Anniversary Card

So last week was my third anniversary with my boyfriend and I decided I needed a card to send to him. But seeing as I usually don't like the cards you can find in shops (and I'm too lazy to go out to buy one), I decided to make my own card. I mean, I can draw, so why not eh? =P

After a few quick sketches, I came up with something I liked and I coloured it in Photoshop. And this is the result, which I printed out and sent out in the post. =)

This is the card version I made.

And this is the non-card version
called 'Loving Embrace'.

T-shirt design & Etsy shop

Hey hey!

Been a while since I was last active on here. I apologise. But then I guess if you're following me, you're already used to the long silences. =P

I have been busy this summer selling some of my stuff at a local art market. Mostly just selling jewellery, cards and magnets. It was a fun experience and I made a bit of money out of it (nothing amazing but any kind of money is welcome right now!). Too bad the summer is over now, but maybe next year I can do it again. =)

Now that I have more time again though, I decided to open up my Etsy shop again. I still have a lot of jewellery and cards left, so I'll be uploading those on there. It might take a few days as I don't want to upload it all at once.

If you're interested, you can go here: My Etsy Shop
Though you can always just contact me personally if you want to buy something! It saves me money as selling items on Etsy sadly isn't free.
Here are some of my items, but just a few!

Antique golden owl earrings

Antique silver music note earrings

'Whistle' decoration magnet

Anyway like I said, you can find more stuff in my Etsy shop, including some postcards. Soon I'll be posting my greeting cards and self-made magnets as well. =)


I also finally made a new T-shirt design this week! Again it's been ages since I did one of those, but my boyfriend was bugging me about making a howling wolf one. I know it's not a very original idea, but I do like how it turned out!
You can click on the image to go to the T-shirt page.

Howling Wolf T-shirt

And that's it for now!
I'm currently still working on a logo/image for someone, so maybe once that is done I can post it on here too (if he agrees to it of course)!

Image stories

Whoo another update! Didn't expect that, did you?

I'm posting another example I made for one of my classes in secondary school. I was told by my mentor to think of an assignment that lets the pupils (13-14 year old girls) replace words with images.

So I had them think up a very short story. I gave them a long list with words, from which they had to pick at least 3. These words they would have to make into images. Then of course they still had to think of at least 3 more themselves. I let the pupils help each other to think up stories, or if they were really stuck I helped them along a bit.

To make the assignment a bit more challenging, I gave the pupils 5 fonts they could pick from. They were told to copy the fonts by hand. Some did really well doing this and even picked the more difficult and curly fonts, while some others tried to completely ignore this part (I made sure they still copied a font though!).

This is the example I made to show them, which I let them try and decipher in the class. Sorry it's in Dutch, but I'll translate it for those people who can't read it.

Image story.

The text says: "The evil witch flew on her broomstick over the forest. Behind her sat her cat. In her hand she held an apple that had been injected with a deadly poison."


I will update again soon with another example I have made for class. Tomorrow is my very last day at placement, so I better go and prepare for it some more! =)

It's oh... so quiet...

Indeed, it has been quiet for way too long up here. I apologise for that!

It's not that I haven't had anything to post, it's just that I've been too busy to find the time to actually post it. Plus I always feel like whatever I might be posting isn't worth it anyway. =P

But I'm going to try and change that, so here is another update!
My placement is almost running at an end, with only one more week to go. Yay! Excited! I'll be happy when it's over, as it's been a bit of a stressful time. And I'm still wondering whether teaching is something I want to do right now or not. I have a lot of confidence issues I would have to work on first before I can stand in front of a class heh.

Anyway, for my placement I've had to make some example images. Not too many, for most I could use old drawings I had or things I found online. But here are two images I made or my placement.

Under the covers

This drawing was used as one of my examples in a class for adults. I was going to teach them about 'frottage' (rubbing with a pencil over a texture so you get that texture in your drawing) and used this as an example as to how you can integrate it into a drawing. The blanket was made by me rubbing it over the sole of a shoe haha. Done in coloured pencils, which is something I rarely work with so it was refreshing.

Long hair portrait

This one is an example I made for my 12-14 year old students in art class. Inspired by the film "Rapunzel", I let them make a non-realistic portrait of themselves with long hair/a long beard. They had to use oil pastels for this. The objects were added in afterwards and are either collage or drawn (though pretty much all the students just used collage). They had to pick either things they liked, or things they didn't like.

The red version is the original, the green and blue one I altered in Photoshop to show them the difference between the colours (green and blue create a bigger contrast). I actually prefer those (especially green) over the original haha.


Long enough post for now I think, no? I think so!

I will be trying to update more in the future, but as we know it's not something I can promise. I'm not good at keeping promises like that anyway. =P

Procrastination

A long and difficult word, procrastination. But it's something I'm very good at it seems. Whatever important thing it is I have to do, I always manage to avoid it by doing something else.

At the moment, I'm supposed to be writing up 7 lesson plans for next week, as well as write down observation reports and some other assignments due Thursday. None of that is done right now. Oops.

Instead, I have been busy building my website, as can be seen in my previous blog post. And the last two or three days I've been making some earrings again, with more supplies on the way to make even more of them!




I'll get my work done, though it'll probably be a last minute thing. But I'm used to it!

My own website!

Yes! I finally did it!

My own website!

It took me ages and ages to figure out how to get a website together, but I think I finally did it. I don't know if it works properly on every browser and on every computer screen, but it looks good on mine. If anything looks wrong, let me know so I can try to fix it!

My coding and website designing knowledge is veeeery limited though. This looks really cheap and simple because it's the only thing I could get to work haha. Now to figure out how to set up a shop on there and I'm all set (if anyone knows how to do this, feel free to help me out). =P


Sorry for the lack of updates by the way, been a bit busy over Christmas (being abroad and being ill) and now with my placement. Hopefully at some point I can find the time to draw and post something on here. Maybe just sketches even. More interesting than nothing, no?

Actually, I can share two sketches I did a while ago in a programme called ScribblerToo. It's a very simple drawing programme, but it lets you create some fun stuff. Here's two random things I made in there. =)

Commission card finished!

Phew! It's finally done!

This actually took me quite some time. Not that it's that difficult, but I really seem to have lost the hang of drawing haha.

Last time I was still wondering what I would use to draw this in, but then I realised I didn't really have any materials left (no paints etc.). So I decided my only real option was to draw it digitally. Which is always a bit of a challenge, and usually takes me a lot longer too. I found it really difficult to get the entire image to look good, constantly fiddling with colours and textures and backgrounds. But in the end I settled for this, and luckily the company was very happy with it, yay! =D

New Year's card for company EDUTOY,
to launch their new site.

Apart from this, I've mostly been busy with school. Trying to work on assignments, but mostly taking care of my placements. I finally found two schools I'll be doing my placements in, whoo! Also already got to help in one school, and will be going to help in the other one on Friday. Exciting and scary at the same time haha.

And tomorrow I'll be giving a workshop on linocuts to my fellow students. So yes, busy times. Christmas is also coming up, which means I have to go do my shopping soon. =)

Hopefully I'll get to post on here again soon with new art work, even though I've got nothing planned so far. Have to keep those creative juices flowing though! So until next time!