The stillness of early Spring

I'm having fun experimenting with several media. I think I will do a whole lot more experimenting because I'm really enjoying it! First of all, earlier I had tea dyed some papers for a junk journal (of which I'm still in the progress of editing the video footage I took of it). I thought this was so much fun that since then I'm begging everyone's used tea bags when their tea is still hot, lol! Then I run upstairs to "paint" with these bags on paper and cloth.

When doing so, a flower head of a bouquet dropped on one of the papers and I noticed the colour the stamens were making on the paper. So I started rubbing some of these on paper and cloth. (Some result are on bottom of the photo above, both left and right.)

I also started experimenting with the copier machine. I copied a bird illustration I painted earlier and really love the result. And when I saw two little leaves that had fallen from house plants, I picked them up, put them under the copier again and again, creating a pattern. I then copied some vintage French text on top of that. (See top right of photo above.) I think this is so cool and will definitely experiment more often with the copier machine!

It's freezing cold outside. We had a tiny bit of snow a couple of days ago, but it's all gone now. The howling wind is icy. "Wind is spoiling skating fun, natural ice still very unreliable" the news headlines read. Dutch people love to skate on natural ice. Well, many of them do, not all.

But the sun is shining happily, making my room comfortably warm. If I didn't hear the howling wind, I would say it's a nice Spring day. But it's not, it's still Winter. There are some first signs of Spring though. In a neighbouring garden the ground is littered with Crocuses. Happy little dots of purple in a neutral coloured surrounding. This gave me the inspiration for an Early Spring fabric heart. Which is finished, but I cannot show it to you yet because it will be send to a dear friend. So you'll have to do with a little sneak peek for now. See on the left of the photo below.

On the right is the beginnings of a small journal, with a birdie I embroidered.

I also gather flowers and press them. Not flowers from outside, not yet. But from bouquets that are on their return. And I have so many flowers and leaves dried and pressed last year. Here are some Hydrangea flowers that I used on a tag. The tag I will show you later, cause again this one goes to my dear friend. Patience my dears :)

More experimenting: I made my first two erosion bundles and put them in the garden. I wanted to try this for some years now, but never did. So here's my first attempt. Now I have to wait two or three months and see what the elements of wind and moist create with it. In the bundles there are papers and fabrics, pieces of lace, flower heads, rusted iron and copper bits, and some cheap water colour paint splashes here and there. I hated painting with this paint and thought this would be a fun way to try something different with it in stead of disposing of it. (Update: I had put them in a little cardboard box and someone thought it was garbage and did dispose of the little packages without me knowing... sigh.)

And then of course there are some of the photos I promised earlier, of the walk we did on the Utrechtse Heuvelrug. In the land of bogs and woods and heather fields. It's such a beautiful area and it's not far from where we live, so we love to go there often.

There was a thin layer of ice on the water then.

I'm sure it's grown much thicker now with this icy cold.

But the strong winds make it treacherous to walk or skate on it.

In the woods we found beautiful textures of bark and fungus.

 

And I love the beautiful mirroring in the water.

There was no wind that day, so the water was peaceful, like a giant mirror.

Small fungus growing on fallen bark.

You know what I forgot to look for?

Skeleton leaves!

I'm sure there must be skeleton leaves now, don't you think?

Well, it doesn't spoil the fun I had :)

I was just thinking, funnily I named this blog post the stillness of early Spring. But indoor as well as outdoors it's not so still at the moment, with my happy experimenting and the howling wind, lol!

Wishing you a beautiful day!

Big hugs xx

Wen