Our big 100 days of summer postcard project

While we were on our 100-day trip along the Mediterranean coast, M and I had a couple of little projects going on. One of them was take a duo-selfie every single day, so I could make a 100-frame video of our changing (tanning and growing beards. Him, not me) faces and changing surroundings. Lots of fun to see that now we're back home.

The second project was send ourselves a postcard from every place we were visiting. Arriving in a new town we had three tasks: get a postcard, get a stamp and find a mailbox. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes it was hard. But we always managed to send our postcard. We have both written a few sentences on each, so it's a bit like a travel journal.

After 100 days of traveling, we had sent about 60 postcards. Once we got home, we found a big lovely pile of memories in our mailbox. There's only one missing. It was a bit of a challenge making a book out of it, since the cards are all different sizes and the pile is rather large. I thought about it for a while and figured out the best way to do this. Even though I bended the rules a bit, my bookbinding days paid off.

Here's the result.

This is (most of) the stuff I used. What's missing in this picture is bookbinding glue. It's just a big ugly white bucket.

Bug-a-boo

I am back from my awesome crazy ridiculous 100 day trip along the Mediterranean coast. Yes, hello again! Tapas in Spain, hiking on Corsica, exploring the most gorgeous beaches of Sardinia and Sicily, eating all that delicious pasta in Italy and wandering through lovely towns, swimming in the bluest waters in Greece. Seeing the sunset almost every night, soaking up the sun. Yep, I would highly recommend :) I have been drawing along the way and there's some stuff I want to show here as well. But I will get to that later.

Being back home,  I wanted to start again slowly, give Stoffer + Blik a lot more of my time than I did before I left. I made the decision on the road to focus on illustrations and the things I really love. But as soon as I was back I was bombarded with a lot of cool projects and so I have been working a little more than I planned or even wished. But last week most things were rounded up. The inspiration was there all along, I just needed the time. And there it was: time. I finished two of the projects I had in mind. (I will definitely show you the other project too, it's too cool not to. Next blog!)

So that free afternoon I took my sketchbook and headed over to the Natural History Museum in my home town. I love the cabinets with all the bugs and shells. I spent a couple of hours sketching the creatures there. When I got back home my brain had worked out a little plan.  

I refined one of my sketches and started carving away...

Once the cutting was done, I made a test print to see where the stamp needed to be refined. And then it was finished. I am so pleased with the result that I feel like making a whole series of bugs and fellow multi legged creatures. This butterfly like creature is now a greeting card and for sale at Stoffer+Blik. Check it out here.