Mini Art Journal: The Nature of Causality

Last week I showed you some results of my gelli printing session using some fun stencils. I have used one in my pocket journal as a base in combination with a wonderful Mucha woman stamp from Lost Coast Designs. I stamped her on sticker paper and colored her in with letraset promarkers.

The print I took was the "clean up /dirty print" and I started with adding more color to the page with dabbing distress inks squezed lemonade and evergreen bough on the page with a blending tool. It created a really nice bright background to work on.

Then I got out the yummy large grunge border stamps to create some texture on the page. I used staz on cactus and forest green and the hero neon ombre sets in green and pinks.

I stamped the whole page with both grunge border stamps in alternating colors and when it came to cutting the page to size for my journal, I flipped the page because I liked the look of the clocks right above her head.

I definitely love how the texture of the background came together. The green aria on the left sort of does look like a couch and I decided to place the lady there.

A quote from Terry Pratchett Discworld was added to the right "Do not interfere with the nature of causality" and I found this very fitting with the artistic process.  I had a hard time letting go of the fact that the flower imprint is not distinctly visible anymore as it did in the very first picture of the post. But I still could create a page I was happy with. Sometimes things just happen while you are working on something and it's better to work with it,and not against it. The quote is written with Kuretake Fudenosuke brush soft pen and accentuated with a pentel white gel pen. The border stamp is from Dylusions and the star stamps from studio light.

I love promarkers because you can create some lovely shading.

Terry Prachett is a wise man!

Have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by.

namasté

Tilburg Penshow 2016 recap (and spoils)!

This past Saturday was the 28th edition of the Tilburg penshow which took place at the Natuurmuseum. It was an awesome sunny day and the car ride over to Tilburg was filled with sunshine and excitment :) And once again when I entered the building and saw all the gorgeous pens on the tables and met up with great friends at the show, I totally forgot everything else existed, so not a lot of pictures were taken.

You would be blinded by all this too, right? And this is only ONE table, from you guessed it Sarj Minhas.

He also had a bunch of gorgeous Limited Edition pens in glass cases with him. All out of my budget unfortunately but great to look at :)

He even brought a whole case of vintage and some modern Omas pens with him! To taunt me I am sure as last year I got a gorgeous Omas paragon with Mottishaw BB stubbed nib from him. I really oogled them a lot and tried a few when I asked if he has any specialty nibs he really gave me something special...

Some pens I tried with great nibs on them! From left to right Omas club with Mottishaw B stubbed nib, Omas Lucens Extra with fine flex nib, Nettuno also with a B stubbed nib, which wrote amazing! But the last one of the line up, was something I have been looking for for years! A Wahl Eversharp Doric 2nd generation in grey shell with adjustable #9 nib. But not just any nib...

It has a oblique broad adjustable nib which is not something you see everyday (to put it mildly ;) So needless to say, this one went home with me.

Yes in my excitement I spelled Doric wrong, but look at how awesome it writes! So I finally have my adjustable Wahl Eversharp Doric with an amazing nib thanks to Sarj!

These beauties were also purchased from Sarj:

Swan Leverfiller in jade green marble with a wonderful #2 flex nib and a Conway Stewart 15 in blue marble with a flexible ob stub. Super happy with my new vintage beauties!

Another find of the day was in a grab box filled with random cartridge boxes:

Parker Penman Mocha, Sapphire and Ruby :) Not all a full box, but definitely still usable! And I have started using them in my parker pens right away!

Talking about ink, I would not leave without a bottle of the KWZ Monarch ink esp. made for Fontoplumo store. They are opening their brick and mortar store in Delft this weekend! I am super excited for them :) 

It's a beautiful warm orange and smells delicious! It also has great shading in a juicy broad nib. More of this in a future pens and ink post!

But of course it was not all about finding great pens and inks but also connecting with great friends, old and new. Was so great meeting them again and one of them was hard not to miss...

SBRE Brown in his colorful suit in front of La Couronne du Comte's shop. He also posted a more flattering picture on his instagram which I also took  ;) 

This picture taken by Dries captures the crazy fun of the day  for sure

My #tilburgpenshow haul is nice and all, but believe me when I say that that ☝️ bunch of crazy, awesome, kind people is the reason I love going to the Tilburg pen show! It's not about the pens, it's about being together with a bunch of like-minded people and geek out about pens for a couple hours, without any 'normal' people judging us ink nuts! Thank you for the great day @janinescribbles @sbrebrown @gourmetpens @mrericorozco @missthundercat @mrmgward @cornelius.grayl @mcvanwijk1! PS: @cornelius.grayl and @mrmgward were trying to block @sbrebrown's face, his suit alone was enough awesome for one photo 😂!

Een foto die is geplaatst door Pencilcaseblog (@thepencilcaseblog) op 25 Sep 2016 om 7:30 PDT

I could not have said it any better, Dries! Thank you for this fab group picture!!

And thanks to everyone for contributing to such a fun day!

For more Tilburg penshow fun,
see a great recap from Dries at The Pencilcase Blog and
 from Michael at Pens N Inks blog for many more awesome High Res pictures. 

Until next year!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.
namasté

The Bride on Halloween

Over at Viva Las Vegastamps blog they are getting us ready for Halloween with their september challenge. They have some awesome Halloween stamps and I recently got plate 1476 of which I used a few stamps for the ATC and card I made above. The Bride of Frankenstein is the focal point on both the ATC and note card.

I also used the Skull and Bones stamps from this plate for the background with the "when witches go riding" text stamp. The background is made with paints, stencils, golden sheer modge podge and pearl lusters. I matted that onto black cardstock and then adhered to the red note card. 

Shading around the Bride is made with a black distress crayon. Red spatter effect on the text was made with a stencil and acrylic paint. 

For the ATC I used a mixed media background, made on kraft paper. I used stencils, modelling paste, brusho, CW gold gesso and red paint. I stamped over it using the same stamps for the background as with the card. Then I made a tape transfer from the stamp to get the reverse image.

It's very easy to make a tape transfer! I used clear laminating foil which I cut in the right size and pressed it down on the stamp. First I have stamped the image with staz-on several times on a piece of paper so that the ink on the rubber is dry. Then used the back of my scissor handle to run the tape well over the image and pulled the print off.

As you can see it's a light transfer, which means the image is transparent. That is what I was looking for so the multilayered background shows through this image.

She is dark enough to stand out but light enough to have the background show through. I matted the ATC on black card stock and called it done. I really love this stamp and made more Halloween ATC's which I will share in another post. 

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

namasté

Mailart Monday: Bowtie Butterfly

In this mailart monday I wanted to share with you a couple of ATC's I made with some great stamps from Stampotique. The theme for this fortnight's challenge at the challenge blog was "put a bug on it" Since I have this "lovely Wings" stamps for a while, it seems like now is the good time to use it!

I have used the torso of Bowtie combined with the stamped wings to make a butterfly. I stamped the wings on transparent vellum paper with forest green staz-on and rubbed some pearl rubs copper over it. Bowtie I stamped on sticker paper and colored with promarkers and cut out. The background is an old Magenta collage stamp which is mail art themed. I lightly stamped it with Hero neon ombre greens and used a blending tool to color it with distress inks mustard yellow and evergreen bough. Then I used green pearl rubs on the edges of the card and matted it on black card stock. I adhered my Bowtie Butterfly with a sticky tape roller to the card and doodled around the edges with a black micron pen. I also outlined the "winged post" with wings that was part of the magenta collage stamp. Then stamped the little envelopes from Elke from Crafts and Things in Antwerp and added red accents to it with a red promarker. 

It was super fun to make and thing outside of the ATC "measurement box" and have the wings create a 3D effect :) If you are interested in trading this ATC with me, let me know as it has no recipient yet. 

And if you are interested in ATC trades in general and like using Stampotique stamps, join the facebook group page where ATC swaps are being hosted. I participated in the september ATC swap of which the theme was "stamped backgrounds" and the below ATC's are the ones I made and sent to my partners. 

I used Janet Klein's Mad Hatter and Rabbit as focal point. The technique of the background is the same as the one from Bowtie Butterfly, but I used stamps from carabelle and Tim Holtz here. I am really happy how these turned out and I hope my partners will love them too. Can't wait to see the creations my partners sent to me. 

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day. 

namasté

Tilburg Penshow 2016

Today is the Tilburg Penshow at the Natuurmuseum Brabant!

A bit late with the announcement, sorry! But if you are in the aria, you should definitely stop by! 

I'm pretty sure it's going to be a lot of fun, if it's anything like last year. 

And there are a number of special guests making an appearance :) 

We're on our way there now and I am pretty darn excited!

If you are going too, hope to see you there!

Have a great weekend.

namasté

Stencil Me Gelli Prints

Recently I had the time to play with my 8 inch round gelli plate again. I used a lot of stencils I bought at the Art Specially event earlier this year and sharing a few prints I made here. The stencil I used below, I needed to have because I knew it would make an awesome print!

Gelli prints with black and yellow paints and Viva Decor Jaguar stencil. The right one has a laminated overlay using the Gelliplate tape transfer technique.

A closer look on the one on the right. First I pulled a mototone yellow circle and then added black to the mix. Then pulled the print through the stencil you see on the left side of top picture. Then I took a large laminating sheet which I cut to fit the round gelli plate and pulled the tape transfer (slowly and rubbing the aria's with paint all the way). I overlayed it on the yellow base print and I am pleased with the first try of this technique! Next time I might add more black to the mix to see if I can get the transfer a bit darker.

I made more prints with the tree and stars stencils I used in Nature's Beauty mail art piece from last monday. This time I pulled a mix  of purple and pinks on the background first. I also added a bit of iridescent medium to the mix to give it a bit of shimmer.

I liked that mix so much I also used it for this print. Another stencil from Clarity, the Seed Heads, was used for this print.

This is a "clean up" dirty print - I used this paper to take away excess paint from printing sessions and you can create some fun prints this way as well!

I also printed on tracing paper and this definitely is one of my faves prints I pulled from that day. I'm going to add these prints to my art journal and mail art which I am setting some time aside to do this weekend :) Hope to show you those results soon.

Hope this inspired you to get your Gelli plate out and start printing with stencils as well. It's super fun to do! 

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

namasté

The Pelikan Hub 2016 round up

This year the Pelikan hub was also hosted in Amsterdam :) It was this past Friday and definitely was a super fun gathering! With thanks to the hubmaster SBRE Brown (and his charming wife Gourmetpens!) the generous sponsoring of Appelboom Pennen, the goodies Pelikan International has provided and all Pelikan Pen Afficionado's attending the gathering, it was pretty successful first (of perhaps many?) hubs in Amsterdam!

Pictures say more than words, so below an impression of the night where birds of a feather, flocked (in pen-geekery) together :)

Opening speech by hub-master SBRE Brown. I think a flock of 18 people attended and the venue was a church hall which Joost from Appelboom pennen has set up.

All brought pens and ink and we chatted, tried pens and shared stories. It was great fun!

That is Joost from Appelboom pennen behind the bar being a gracious host as well. He brought a lot of inks for us to try and some new release pelikans (I might have got one...)

Mr Eric Orozco (top picture, busy at work ;) and Mike Ward also attended the hub all the way from the US! Mike was kind enough to do some calligraphy samples for us.

He wrote my (and most of all the other attendees) name in beautiful Spencerian script. That really brought something very special to the event :)

And this is my special Pelikan collection box case with the pens I brought with me to the hub.

I didn't take a lot of pictures, was too busy having fun! See Gourmetpens's round up post of the hub HERE for more pictures of the day. We stayed pretty late and here is a picture of us taking the late train back to Leiden. 

Thanks to everyone who made this possible! Hopefully next year we'll have another one of these to look forward to :)

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

namasté

Spotlight Stationery August 2016 Box Review

In my review of the July Box from Spotlight Stationery I mentioned I was eager to see the contents of the august box and then decide if I was going to subscribe to it (bi)monthly or not. It arrived a few weeks ago and finally have the time to review it here. If you are cleaver, you can guess the theme by the contents above :) Shown are postcards from artists at National Star and the note card is from The City Works.

On the appearance of the box: It actually fits through the mail slot which I really appreciate because there is no hassle to pick it up at the post office if the delivery was made when I was not at home to receive it! Also it's always so nicely packaged on the inside with the Spotlight Stationery logo sticker, slogan stamp and gorgeous blue tissue wrapping paper.

What I also definitely appreciate the personal touch with an envelope in my fave color addressed to me (also handwritten!) I am sure that using my fave shade of turquoise for an envelope was a total coincidence, as they used it (I think) because it's the second color in their logo :)

On to the content: This month's theme is, as stated on the explanatory note, Architecture with a emphases on buildings and skylines. The note with the theme and explanation of each item in the box speaks a lot about the care and effort they take in curating it. It's definitely not just randomly thrown together! 

This time the box was stuffed with two really cool pocket notebooks: The City Works Debossed notebook on the left and the Riba Museum Pocket Journal on the right. Let's take a closer look at them below.

The Southbank Debossed Notebook from The City Works has such a beautiful and unique cover! It has a raised "debossed" hand pressed cover which is fun and pleasing to the touch. The notebook is A6 sized, blank notebook with 144 pages in it, which lays flat in use so it can be great for sketching on the go. I'm really liking the look of this notebook! The Kensington greeting card, which you have might have noticed on the first picture in this post, is from the same makers as this notebook. 

The other book is a "Museums and Galleries" pocket journal, published by RIBA Publishing, which stands for the Royal Institution of British Architects. It's has 178 lined pages, with a storage pocket in the back and a magnetic closure "flap"on the front. The cover design is adapted from a drawing by Charles Robert Cockerell "the most famous building in the world" and is in the collection of RIBA Archives and Libraries. Now being Archivist/Librarian myself I know you can find amazing treasures from the past in unknown archives, like this beautiful drawing! I'm glad that RIBA is making these accessible for us and the sales of these books benefits the RIBA Architectural Library as well. And helping Archives and Libraries stay open and free of use for public is something I fully support!

About the pens that were included: on the bottom you see the uniball eye roller ball pen in fine with black waterproof ink. It's an instant fave! I had used these before a long time ago and happy to get reacquainted with them again :) New to me is the uni ball air on top which I received in blue and with a broad tip.  It doesn't say it's waterproof on the pen, but in the product description it says it is when dried. I should test it before I try it with watercolors, though! It also has a fun tipping, you can write thick or thin depending on the angle you write with. So sorta like a fountain pen or a pentel tradio, but this has a round tip. I could use them both in my art work for sure. 

FYI: The London city silhouette bookmark you see below the pens was not listed, but have seen in other pictures of the box that they all have it and I suspect it was just thrown in there as a fun extra :) 

In conclusion: The content of the box is worth more than the 25£/30€ subscription fee for sure. This month we have received not 4 but 6 postcards (9,50€ for the set), 2 uni ball pens (2,50€ each), a hand pressed greeting card (3,50€) and two notebooks (blank - 13€ and lined 10€) The prices are based on what I found for each item upon searching the products through google. Bringing the total value of the august box 41€ ex. shipping. 

That is definitely not bad a bad deal at all! I also really liked the contents of this box and like the July box, this one is also sold out. But Spotlight Stationery still have a few of their past boxes for sale and they recently added the postcards sets to their shop as well. And if you so desire you can always subscribe to the Stationery box on a monthly or bi-monthly basis (the september box ships on the 23rd this week!). 

So the question remains, will I or won't I get a subscription. I have really thought about it and even though I really liked the content of both the July and August boxes at this time I won't be getting a subscription. This is purely because of 1) Budgeting reasons (there is a Penshow coming up in Tilburg later this month which I am saving my pennies for...) and 2) my stationery hoarding is getting WAY out of control! While I like getting new products to try, I actually need to TRY and USE them as well and not just get new stuff all the time. Like these pocket notebooks, I have like 5 different ones sitting in my closet to use. Now it's 7... Sigh, it's been an ongoing issue with me and trying to get better at using and not hoarding. So for these personal reasons I am not indulging getting a subscription (at this point in time) but I DEFINITELY recommend it as the Spotlight Stationery team surely do a great job in curating these boxes!

Hope this review was useful to you if you have been thinking about subscribing to the Spotlight Stationery box. 

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

namasté

Disclaimer: I was not in any way compensated by Spotlight Stationery for this review. There are no affiliated links and the opinions reflected above are completely my own.