this and that and turning 30...

+++some new items in the shop, a bracelet in the style of the duizendbloem series, with big round silver links and glass beads dangling from them...and a new necklace of cornflower millefiore! :-D

+++ ...and there's another bracelet in the making in shades of a forest pond and I've made some other colour collections in beads, waiting to become bracelets! Also half a necklace of daisy millefiore beads & silver hoops, and I've been running around with this ring idea of silverplate, stone and silverwire in my head for a couple of months now, just need the time (and energy...) to get it out...
And I still haven't told about The Project. Still gonna. Here's a little teaser...

+++I turned 30 two weeks ago. Yay! It actually made me quite happy knowing I survived my slightly insane and confusing twenties, and came out at the other end knowing and accepting myself...a bit of phoenix thing. Although celebration has been postponed a bit: treating myself to a full 2-day migraine attack on the day itself, and receiving a visit from rheumatism in my right hand/arm since then. I wondered why my hand and wrist was so stiff and wouldn't warm up the last month until my arm muscles started smarting and there were jolts of pain in my wrist and shoulder, and I started feeling feverish and tired...Grrr.
Oh well, at least I know now and am taking care of it. Mostly by tea, as usual, and showers, and resting...
Still, it's a step up from last year when I had the flu on my birthday. I should seriously consider having my birthday officially on a healthier day, or move south or to Australia... :-p


+++what I did do on my birthday before the migraine kicked in, was going to this movie, aanrijding in Moscou, a Flemish movie that plays in Gent, in my neighbourhood! Hilarious. And very educational for a non-Ghentian like me. The buildings I pass nearly every day! The dialect (accent really, it was still quite decent...)! The food (bloedworst, stoverij en waterzooi...)! :-p Have a look at the trailer even if you don't speak Dutch...



+++and I saw a documentary last week about wildlife photographer and film maker Simon King whose work touched me profoundly. He has a way with animals (and people) that's incredible, like at one point he had to care for two orphaned cheetah cubs and get them ready to survive in the wild, showing they all lived together, the purring cheetahs (then almost fully grown, big cats!) & him lazily hanging around in the reservation... his love and respect for the animals (and nature, and people) is quite contagious. I think we should clone him, we could use more of him in this world! :-p

portrait of the goldfish as a young uhmm...

goldfish...

Here he is, among friends!

I did finish the necklace a couple of days ago but the pictures I had taken with my new (2nd hand) Nikon D40 camera weren't quite as I had hoped for (teaches me for playing with it without consulting the manual! :-p) -so I went back to my trusty old one to take these. Just to take these. I'll show you what pretties the new one can make...another night. ;-)

And even though I haven't quite gone public with announcing my dawanda shop yet (besides this blog), two friends had already discovered it and surprised me with buying something at almost the same moment! That made me very happy. ;-) Thanks for your encouragement, you know who you are.

jewelry with a cause: Natuurpunt

I've decided which organization (for starters) will receive a donation with the selling of the T(h)ree Sisters necklaces: it's Natuurpunt! (this site is all Dutch, sorry about that! they don't seem to have an international page...)

This Belgian organization focuses among others on the preservation and development of our natural (local, Flemish) landscape.
And anyone who knows Belgium and our dense population, industrial and urban development knows we're in dire need of green patches!

And I myself could do with more trees. Lots more trees. If I were a rich girl I'd buy a bunch of bare lands myself and let nature reclaim it, much like the back garden of CP Estes (The Faithful Gardener)... But in the meantime I can do this: I will donate 10% of each tree sister/dryad necklace sold on Dawanda.

I'll donate it through this site: ikwilhelpen.be

neil gaiman

"(Libraries are your friend. It's one of the refrains of this blog, I think.)"

-neil gaiman in zijn blog vorige zaterdag

Een van de redenen waarom ik het (als bibliotheekschoolstudent) zo graag lees: hoe hij als auteur en schrijver om den brode tegenover bibliotheken staat en zelfs als verjaardagskadootje (van zijn blog) een van zijn boeken op het net heeft gezet (tot einde maart 2008) zodat iedereen er een keer van kan proeven!

target practise!

Now that I've got this cute little microtorch up and running I can do some soldering again (I experi- mented a little with my basic plumber's torch last year but that bushy flame was hard to control so I left it at that until I found this little torch), and one of my first "victims" was this little fish...he looks as if he's fully aware of that... :-p

Don't worry, he survived! LOL.

Today he became part of a new fishy necklace. You'll soon see more of that!

proudly presenting...

...my very own webshop! Its URL is http://artemissne.dawanda.com [CLOSED since jan 2010, check www.aarghh.be!!].

I've been preparing it for a while now, since organizing isn't my best point... and finally uploaded the first items yesterday! That felt good, I felt really accomplished. LOL.

For now I'm hosting just a handful of goods, but I plan to add more the next days, as I design and make them. I try to go for a nice range of jewels and prices so it appeals to most of you. One thing I hope to add soon are some "necklaces with a cause", like the t(h)ree sisters where I donate part of the profit to a good cause. Well, trees and kitties for starters!

The site that hosts the webshop, Dawanda, can be described as some sort of "Ebay for artists" -without the bidding though; you'll only find handmade goods there. Go have a look, stroll through its catalogue to see what they can offer, or play with coloranda to find items in a certain color... but be warned, this can be quite addictive!

Oh dear, my resolution for 2008 to turn this into a well-written blog with fascinating content really hasn't happened...yet. Not that I'm not inspired, I've got tons of ideas, topics, thoughts to explore... Lots to tell you. :-)

I just haven't found the time & energy yet. January was mostly tests & exams (libraryschool, which I passed! Weee!), February was being down with the flu and recovering...

But you know, as usual with ideas, they want to incubate a bit, simmer until they're done -and you don't know beforehand when that will be or in what form even.

So remind me to tell you about the Project, which I thought was a whole new thing I had thought of until I opened my sketchbooks from a couple of years back -and there it was. D'oh.

For now I leave you with this poetic & feline bit of video by Gregory Colbert which I picked up some time ago on the Endicott blog: Feather to Fire.