade ornament swap. Of course it had to be something made out of fabrics and/or threads. Originally the swap was only open to USA residents, and another one for UK residents, which neither of those describe me. But when I asked if someone was willing to swap with me, dear Pen Parkin of Rosa Lily offered to be my swap pal. Thank you so much dear Pen! I really appreciate that! This is the ornament I made her. A Matryoshka doll, which I embroidered by hand.

Later, I will share the beautiful sweet ornament Pen made me, when I share more of the handmade Christmas beauties I received this year.

Christmas has just gone around the corner, but just look what I found in the garden: the first signs of Spring! Isn't that wonderful? So happy to see some little flowers peeping their heads out in the sunshine again!

Wishing you all a most beautiful day, and hope to see you coming Tuesday when the Simply Neutrals linky party will be back! You'll have a whole week to link up and join the party.

Big hugs xx

Wen

Autumn

Hello sweet friends,

It's definitely Autumn here, nature changes its colours to beautiful warm tones. There are still some gorgeous flowers showing, like these soft pink roses.

I love the warm reds and pinks of Autumn and wanted to do some embroidery to add to my Book Of Bloom. So I started with a flower and some leaves and I will see where this will bring me. I do not have a design to work from, I just love to embroider like I'm drawing with thread.

I do not have much time for embroidery though, because whatever time I have available for creating, I use for painting.

Like this little painting of a Cardinal bird that I did on a dried and pressed autumn leaf.

But I'd love to do more embroidery, so I will definitely make sure to take some time for that as well! I find the slow pace soothing and relaxing.

While painting, I notice that I'm leaning towards illustrating at the moment. Especially illustrating birds and flowers, like below, with influences from folk art. But I also love art journaling, and I will share some of that on my blog Wen's Paint.

Did you have some time to create lately?

Wishing you a beautiful day!

xx Wen

Trying some new things

Hello hello, summer holiday is almost over and we're back to normal. How has your summer been? Just before we went on a few weeks trip I had sent out a little package to dear Dorthe. I had been trying new things, expanding my horizon. Like macrame, knitting, and crocheting in thread size mini.

Like the tiny crochet flower above (see the difference with the white flower in a thread size that is commonly used in our days), with an old crochet hook in size mini. My goodness, that's hard! I'm in awe of the ladies of old that made tons of amazingly beautiful projects with hooks like this one...

I finished a fabric and lace booklet that I had been working on some time ago. It has little pockets to hold sweet messages and a tiny notebook.

On pinterest I had found a tutorial by Lia Griffith for macrame, something I had been wanting to try my hands on for a while now. The result is below. It's a tiny macrame, which can be used as a necklace hanger for example, like Lia does in her tutorial.

Also, I tried knitting, with some cotton yarn I had for crocheting. And from my first little test swatch I made a tiny pocket message booklet with an embroidered uplifting message on the inside. This little message can be carried with you in your pocket, or even used as a wrist cuff. The knitting feels so soft, so cuddly. I added a crocheted heart and an embroidered button on the outside.

You are loved. A good reminder I think. It's something we tend to forget, isn't it?

Well, this is it for today, dear friends.

Wishing you a wonderful new week ahead.

xx Wen

The inspiring coast of Cornwall

Cornwall had been on my wish list for a long time before we made it there. I grew up in a coastal town myself and really longed to visit the south west end of the UK. And I was not disappointed. Now I really long to go back there again and again.

It's that's feeling of really being on vacation, that I also always have when we drive to our local coast and pass the sand dunes. On these coasts the trees are lower than inland. There's more bushes than trees, really. You hear the seagulls and smell the salt of the sea in the refreshing breeze. And of course there's the sea. The waves splashing on the beach over and over again.

It's the hours spent beachcombing.

Finding treasures in shells, stones, sea glass and pottery pieces.

It's a place so inspiring, I take loads and loads of photos to bring back home some of the beauty and memories. At home I wish to capture it all, studying in threads, fabrics, paints, and so on.

And I don't mind the weather on coasts like this.

I want to stay outdoors for as long as possible. You really have to drag me home then.

The hills and cliffs, the beaches and sea, they inspired me to experiment with crochet. I used a version of the so called wave stitch, and varied with working in back loop, front loop and both loops, to add some depth to the piece. I also started adding some tiny flowers in embroidery. Where this will lead me, I have no idea, but I'm having a whole lot of fun anyway :)

And the colours also inspired me to get some paint going as well, as you can see.

I love paintings worked in detail and abstracts equally. It's just like nature. Nature paints in wild landscapes, flora and fauna, magical small worlds in details, and abstracts and patterns.

Here's an abstract painting by nature:

Isn't it just gorgeous? Plant life holding on to ancient coastal rocks, washed by the tidal waves. 

Waves that bring little treasures to the coast: sea glasses, pottery, shells.

Found in rock pools and harbours.

Here the ocean has withdrawn. But only for a little while. You have plenty of time to do some beachcombing, but make sure to keep an eye on the tide and go back to dry land in time. I didn't, and got wet feet. Luckily I was close enough to the beach. Others had gone a little further and had to swim back. They had fun though, and got back safely.

I can see why so many artists are inspired by the Cornish coast.

Here are some of my favourite Cornwall inspired artists (in alphabetic order):

Amanda Richardson

Carolyn Saxby

Hannah Cole

Kirsty Elson

Melanie McDonald

Serena

The only thing that I regret, is that I didn't shoot more video on this trip.

Oh well, next time!

Is there a particular coast you have fond memories of or which you would love to visit?

Do you love beachcombing?

xx Wen

Sneak peek

Hello sweet friends,

Today I have a sneak peek for you with a link that will take you to a new fabric heart of mine. I also added a little how-to in there.

If you want to know what this is all about,

then please hop over to

Wild Flowers on a hapa zome heart

Wishing you a beautiful day.

xx Wen

Grow Your Blog 2015 plus giveaway (now closed!)

*** GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED ***

Hello hello and welcome to the Grow Your Blog Party of 2015!!

Well, my spot in the party anyway :)

Dear Vicki of 2 Bags Full has generously offered to host this wonderful party again this year. Thank you Vicki!!! It's a huge party with lots of beautiful blogs participating. And it's all about sharing and exploring, having lots of fun and making new friends in the world of blogs.

So here I welcome you in my little nook, where I share with you what my blog is all about. And be sure to check out my little giveaway too! Enjoy your stay and thank you so much for visiting me!

***

My name is Wen.

When you visit me, you'll find different kinds of hand crafts. I love making books and collages.

Be it made from fabrics, laces, paper or whatever.

And of course there must be cards.

For that's what we love to send each other, don't we?

I love making little presents for friends and family.

And wrapping them carefully in sweet packages.

Making fabric hearts.

And hand made books.

Glue books too. And ATCs.

Flowers are essential to me in both my work and life.

So you will find lots of those too.

For example in my embroidery pieces, which are mostly incorporated in collages or books. I plan to make more projects with embroidery, like this brooch I made.

And hand made fabric flowers.

An example of a fabric collage:

I love to work with laces, old and new.

You'll also find here some faith inspired projects,

like this fabric embroidered tag.

Or a collage on bark and an altered jar.

Sometimes I add a little tutorial or "making of"

like here of the collage below: 

Sometimes I share my thrifty finds here too.

***


GIVEAWAY


*** THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED ***

 Well, this is a lot of photos already, so I better hurry to my giveaway now.

My giveaway to you is this little roses notebook that I made.

There are watercolour paper pages in it where you can add your thoughts

or memories or quotes or whatever you'd like to pen down.

I wish you all a wonderful party time!

Thank you so much for visiting me, it's very much appreciated.

Sending you big hugs and happy smiles.

xx Wen