Over the ocean

Tomorrow I will be on my way to London!

In order to graduate for my IB exam, I have to do an international internship.

After approximately two years of searching, mailing, asking and arranging, I finally managed to arrange something in the UK.

I'll be working at the foodbank for a week in the centre of London.

I'll keep you updated!

Brabantia beauty

Here he is. My beautiful Brabantia bread bin.

I already wished for this design. There's also a design with different flowers, but I preferred these flowers. And there it was.. On that market..

It was only 10 euros! Well, actually it was €12,50, but he agreed on €10.

The lovely old bins on top were for free. If we didn't take them, they would end up in the bin the day after. So we were right on time!

I love love love my founds! Unfortunately, I the teapot I wanted to buy was sold just before I could buy it.

Great day

Short update:

I've finally found my Brabantia bread bin! Yay!

Aaaaand I got some extremely beautiful old boxes.

I'll post pictures of them as soon as possible.

How writing becomes a feast

I bought this cute little book in the second hand store where I am to be found regularly. It is only a small booklet with a few pages, but I really like this found.

On the front page it says:

"How writing becomes a feast

Manual on learning to write with the broad pen - by Jan Schalkwijk"

It is a booklet made in 1970, and is full of exercises to learn you how to write like the handwriting they have used here on this first page.

And look, on the past page is a handwritten advertisement, and a letter to invite you to Jan Schalkwijk's writing club. It's an invite, sent on the 5th of January, 1977.

"Mercator

club of lovers & practitioners of Italic handwriting.

Dear sir, may I very much invite you

by Mercator. On saturday January 29 we are in

the Poort van Cleef. Opening 1400 hours.

We are going to practise then. Everyone is welcome.

Nice, if you too would come to meet

Sir greeting

Jan Schalkwijk

5.1.1977"

DIY - Hat exposure

Hello ugly rusty owl. You look like some popular home accessoiry, vegetating in our back yard. You can be much more useful baby!

Sorry owl, but I just felt like tearing you off. Unfortunately you left some rusty spots, which I decided to cover with black tape. It doesn't have to look too neat. I'm planning to cover it anyway.

Look. Why not exposing your prettiest hats? You can use anything. Old lightning standards, candle standards, whatever you like!

Wishlist

We all wish things, don't we? We all have certain things we would like to have. My wishlist grows pretty fast lately. I started to think about how I would furnish my room whenever I am going to study. Most of us aren't that rich being a student and neither will I be. That's why I have to take a good look around of what nice things there are to buy on a small budget. Of course I do have my preferences.

A few things I would like to find this year:

- A retro bread bin, preferably an orange one with flowers.

A bin like this would be nice:

- A glass set for alcohol. I really like those chique heavily decorated carafes with matching liquor glasses.

- A good glass display case for my teapots (to store even more teapots in, haha)

- Cutlery. I adore cutlery. Especially spoons. I don't know why, but I have a weakness for beautiful cutlery.

- Coctail glasses. Serving drinks in a coctail glass will even give a fancy twist to a dead simple fruit juice.

I prefer glasses like the second one, seen from the left. The typical triangle shaped glasses.

Hurray for second hand shops. :)

Bottle Cap Artwork

I have started to craft with bottle caps.

Attempt one:

And attempt two:

Hahah this looks so stupid. I really really need to have more bottle caps to make something good. This looks more like a.. Yes, like what actually? A hill of rubbish I guess. At least is does not look like a 2CV Charleston at all..

Do whatever you like, they'll talk anyway

Oh my room looks so much better after bringing in images and objects to fill up the emptiness of my snow-white room. I had several new things ready to be pinned to my cookie walls, so I took a few minutes, some nails and a hammer. I found these iron photo-frame hangers in a drawer somewhere at home. They've never been used. The best thing is that I could just slide my post cards in between the iron plates. I've also nailed one hanger behind the wooden plate with the tile saying 'Doe wat je wilt, kletsen doen ze toch.' which I had to buy when I saw it. 'Do whatever you like, they'll talk anyway'. Lately I've noticed that this is so true...

And yes, I like the temporariness of the iron hangers. I can slide in whatever image I like at that moment.

Rubbish chair

A new school year means new assignments for art classes! Finally! The first assignment seriously makes me happy already, because it suits me perfectly. The assignment is to make a chair from rubbish. You may use everything, every kind of rubbish, as longas you make a chair of it. Cheap, original and very exciting!

A friend of my mum gave me four bike wheels, to use for this assignment. I do have some ideas already!

We had to start off with making some 'mood board', of what you have in mind and what you like.

Here are some images I found:

Kaftpapier

No, this is not a gift. This is not a painting, yes, it is a plastic bag. But.. I have used my plastic bags as wrapping paper for my school books! I had wished that I could do this post weeks earlier, but due to some ordering mistake, my school books came too late.

So, I hope this can be an inspiration for next year (or you might be mad enough to wrap your books again this year?)

Wrap your books in plastic bags! It actually only has advantages:

1. It doesn't cost you anything (I mean, everyone gets plastic bags when buying a new piece of clothing)

2. You can't tear it off so easily.

3. Your book isn't totally soaked when it's raining because it's covered in plastic.

4. You can write on it without the risk of getting ink on your book because the paper was too thin and the ink leaked through.

5. Your books are unique.

Give me one reason not to wrap your books like this!

DIY clothes hanger improvement

Always struggling with clothes sliding of your clothes hanger? You don't need to buy new ones, it's ever so easy to solve the problem of sliding.

The elastic bands make sure your clothes won't fall off. Cheap and easy!

Saved from demolition

There's a light source outside! Finally! The veranda is a really nice place to sit, but when the sun goes down, it becomes so dark that it doesn't feel as pleasant anymore. And since it's getting dark earlier and earlier each day, I thought the time was high for making a warm and cosy light source that lets us sit outside for a long period of time until it's too cold to sit outside.

Now my mum is on holiday, I thought I to surprise her whenever she gets back home. The hubcaps really give a warm and luxurous feeling to the veranda. I think the effect on the stone walls is absolutely fantastic!