WIP: a nebula of sea glass (FPNL club meet edition)

So last weekend on Saturday there was a mini summer meet of our wonderfully growing Fountain pens the Netherlands facebook group. We called it mini as about 15 members attended (in contrast to last time where there was nearly 40 attending) It was a bit unsure if I was able to make it due to another appointment, but thankfully the day freed up! So I could happily chat with my fellow FPgeeks about our newest acquisitions on pens and ink and try each other's, not exactly Every day carry, but the pens they had inked up at the moment. The table shot above shows only a portion of the long table the group shared and the fun we had. The pen tray in the middle and the corner left pen pouch are mine, by the way. Oh and Janine (you can see her lovely handwriting at the right on the Tracing paper) had the brilliant idea of having a Pannenkoek for lunch (wish I had thought of that!) hence the sweet powder sugar and syrup on the table.

In preparation for the pen meet, I made a currently inked listing and made sure to include a special pen which arrived only a week before. The Edison Nouveau Premiere Spring LE Seaglass from Goulet Pens Co. You can see it on this desk shot, which I am sharing over at The Stamping ground for WOYWW #422, it's the blue and pink swirly pretty one! Let me show you a close up.

There... now ain't that a pretty one? I have inked it up with Robert Oster Cherry Blossom, as it's fitting to the pink swirls in the pen. I did have to smooth out the nib though, as it wrote quite scratchy out of the box (which was unusual because most of the time these nibs are 100% smoothed and ready to write) Fortunately I have a nib smoothing kit and it took me no time to get it tuned and ready to write :) Those swirls also really inspired me to make some mixed media goodness.

I made a little background for an art journal using a marble swirl stencil, Liquitex modeling paste and Lindy's Stamp gang magicals. So much Swirly goodness! I even took it one step further and played around with some digital overlays.

I am experimenting with some digital enhancements of my art and I really love the way this is looking :) A sea glass nebula!! Oh how i wish that pen material actually existed!! But now I think it's in need on some sparkly, shiny ink, don't you think? maybe the new Nemosine Blue Snowball Nebula sparkly ink? Or I should just "shop my stash" and find a Diamine shimmering ink for it :) 

Thanks for stopping by and I hope to hop by your desk later this week. 

Have a wonderful day!

Shopping Highlight: Appelboom Pennen in Laren

This past Saturday we had third FPNL group meet-up and this time it was arranged by group member Chaïm and store owner Joost whom organized a meet up in Laren where Appelboom Pennen physical store was also located. About 40 of our group members came, we chatted, there was a "guess the pen brand" quiz and even an ink smelling (and tasting apparently!) showcase (which I missed because I was in the store oogling all the pretties in the store then!)... a lot of fun and interesting things happening makes for a fun filled day!

Here is a photo impression;

It was a HOT summery day so the venue was a wee bit crowded not only by people but the heat as well. So we left in groups to the store to make sure that that wasn't too crowded either...

The store looked very elegant and so many pretty things to see! I esp loved these shelves full with ink bottles! It was tempting to get a LOT there but I reigned it in and bought only 2 products!

I bought the TWSBI Al-Pink and Robert Oster Tranquility ink - the KWZ ink was bought by my husband - and the rest were all in the amazingly generous goodie bag Joost provided for us! Super sweet and I can't wait to try out all my goodies!

Looking forward to the next pen meet. Definitely stop by the shop in Laren when you have the chance! 

Have a great day and thank you for stopping by my blog today :)

Fountain pen NL club meet at La Couronne du Comte

On March 4th we had the second meet up of our Fountain Pen NL club and this time it was in Tilburg, This day was in part hosted by La Couronne du Comte, a great store that sells amazing stationery products, art supplies and of course fountain pens :)

The store is a bit on the smallish side (good news, they will move to a bigger location soon! Check out their moving sale!) but packed with a ton of goodies and people on this day! About 30 of the facebook members attended and it was super fun! More pics of the store coming up:

Faber Castell products

Lamy, viscont, pelikan, sailor...

We arrived a bit earlier than the meet up was planned so we still had some room to browse in the store.

But that quickly changed as everyone had the same idea ;)

We had lunch at Happy Italy which was across the street from LCDC and it was great to chat with everyone, try each other's fountain pens (also be envious of them, haha!) and getting to know fun and interesting people. And I'm really missing the two crazy people on the left! Sigh...

Group members Chaïm and Martin together with Dennis from LCDC also organized a little quiz to test your fountain pen knowledge. There were 6 prizes to be won and I was one of the winners, yay! The prize was the yellow Lamy on the right. Everything else you see except for the sailor pro gear slim earth and the KWZink were gifts in the goodiebag LCDC gave us. By the way, The winner of the quiz was Azizah, with 9 out of 10 correct answers. She even beat Stephen whom was 3rd place with 7 correct answers ;) I had 6 correct and was 4th place :D

With a whopping 25% discount on the assortment offered to the group members I could not leave without buying something, and they had this gorgeous pen with a music nib on it, so naturally I was a goner as soon as I tried it! I got KWZ ink old gold to go with the pen, love the shading in this ink.

Did you know that LCDC also sells art supplies? I saw this gorgeous Karl Box with amazing Faber Castell goods. The price, even with 25% off was still a bit too steep for me, but well one can dream, right? 

They also have these amazing Caran d'Ache oil and water color pastel's for sale. Pictured are the NeoPastels 24 set and Neocolor II 30 set. I always wanted to try them in my art and now I can thanks to Dennis! I can't wait to use them and will post a review of them too, hopefully in not too long from now. 

This was such a fun day and if you're a fountain pen enthusiast living in the Benelux (or are from the Benelux but currently live somewhere else...), you can join the the FPCNL facebook group to chat with other Dutchies about this crazy hobby of ours :) And of course you will get notified by next group outings such as this one. Sadly I had not taken any pictures of the first meet up, as it was so hectic and we had to leave early, but Akkerman in the Hague were also awesome and gracious hosts then. Please see Azizah's blogpost about that meet up (and yes, that guy standing next to me in the 3rd last picture is my husband.... :D) Am looking forward to the next meet up in May!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

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