As always, Easter means my one foray into painting a year. This time I set out for colourful. I didn’t want to do the same thing that I normally do, so some different shapes were chosen. Since I do still like polka dot, I settled on polka triangle. They are pointing in different directions and I think I almost all the colours in my waterpaint box were used.
For the second one, I wanted to do a puzzle. It’s not great, because planning this in advance would’ve absolutely helped. However, it’s still colourful, it’s entirely painted and I have put a bunch of different shapes on it. Now to wait until tomorrow to see whether I boiled them long enough and they are still edible!
Three finished object from a glass blowing workshop.
I used to live close to a glass blowing museum where they organize glass blowing workshops on Mondays when the museum is closed. It was always something that I wanted to do some day, but the costs were quite high. So when my job gave us the option of doing workshops from a fund, I decided to sign up for glass blowing. The waiting list was more than a year, so when they phoned me a few weeks ago and said ‘we have an opening next Monday’, and it happened to be during my holiday, I jumped on it.
The workshop had four people per instructor and we got some options of things to make. The first thing everyone had to do was to make a clear glass paperweight. You’re supposed to pull the glass out with tongs and of course my upper body strength was lacking so mine has smaller bubbles than intended. With a solid object like this, no blowing is needed.
The second thing we made made was another paper weight. Now we had options though. 1) We could choose two colours to add to this one and I chose shades of blue. 2) We could choose the shape. We got some options to pick from; a sphere again, a sphere that could hold a tea light or a ‘rock’ shape with flattened sides. I chose the rock shape, it turned out really cool! I like this one the best.
The third thing was a vase. With this one, we could again pick our colours and our shapes. I chose to add only one colour (white) and wanted to make a similar shape to the rock I made before. So the sides were flattened again. The neck of this one turned out very narrow with very thick glass, so it can’t hold much, but it does look interesting.
I enjoyed the course a lot. It’s so much harder than it looks when professionals are doing it. The combination of ‘super hot’ and having to continue turning the pipe and not having an ‘eye’ for it is a lot. I’m still inclined to do another course in the future though.
Three for me and two for you, egg painting edition.
This year, I was with my mother for Easter, so on Saturday night, we sat down and painted our eggs for the traditional egg salad. I chose to do a stiped one in red, a dotted one with greens and blues and one that was supposed to look like a zebra, but I dropped it halfway through and its face looks nothing like a zebra. My mom opted for yellow and blue sections and rainbow stripes.
The best thing was that the next morning, they were all hidden round the garden, so I could do old-school Easter egg hunting. It was great! Salad also tasted good. What’s not to love?!
I yet again boiled 2 eggs and painted them the day before Easter. Since I’d been on the knitting machine all day, my creativity was a bit lackluster but I really love the end result of these.
The plan was basically to hold the egg between two fingers and make a polka dot pattern around those fingers so I could continue to hold them without becoming a paint monster myself. I tried it first with the blue one and it worked out great. I love the simplicity and I love the blue, even if it’s a bit splotchy.
For the second one, I did a similar thing, but now I wanted polka ovals. So I picked one of the colours in my paint box and just made a bunch of ovals. The shade of red is slightly less appealing than the blue, but it still looks great. Honestly, this was a perfect way to end a knitting day.
I kept up tradition and painted two eggs. This year, I followed the suggestions from my friend: Minions and Pippi Langkous (Longstockings). To make the hair, I found the last remaining orange pipe cleaner in my house and stuck it atop an egg with an orange hair backside and a painted face (with lots of smudges). For the minion, I gave him nice blue coveralls, a surprised face and a googly eye.
In the first post Simplicity Naaimode Project, I explained my current quest with trying to find the original pattern numbers of patterns published in the Dutch Simplicity Naaimode magazines. I’m proud to announce that after many hours of googling, reverse image searching and cursing, I’ve finally found all of them!
I got a subscription to the magazine a few years ago, so I didn’t have to look for them in the bookstore anymore, they would just arrive in my mailbox. I’ve been diligently trying to find all of them but up to today, 3.5 patterns were still illusive. These were from the first magazines I owned, so they must’ve been quite old. Out of 491 entries, that was still about 99% percent, but it was bugging me. So I buckled down and got to work. I found one via reverse image search, one via normal search and two via ‘related search’. I’m so happy to have my collection complete!
So, if you want to know which patterns you can find in copies of Simplicity Naaimode (that I own), you can check the Simplicity Naaimode pattern conversion.
Somehow, the year has flown by and it is time for Easter. Not sure how that happened but it does mean that it is EGGTIME! This year, I celebrated Easter with other people and I brought some eggs. That meant more canvases and therefore a very egglectic assortment of imagery. Some might have some eggcidental paint splodges but who cares. I present to you, the 2022 Eggspoits!
It all started with Punk Egg. I wanted to use some wool fluff for the top of his head. He’s wearing a black vest and has several earrings. He’s so punk, he’s sticking out his tongue. Punk on!
Time for Jailbird Egg. Parading around in his striped shirt and hat, looking grumpy Jailbird Egg is waiting for escape! Perhaps he’ll be rescued by Fancy Lawyer Egg?! I don’t know what I thought here, I just wanted to do a swirly moustache. He’s got fancy hair, a spotty shirt and a tie!
Princess Alert! Snow White Egg is casually lounging around in her blue & yellow outfit, sporting a cute little red bow in her dark hair. She’s waiting for Ariel Egg to come visit. That purple shell bra, bright red hair and fancy green tail are sure to keep all the tongues wagging!
Yarr, Pirate Egg is sporting the tell tale eye patch and funky beard that pirates are known for. His red striped shirt is sure to portray extra pirateness. Finally, Harry Potter Egg joins the party, his speedy hair, fancy scarf and lightning scar make it clear to everyone that Harry Potter Egg is there to steal some thunder!
Do any of these make sense? No. Did I enjoy myself? Yes. Goal eggcomplished!
I wanted to play around with ceramic markers again, so I bought out a mug (white), found an occasion (Mother’s Day) and got to work. The plan was to make a mug with activities that my mum likes to do. I googled my way through tons of line drawings and settled on a few. Practiced on paper for a bit and then got to work.
Can you guess what I’m trying to show?
Side 1
Side 2
Side 3
I was going for: Side 1 Red – jeu de boules/petanque, there is a tiny cochonnet on there too. Side 1 Purple – skiing, because it’s the best sport to do in winter. Side 1 Black – running, a hobby that I will never understand, but she seems to enjoy it. Side 2 Red – relaxing, maybe with a book. I’m known to partake in this activity too. Side 2 Purple – having some wine, because I couldn’t figure out how to draw a bar. Side 2 Black – bicycling, without the helmet that does go with the race bike, but minimalism. Side 2 Red – choir singing, wailing terrible Dutch songs with a bunch of locals. Side 3 Purple – playing (bass) guitar, it might not look like a bass, but you get the idea. Side 3 Black – hiking, following a path all through the Netherlands in different stages.
I did enjoy looking up all the images and making something out of it. The marker instructions said that if I baked it in the oven, the drawings should be permanent and dishwasher proof. So we’ll see how it holds up!
What do you do when you’ve completely given up on mowing your lawn? You plant a sign. Or at least that is what I did.
Beeees
I’ve got an absolute hatred of mowing the tiny bit of garden that I have. Weeds grow really quickly, there’s barely any real grass to speak off, and it’s just misery. I also feel like the majority of the gardens that I can see from my house are very minimal and not particularly insect friendly. So I combined the two problems. I was going to not mow the yard but also indicate to people that this was a deliberate decision (pre-empting some peer pressure here). I chucked in some more flower seeds and got to work.
Planted sign
I found a nice font, wrote my message (Bee strip, deliberately unmowed), copied a picture of a bee on and then mangled the same picture of a bee to show it in a different orientation. The combination was resized to fit the piece of wood (a tiny bamboo cutting board) I bought for it. The collage was printed and then I used some carbon paper (the stash delivered) to get the image onto my wood. The wood burning tool came out of a box and was used to permanently mark the cutting board – only one finger burn! Once it was finished, I went outside and MacGyvered a stick to the back. It’s been up for a week now and still standing, even through a pretty decent storm. Until the stick breaks, I’m calling it a win!
Even if Easter will again be a solitary affair, I’ve still got to paint me some eggs. As usual when I do Easter by myself, I boil two eggs to decorate and eat. This year I painted one and used colour pencils for the other. The eggs were really white this year, so a real blank canvas. However, my levels of inspiration weren’t very high so I just made a reverse toadstool and then I coloured swirls on the other one. It was fun playing around with eggs again.
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