My Creative Space

Today I'll be choosing colors for our bedroom. We're not choosing as bold as we originally planned, keeping in mind that we want to sell the house in the near future and so the colors should appeal to many. We choose a laminate floor in grey oak. Something we might have done anyway, but instead of going for ox blood or a real dark blue fro walls and ceilings, we'll go for lighter colors which lean towards the grey in the floor. The burgundy is a sample for curtains, but I have not decided on that yet.

Monday Mood

Trying to keep it cool :-)

Elianne by Carambatack

Beautiful View by CassiaBeck

Pebble Stack

Across the canal by Lauraamiss

Story bowls

Long I have been thinking how to name my bowls with a little scene in  it and looking back it was just logical to name them story bowls, so now they have a dedicated section in my shop on Etsy. For a while I had a different name in mind and that blocked me from seeing the right name for them, so hence the delay.

There are stories everywhere; sometimes it's the clay telling me a story as I start with this in mind, but end up with that. Therefor I very often I let the clay speak to me and start only with a vague idea in mind even as little as just the size of the bowl and the choice between clay and porcelain. Other bowls are inspired by what I see around me, the snow of last winter with all the trails of animals was a great source to name one inspiration.

Sometimes I'm inspired by stories written by my friend Shauna. And sometimes she is inspired by my work to write stories. We could not let this go unnoticed and are working on a collaborative project. More on that in future blogs.

Shauna made me also think on how I create, especially on my cuttlefish castings. She wrote a paper with a colleague writer: "Imagining The Image And Wording The Work" . They discuss the similarities between the different creative processes of jewellery making, painting and writing; I will share more of this with you later, cause it is just really interesting. And so thought others, their reading last Saturday was well received and they are now tailoring it to submit to a journal. Until it is published I cannot share it with you, so hang in there.

If you wan to read a little more on how I create in the meantime, here's a blog on how I create when I was working on a piece inspired by traditional objects from Zeeland where I was born.

Strawberry

More red today, maybe our slowly reddening strawberry's put me in a soft red mood Monday. 

I think our first strawberry of this year will be ready for picking at the end of this day :-)

I have started making in a list in my head with the fruit and vegetables I want in the garden of our next house. Strawberries of course, but also rhubarb and raspberries, which I love even more. We already got some apples and plum trees now and I'd like those again and a pear tree. A few years ago my brother experimented with new pear varieties and one turned out real nice. Never was commercialized, but we do keep a stock for ourselves. What else, herbs, onions, tomatos and a small vegatables patch. 

Monday Mood

Today I still got last week on my mind, meeting lots of lovley fellow Etsians at the craft party at Mitsy's place.
I was very happy to meet  Nicole from Babongohome, Veerle from Nevousinstallezpas, Ina from DeerLola, Mariana from Florcita, Kim from Viltalakim and Greet from FleurFatale and of course the wonderful host herself, Mitsy from Artmind. Than at yesterdays fair Inge from Kookaboora spotted me (which was not so difficult since I was her neighbor across the aisle) and came over to say hi. 
So here a moodboard filled with products of these lovely ladies. Most in red, felt like red today :-)

Flower trio necklace

Bunnies having a chat

Passionate corsage

Felted vases

Bunch of upcycled flowers

Silk crocheted earrings

Red and Burgundy bead ring

Cherry Charm

Happy Stats

Another week is over, time just flies.
I had a relaxing and sort of busy week at the same time.

• 2 new kittens were added 2 our household 
• tried new variations of muffins and they were well received 
• meeting lovely fellow Estians at the carft party at Mitsy's (read all about here)
• met even more Etsians at the fair today in Antwerp
• My cuttlefish castings are part of a research project by Shauna Busto and Karen lee Street , yesterday they gave reading about it, which was well received 

Craft party

As I'm writing this I'm waiting for a phone call from an Antwerp radio station. They want to interview someone who participates in this Sundays fair 'bepArkte oplage'. And since I'm participating I qualify. If you can come; do! It's a nice fair and located in a park with a bar, so you can enjoy the sun and a drink before, during or after shopping. Once the interview is over I'm off to the craft party in honor of the 5th anniversary of etsy, at Artmind's place.
Yesterday evening I made muffins for todays party, 4 variations, one I tried before, 3 are new, inspired by tweets on muffins or just inspiration of the moment in the supermarket. So the guest at the party will be guinea pigs :-) If they react positive I'll finish this blog later by sharing the recipes. I also bought some sweets called Truly Party Animals, thought they suited the theme just fine :-) Some mead, juice and nuts will top it off, if everyone has this much with them, Mitsy can send us rolling when we have to go home.
Well still no phone, so I'm off....

...and back. Had a wonderful day, meeting fellow etsians in real life, eating, crafting and chatting. Mitsy had prepared for us to work with porcelain and color it with stains, pigments and oxides and lots of textures. Great to see what everyone made and even more curious to see what will be done with the pieces after firing.

This afternoon inspired me (for a start, more will follow subconsciously I'm sure) to make brooches with mouse(s) after a piece of cheese. Thanks to Mitsy for supplying the texture-stamp for the cheese and having yellow stain around. I would never buy yellow myself, since its not really my color.

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The muffins were a great success, so here the promised recipes.

I started by making it myself a little easy and buying the muffin mix (400gr) from AVEVE (If you're not in Belgium I'm sure there will be other muffin mixes available). I add 100 gr of vegatable oil and 200 ml water and mix all until smooth. Than the extra ingedients for each variation, see below. This will make 12-14 muffins. You need to bake them at 180°C-200°C for 18-20min.

For raspberry and lemon muffins add approx 150 gr frozen raspberries and the zest of 1 lemon.

For speculaas muffins add 8-10 speculaas cookies in chunks.
Speculaas is a typical Dutch/Belgian, but ginger type cookies will make an excellent replacement.

For rhubarb muffins, add 20gr of vanilla sugar and approx 150gr of rhubarb in thin slices (1/2 cm max). Sprinkle with a little cinnamon.

For cherries and chocolate muffins, add  approx 100 gr of cherries (bought a bottle and drained of the syrup) and chocolate buttons to taste.

Enjoy! Bon Apetit! Eet Smakelijk!