Lots of pregnancy stuff in the journal this week as it's slowly taking over my life at 24 weeks.
A lot of friends have been asking me whether we're planning to move now that we've got a little one coming. Like most Londoners, we're in a one bedroom 'flat' (apartment) with little budgetary room to wiggle our way into something bigger that's not an hour or two away from work or would bankrupt us within six months. So the answer is no. We're not moving.
As I imagine it will be interesting to see how we'll manage to squeeze in the babe in between the lack of storage space and came-with-the-flat bolted down IKEA stuff, I thought I'd give you all a 'before' tour of the house now, and come back in a few months from now when we've set up our baby gear.
Living Room
The living room is by far the largest space in the house. It has large bay sash windows and holds a lot of our second hand and up cycled treasures. It's also where my studio nook is. It's tiny, but it's more than most people have and Jochem is often jealous of my miniature desk (an original Gispen), even if I end up accidentally knocking off my notebook, watercolors, water, tea, etc. while working.
Bedroom
The bedroom came fully furnished (as did most of the house, originally), and most of the furniture here wasn't bought by us, with the exception of the bed. We decided to splurge on the bed when we moved in and it's been the best decision ever. Memory foam FTW. The bedroom has a large sash window overlooking the garden.
Kitchen
Most of the kitchen is kind of a mess, but it's large enough and has a breakfast bar (my favorite) and a door leading to the shared garden (Jochem's favorite). It's airy and bright and I love sitting here in the morning with a cup of (now decaf) coffee. Not pictured: the dirty dishes. It's my blog, I can pretend I'm a good person here.
Also not pictured in this post is our bathroom. We have a bath, but honestly, that whole space just depresses me. It needs a paint job and then some, so perhaps in the future I'll do a before & after on the bathroom.
Hope you enjoyed that little tour!
Lately, I've been trying to hold off on taking on too many commissions. I've been doing a lot of travel and the pregnancy is taking up its fair share of energy as well. I've got one more wedding invite to finish before my maternity leave, but other than that I've mostly been working on a baby book for our little one and trying to keep up my own journal pages.
Here's two commissions I did do this past year, both for family. I also hand lettered 350 place cards for a friend's wedding (which was surprisingly relaxing), but I forgot to take pictures.
Samme's Born!
I had the honor of designing my nephew's birth announcement. He was born back in November, and he's the absolute cutest of course. I love working with my brother and sister in law, as they always know exactly what they like and don't like. It helps when people have a clear idea of what they have in mind (and have somewhat of an understanding of the design process).
Party Invite
Exiting things are happening in my family, as my youngest brother is getting married next year. Because our stepmom has recently fallen quite ill, and we're not sure how long we'll still have her with us, my brother and soon-to-be sister in law decided to organize a small gathering for all of the parents in honor of them getting their wedding license. We had to throw this one together in quite a rush, so we used a drawing I made of them in my journal before from when they got engaged (see here) and turned it into an invite. It was total card blanche from their end, so this went to press with only minor adjustments.
If you're a careful observer of these journal pages, you might have noticed I've been sick and tired a lot. The good news is this wasn't completely due to my loud neighbors, the shitty weather, or the travel. Nope, we're expecting a little baby Floor! I'm due December first, so there's still a while to go, but we're over the moon excited. Hope you guys like babies!
One thing I like about cities, is the sense of anonymity. You don't have to get to know your neighbors if you don't want to, and no one will gossip about you when you don't show up to a local bake off or god knows what. Unfortunately, the paper like quality of our ceilings and walls make that I've inadvertently gotten to know my neighbors quite well. Including their ringtones, party schedules, and favorite songs. Everything but their name, really.
So off to the British countryside I went with my friend and colleague Hannah, to assist her on her 'shoot'. No, not a shoot of the fashion variety, but a shoot of the dead-bird variety. I had a lovely time, outside, breathing air that was so fresh it almost hurt my poor city girl lungs, sniffing up the smell of gun powder, drinking gin, wearing tweed. It was truly a unique experience. Yet, while I am convinced many a supermarket chicken would happily trade with the partridges and pheasants that day, it was odd. Bringing home a dead bird to pluck, gut, and eat is a lot more 'real' than buying a pink patty in the store. There's real power in knowing where your food comes from, and it's inspiring me to eat (even) more consciously and eat selectively.
Time flies when you move to a different country, move twice, travel around the globe, and have people over every month. 2015 has been a great year, and I can't wait for 2016!! Which is great, because it's already here despite me redrawing and reliving the past all day today.
Happy New Year, all. May the inspiration be with you!
December feels like a haze. A pink fog filled with pictures of my new nephew, work, working out, food, fun, family, and - of course - Star Wars.
That breakup that left you breathless. That friendship (or was it more?) that faded and left you grasping for answers. That lover you lost through no or all fault of your own. We all have unresolved feelings about someone or some situation, I'm sure.
Which perhaps is why I used no less than seventeen exclamation marks in my reply to Erin when she asked me to illustrate the second volume of her project 'Portraits'. 'Portraits' is a heartfelt project that aims to honor memories and exorcise unresolved feelings. The characters profiled in the volumes are citizens of pretend spaces we’ve created between past and future, fiction and memory.
It's one thing to be asked to collaborate with someone you respect and admire, it's another to work with them on something that feels both personal and important. The second volume of 'Portraits' on Without Pretend is illustrated by yours truly and I invite you to check them out.
Bring tissues.
We just came back from a two week tour around the Croatian coast! Our schedule was quite action-packed, and I'm not sure we'd necessarily do that again, but on the other hand I'm not sure what I would cut out if I had to, everything was so beautiful. Here's the journal pages for our trip! Enjoy!
Last month, I attended a comics workshop in Walthamstow (where I now want to live) taught by the very talented Emily Haworth-Booth. It was a great day and I left feeling incredibly inspired, although not particularly by my own work.
What most stuck with me, is the way Emily taught us to storyboard. I don't usually do longer comics, but whenever I've tried, I started out by writing a script. These scripts would turn out lengthy, too wordy, and I'd have trouble adding images to the text. Emily, instead, had us start out with a picture, think of a story, and just randomly start drawing scenes on frame-sized bits of paper. We could then add text where needed and tweak the order of the story. As I am a very visual thinker, this felt much more natural and a lot less stressful to me! Lightbulb moment!
My story ended up being about my younger brother Rutger (because I miss him) and although I'm not sure it works as a story per se, I decided to follow through and ink and color it nonetheless.
Thanks, Emily, for the great workshop!
If you're interested in taking a class from Emily, there's a section for that on her website right here.
Oh what a difference a week makes. From the freezing Brighton beach we went to summery sunny days in London. We've been having a great time exploring this new home town of ours that seems to have finally woken up from its slumber and my allergies are finally acting up. I'm not complaining. Just expressing myself is all. Hope it's sunny wherever you are, dear reader - enjoy!
It's been on my mind for a while.
I want to make something. Something tangible. Something I can hold in my hands. Something meaningful. I wanted to handle paint again, manipulate its texture and shape. I wanted to create something meaningful you can bring with you and use as a conversation starter, perhaps.
So these past few weeks, I've been thinking. Tweaking. Sketching. Sourcing. Prepping. Painting. Polishing. A series of brooches. Small, wearable, abstract paintings based on personal polaroids. My polaroids right now, but possibly your photos in the future for custom orders and gifts?
The varnish has dried and clasps are being attached. I'll wear my 'wedding brooch' to work tomorrow just to take it for a spin around the block. I am excited.
Stay tuned. More information on this series and where you can buy one / order yours (spoiler alert: Etsy?) will follow shortly.
When I was home sick this week, I finally caught up on reading through my stack of Frankie Magazines (so love that magazine) and came across a hilarious article on how at some point in your late twenties, early thirties, all your friends turn into couples and you all of a sudden find yourself attending dinner parties where all people talk about is mortgages and appliances. My friends are pretty awesome so they also talk about other things (although it has been suggested to me more than once that I get food processor X or mixer Y instead of my 5 Euro supermarket version which I happened to think was pretty grown up already), but it is true in a sense. Adult life can be very boring. Full of chores and boomerang errands where you take care of something, only for it to be followed up by another errand. Have I told you that joke about how the internet was supposed to be installed in my place this week? Oh yeah, they didn't show.
These journal pages are not about any of this, I just felt like stating the obvious above. Also, I was reminded of it because I felt like a real grown up when my new bank cards arrived in the mail. Yay. Bank cards! Bureaucratic hurdle number one has been taken!
Happy holidays, everyone! Or: Merry Christmas! Or: Happy whatever doesn't offend you (seen on a sign in a London store window)!
We made it. Miso made it. Our stuff made it. Even our bikes made it - just on time for a nervous bike ride down to St. Paul's on nearly empty roads this Christmas day.
Internet is limited up here in our little tree house overlooking the city, so we read books and prepare lavish meals, and try to fit the contents of the 130 boxes the movers packed into the 50m2 at our disposal before the first guests arrive.
Happy times, everyone. Hope you have a good time wrapping up this year and preparing for the next. It's going to be a good one, I think.
Usually, my emotions present themselves right on cue. I bawled my eyes out during my brother's wedding, jumped up and down squealing when I heard I got the job I really wanted, and my voice cracked just the right amount when I read a goodbye letter to my grandpa at his funeral (I could still speak, fortunately). Me and my emotions are like BFFs - we're in touch.
These last few weeks, however, I've just been making other people cry. There were goodbye parties, dinners, meetings, and people have hugged me and expressed their sadness over this mythical event that apparently is happening in four days from now: our permanent move to London. It hits me, sometimes, in a combination of mild panic and excitement, but mostly I'm a little weirded out. Working towards a date on the calendar when this abstract thing will happen to us and our lives will change.
My scanner will be on a truck in two days, so I'm not sure when I'll post next, but follow me on Instagram in the mean time if you're curious as to when those flood gates finally open. Dramatic smudged-mascara-airport-selfies anyone?
In exactly one month, a big truck will pull up to our house, and all of our belongings will be taken away by strong men with boxes. At least, that's how I picture it will go. Because, we found a house in London!
We did a quick trip to London end of October to do some house hunting. Which was exactly as horrid as you would imagine - apartments in London are expensive, tiny, and ugly. At least the first 8 apartments we saw were like that, and some of the more promising ones were taken off the market right as our relocation officer drove us around town to get there. We went through the ghetto and back, to closet-sized apartments on shmansy streets, and waited around for real estate agents who in the end turned out not to have the key to apartments we were eager to look at.
We were about to give up - talking of plans for another round of searching, possibly staying somewhere temporarily for a while, perhaps even looking at completely different neighborhoods, when we visited 'our' apartment.
Bright, not too tiny (still small), cute mixed neighborhood, right near a 'tube' station, perfect. We put a bid out almost immediately. Yes, a bid. I had never heard of it either, but apparently tenants can outbid each other until you put a crazy fee down (which we did).
Fortunately, the bid was accepted after much back and forth, and we spent the next day walking around our new home town and eating Turkish food near our future place. That was probably the last time we'll ever be able to go out to dinner as we'll be poor from the minute we arrive in London, so I'm glad to inform you it involved a very, ehm, motivated belly dancer.
As soon as we got back to Utrecht, we started sorting out our belongings. The new place is about half of the size of our current apartment (and about 2 times as expensive, so it works out in a strange, messed-up way), so we can't bring all of our stuff along. It's a great way to get rid of the junk we've been collecting and haven't looked at for years (college notebooks anyone?), but there also won't be room for some of the good stuff, like my drawing table or any of my studio equipment.
Fortunately, there wasn't much time to mourn our earthly possessions, as we boarded another airplane on our way to Lisbon, Portugal! I'd booked this trip a while back as a surprise for Jochem. Totally irresponsible, of course, and looking at it in hindsight we should have saved our precious Euros, but it was a welcome distraction. Sunny, beautiful, delicious, and relaxing.
The week after, I got a new tattoo! I had decided on the design a while ago and had booked my appointment a few weeks ago, but I was still nervous because that stuff hurts like a mother. I lived, though, and although the tattoo right now is looking scabby and itches badly, it turned out real nice.
Last week, it was back to normal life. Taxes, bills, scary movies. The usual.
But not before I took one more trip to London to attend a few meetings. I decided to fly in in the morning and fly out the same evening, which sounded like a good plan. Until I had to get up at 4 am to catch my 7 am flight. Fun times, but all the meetings went really well, and at least I won't have any trouble sleeping this week.
And then it was today and I'm drinking coffee and reading John Steinbeck before I get started on my work for the day. So. Bye then!
YOU GUYS! I am so excited! If you happen to follow me on Facebook, you've already seen bits and pieces of the big news floating around, but here's the official official actual real announcement: on October 21st 'Healing Meals', an e-cookbook written and photographed by the award-winning author, naturopath, food photographer & bodymind chef Kyra de Vreeze and illustrated and designed by me (aaah!) will hit the Etsy shop!
After a long summer filled with writing, styling, drawing, writing, and tasting we're so incredibly proud to present you with the official cover design. Tadaaa!
A Little Bit About 'Healing Meals'
In this book, Kyra highlights one ingredient at a time (broccoli, carrot, eggplant, kombu, romaine, shiitake, and 19 more - all illustrated by yours truly, of course) and shows you how tasty and healthy these vegetables actually are. It includes tips on cooking techniques that will help you get the most nutritional value out of each of them and provides you with a straight-forward list of their individual medicinal benefits.
Did you know the healthiest way to prepare broccoli is by steaming it for 5 minutes? and did you know this technique will boost its wound healing, immune enhancing & detoxifying properties?
'Healing Meals' features ingredients that promote mental clarity, glowing skin, optimal metabolism & healthy joints. there are ingredients that will help heal arthritis, edema, PMS, restlessness, candida, and insomnia. Kyra shows you which ingredient will act as preventative medicine & what it can be used for, as their healing powers are endless.
Now, I know what you're thinking. You don't have time. You have a job. Children. Hobbies. You need to save the world. Go dancing with friends. Watch a bunch of cat videos. We do to. So we made sure you don't need to have forever to make your meals magical. Good food CAN be quick, simple, and tasty at the same time. We promise.
Most recipes featured in ‘Healing Meals’ take a mere 15 minutes to prepare and only need a maximum of 10 easy and affordable ingredients.
So in short: good, healthy food AND a social life. Eat that!
September wasn't great, I'm not going to lie. Lots of little things just kept piling on until I could feel stress bunching up not just in my shoulders and neck, but creeping into my toes and fingers. Turns out you can turn 30 and learn a lot about how not to deal with tension, but somehow forget (or actively ignore) ways to release it in a healthy way. Fortunately, you can always count on some Jehova's witnesses to ring your doorbell when the hour is most tense - reminding you to just shut that door and cuddle a cat instead.
This weekend I had another breakdown after we found out some of our winter coats and books had grown some additional fur in the form of mold. My colleague says this house is just bad luck and I'm starting to believe her. Instead of throwing myself a weekend long pity-party as would have been absolutely appropriate I think, I went to the art supply store and got myself some fresh inks, illustrated by exhibit A below.
I remembered this story because that same colleague - I'll just say her name: Ingrid - recently tried to get rid of one of her very own fingertips. I remember this incident very clearly. I felt so sorry for my mom for obviously having the IQ of a doorknob. Fingers clearly look nothing like grass, you poor lady!
Hope you're all having a great start of October so far and I'll be back soon, I promise. Fun updates ahead!
Last weekend I went to Brussels to visit friends for the first time in almost a year. I hadn't been to the city because somehow I just couldn't deal with it emotionally, but now I felt ready and eager to see my friends, colleagues, and the city again. I almost cried of joy, walking out of the station. Which is surprising, because Brussels train stations smell like piss, mostly. Piss and waffles, to be exact. But you know me, I am nothing if not a little dramatic at times - and drama I would get.
After dinner and drinks, my friends and I were having one last drink. I went to the bathroom for a minute, came back, and my backpack was gone. With everything in it. Money, passport, phone, laptop, creditcards, ipod, books, sunglasses, my favorite clothes, makeup, medication, tickets, art supplies, and my journal. This journal.
After hours and hours of waiting and finally being able to leave a statement at the police station, I went to spend the night at my friend D's house. It's a crazy feeling to have nothing on you but the clothes on your back. If you're expecting me to say it felt 'liberating' - wrong blog, dude. I felt absolutely lost and emotional about someone else touching MY stuff with their dirty hands. I told you it would get dramatic.
Fortunately I watched a lot of Disney when I was little and this story ends well, with a knight in shining armor and fruit smoothies.
When Jochem came to pick me up the next day (he drove all the way down here), he had good news: the police had called him to tell him they had found most of my personal belongings in a little park next to the police station, a few blocks from where my backpack had been stolen. Those personal belongings included my journal! We went out for smoothies to celebrate, drove home, and I collapsed and lived happily ever after.
The End.
I've been feeling better (my flu has a great work ethos and only grabs me on weekends and holidays) and I have been traveling for work quite a lot. It's been busy but good. There are a lot of moments in my life right now where I take a big breath in and feel insanely happy and blessed to be where I am at. My life is made out of pretty amazing stuff and I'm enjoying every bit of it.