Whale for sale

Instagram and Pinterest are great for inspiration. I scroll through their pages a lot and I usually feel like getting to work immediately. A few days ago on Instagram was no different. I came across this account of a guy who was making linocuts and prints. So lovely. And it immediately made me want to do that too. The larger lino's I saw on there were too much for 'right now', but a stamp was only a little carving away. So I did and that same evening a new Stamp Family member was born. A rather large one: Whale.

I really love how it turned out. I love the simplicity and the shape. Luckily I also still have a little stash of reclaimed wood to mount it on. It's all finished now and you can get 'Stamp Whale' at Stoffer + Blik. The image above might be a postcard one day, what do you think?

Freshly made: Clipboard!

Brand new at the Stoffer + Blik shop: This wooden clipboard with a corner of it painted in my very favorite Celadon Green.

I made myself one of these clipboards a while ago to see if I would be a nice addition to Stoffer + Blik. I love it, so yes it should be in the shop. I am using mine a lot. I change photos, postcards and in the kitchen it is holding different recipes.

I'm definitely not doing without my own, so I had to get to work and make another. So I finally found the time to get the wood, drill the holes, glue on the clip and paint the wood. And voila, there it is! At the moment there is just one for you to buy. I do have plans to add a couple in white as well.

Do you like it as much as I do? You can check out the result of my little photoshoot here at the shop.

One of my to-do lists just got shorter

I have a list of to-do lists. And it tends to get longer instead of shorter. I just add a lot, really. I do get to cross things off and I am about to, right after I click on publish here. One of the things on my Stoffer + Blik list was 'write a blog about the new handmade book'.

I added that when I finished making that book. It was the hand bound notebook that I covered with a vintage map that I found on a flea market. I was (and am) really happy with the result and wanted to share that with you. I say was, because a few days ago I sold it. And 'sold' in handmade-unique-one-of-a-kind things means 'gone'. I miss it. Boohoo.

So I am a little too late really, because I am about to show you something that is no longer for sale and that you cannot have. Sorry.

But it's pretty all the same. So here it is anyway. I made this hand bound book, without any cover in the course I took last year in hand bookbinding, so it was laying around for a while before I actually finished it. Then I found the perfect paper to make the cover: a beautiful vintage map of the United States, with NYC as the center of the cover when I folded it around. Perfect!

Usually I would say: you can get it here! But you can't... I should have written this sooner, I know.
I am now all out of these hand bound books. I am thinking of ways to get my hands on a good paper cutter so I can make some more. I'll get back to you on that.

A whole lot of X

Since about a year and a half I have this thing for the letter X. It started out as a creative way to say 'kiss'. Since then I have been seeing x's all around. And receiving them too. They are on number plates, on stickers, in fences, shadows form them and workers spraypaint them as signs on the pavement. I now have an X-radar. They're everywhere!

That made me think of the stitched heart card I made a while ago. It is looked at at Etsy quite a few times a week, but it has been sold out for a while. So on a slow evening with a cup of tea, I dusted of the needle and the brightest pink wool and put some x's together. That means I have one of the these cards in stock again. You can get it here.

Etsy Lookbook Spring/Summer 2016

I received an email the other day that made me go: Yeeej!! It was an email from Etsy Headquarters in Berlin. They want one of my items featured in their lookbook for spring/summer 2016. Uh okay, yes please!

They want to show my Chalkboard Week Planner. So I need to sent the item to Berlin, where it will be photographed for the book. They'll send it back before Christmas, which means I need to remove the item from the shop until I get it back, or make a new one soon.

It's funny because I just mentioned to a friend, right before I got this email, that this was the item in my shop that was looked at and favorited most, but never actually ordered. That might just change now...

Word up! [discount]

Yes! They're back in the shop, all 27 points. Aren't these the prettiest magnets you have ever seen? They are made out of original vintage wooden scrabble tiles. I added a tiny but strong magnet to the back. 

And the best part is: they are now available with a really nice discount! Instead of €14,25 you'll only pay €9,95! 

Don't wait too long, because there is only one set available... Get it here.

Fighting demons

It's not all experiments I am drawing lately. It's also real work, where people actually pay me to draw. That is pretty awesome, who would have thought... Even though I really wanted to be able to make a living out of doing what I love and I am so happy that it is really starting to go somewhere for real, it also scares me and I have some demons to fight. The usual I-Can't-Do-This, This-Is-Crap and Who-Am-I-Kidding type. You probably know them. They tend to show up in most aspects of, well, life. I try not to pay too much attention to them. They're annoying little buggers who should just shut the **** **.

People ask me to draw things I have never drawn before, obviously. And that's a good thing of course, otherwise it would be a real bore. But how can you say YES! when you don't really know if you can... I started a long time ago by saying that I was going to try and I made sure the newspaper I was drawing for had a back up in case I failed. That was many years ago and it was a one-time-thing (it was published though!). After a few years of silence, doing other things and building experience and confidence, it is easier for me to just say yes, even though I am definitely not always sure.

Most of the time I don't even know how things will turn out. But that is also exactly what I love about it. I can surprise myself (and disappoint...yeah that too). Now I am really trying to skip the maybes and the tries. I just say yes and see what happens.

Here are some of the illustrations I have been working on lately. These have been published in AD Magazine. First one is a part of the world map on where flamingos live. The second is part of a whole production on pigs and these are three out of 5 types of domestic pigs.