Monday Moodboard

Today it's all about Black and white !

Berniolie, palepink, Babongo and Vaisto
More moodboards ? Hop over to Fleur Fatale's blog !

My creative space...

... is a day late, I know, I know... I actually took the pictures yesterday, but after a busy afternoon I didn't feel very well in the evening, and just vegged out with my knitting and pencils (okay, so that's not technically vegging out... but still).

Two big changes ! First, the antique craddle. Isn't it pretty ? We're still waiting for the mattress, we had it custom-made and it should be here next Thursday. The craddle was in a really sorry state when we bought it, but my Dad is an awesome woodworker and redid the damaged pieces, you can't even spot them now !
Second, you might notice it's the first time I post a picture of my computer desk from that angle. The reason being I can now open the window right next to said desk and step out on the balcony ! We replaced the old window and door with two big sliding doors. now I can show you the big mess that is my work area... I just need to have all that inspiration around me, the pictures, the materials and the projects in progress. I know some artists can't work amidst chaos, but I can't create without it.
As usual, see more creative spaces (from yesterday) on Kootoyoo's blog.

Proof that it works : two new listings in the shop. The Autumn print has been waiting for me to photograph it for some time, now it is finally online. Then comes another World Wonder, the Pharos lighthouse. I really have to thank Baahar for this wonderful challenge theme, it keeps me inspired ! I'm working on a third print on that subject and it has brought me so much... I'll have to make a separate post about it.

I do have to thank all the wonderful euro and UK peeps who included us in treasuries lately. It's been amazing to meet so many adorable and wonderfully talented people through Etsy. Thank you so much !

Sweet treats - Argyronete's Kougelhopf

Yesterday autumn still seemed to be there (it's gone again today, we're back to summer and my feet complain about it. A lot) and I was craving some hearty food. Out of the blue I took a recipe I had been lying around for years and never came around to actually trying out : traditionnal Kougelhopf by Argyronete. I adapted it to make it in the breadmaker (no hand-kneading = less physical effort for me = good !) and this is what came out of the oven !

Looks yummy, right ? It is !
And here's the recipe, with breadmaker :

Take
one big handful of raisins
a glass of alcohol, kirsch is best, rhum works
225 grams of butter
6 eggs
375 grams flour
10 grams yeast
2 tablespoons milk
10 grams salt
75 grams sugar
some almonds

Cover the raisins with the alcohol and let them aborsb it for a few hours.
Mix a little bit of sugar, luke-warm milk and the yeast. Let it rest until it has doubled in volume. ou can also use dehydrated baker's yeast in the breadmaker, just add it to the flour then.
Cut the butter in small dices, put them in the breadmaker. Add the whole eggs, the flour, the sugar, the yeast, the salt. Make sure the salt does not touch the yeast. Let the breadmaker knead the dough until it no longer sticks to the sides of the dish. Then drain the raisins (you can keep the alcohol for another maceration), add them to the dough and let the breadmaker do its work once more.
Put in a well greased Gugglhupf form. Let it rise for half an hour. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 180° Celsius.
Bake for 40 minutes. Take out of the oven, out of the form, and add powder sugar on top. Yum yum !

In Etsy news, we have been featured on another blog ! See some of our articles on Crafted by Design's Monday Mentionables - although we aren't Monday... :D Monday or not, it's still really nice to be featured, thank you Kerianne !)

WOOHOO !

I'm super-duper-mega happy ! I just won the European street team weekly challenge on Etsy. The theme given by Baahar was "Seven World Wonders", and the Babylon Print won. I am soooo happy ! Can you tell I'm happy ? Because I really, really am !
This means it's up to me to host this week's challenge. So the new them is...
...
*drumrolls please*
...
LIFE ON MARS !

A short reminder of the "rules" for newcomers:
The deadline is next Monday 21:00 CET. It has to be something created for the challenge or at least finished and listed in this week. It can be showed somewhere else. Please, take at least one picture from your creation, upload it somewhere on the web and send me the link as convo on etsy.

And the entries already started rolling mere minutes after I announced the new theme !

Meteorite Necklace, by LeelaBijou


Life on Mars adjustable ring in moss green enamel, by FleurFatale


Life on Mars, Leather Journal, Suede, by Kreativlink


Traces of the past necklace, by Happyment


Life on Mars Heart Padlock Chocker, by dinafragola


Evidence of life on Mars keyholder, by barbarix


Mars Craters Red Crochet Beret, by heileen


Life on Mars Neck Warmer, by kraplap


Mars Earrings, by bijouxdellostregatto


Life on Mars felted bag, by ingermaaike


Life on Mars earrings, by gr8jewellry


Life on Mars bracelet, by staroftheeast


Black-white nuno scarf, by creationsbyeve


Life on Mars dangle earrings with black wooden beads, by karuski

Monday Moodboard

We're entering autumn today.The sun is hiding behind the clouds here in Grenoble, but I have found a little autumn sun online...

First row : Gold peacock earrings by Steinschmuckdesign, Golden Growing journal by Kreativlink and Aurora Borealis by staroftheeast.
Second row : Ewok mouse by TheHouseOfMouse, Brick Red Bricks and Taupe Pillows by BacaCaraJewelry and Cinnamon handwarmers by Ayca.
More moodboards Fleur Fatale's blog !

A girl's day on her own

So what's a girl to do when her husband has deserted her to go to a wild party in the South ? (don't worry, he'll be back tomorrow, I'm just jealous because I'm not allowed to travel that much with my bump and will as a result enjoy neither the party nor the faboo chinese food there. Jeaaaalous !!!) Let's see.
Work on some picture editing and listing new stuff in the shop.
Draw a little while the computer busy computing stuff too heavy for its little brain. (My computer is a bit slow. He understands things quickly once you've explained them at great length)
Do some more scanning and picture editing.

Think about taking care of the laundry.
Draw a little more while the computer thinks big long thoughts by himself.

Decide to have a cleaning frenzy rather than have lunch.
Have lunch eventually. After the whole downstairs area has been cleaned, that is.
Spend some time rereading a teenage favorite. Think I should work on some illustrations from that text.
Get phone calls by Mom and Stepmom. None of those are ever short. Answer copious amount of questions about the little alien inside the bump.
Realize at some point in the afternoon that project warm bath has been forgotten. Apply oneself to said project.
Hop to home decor store to pick up a new picture artefact, as shown below. Well, I couldn't decide on which one, so I got two.

Forget about the laundry. Actually I think that happened a few steps earlier.
Come back home ravenous.
Discover that the nearest pizza place is still closed. I think they are taking Ramadan month off. Wish I was a muslim for a short while and knew the dates of Ramadan this year so that I could order pizza again - I think it ends today ? Am I right ?
Settle on a big plate of pasta with tuna and parmegianno.

Eat in front of Sex and the City. A girl has to take every opportunity to make an evening truly girly when she's home alone.

So this is my entry for this week's EST challenge, "Seven world wonders". I am *dying* to be allowed to do metal engraving again but acids are just a big no-no until the baby's born. So the design of this piece is very much inspired by my Grandma's and my own style of metal engravings, only I did it in black ink and digitally added the color. I quite like the result. I felt pretty inspired by the theme, I chose the hanging gardens of Babylon because luxurious foliage and exotic birds are a theme that regularly popped up in my Grandma's work, so it almost natural to have my own take on it. But now I want to push this further, hence the other drawing, the Pharos lighthouse, where I am trying to infuse nautical and egyptian elements into this style. It's also very interesting because it makes me work on coposition in a way I'm not used to. Now I just need to find ideas for the five remaining wonders of the ancient world ! *laughs* I have a weird addiction for working in series, even though I don't always get to actually finish the series.

New stuff ! Exciting ! Yay !!!

The title about sums up how I feel about the new line we're currently introducing in our shop. Yeah, I'm *that* excited about it. We have kid's birthday invitation and birth announcements lined up right now, with more to come and wedding invitations to be added.

Ever since I started working on our own wedding invitations, I got addicted to designing those. I'm very happy that the next month will provide me an opportunity to design another - a birth announcement -, but I have to many ideas to just narrow it down to one. So here it is, the new Serpentaires line of customized, print-your-own wedding and children stationery !

We dedided to go the print-your-own route as this is the greenest way in terms of shipping and also the most cost effective we can offer to our customers. Of course we are very, very much interested in any form of custom work in this line. Not just mere personalisation of an existing design, we'd be thrilled to work on a design from scratch following a client's desires !
The first ones will be in similar soft watercolor tone, but we have many more ideas. Stay tuned for more, including work by Lady Fi !

Old school

That was the theme for this week's EST (European Street Team) challenge on Etsy. I've had a blast working on the previous entry already "Enchanted Forest" (see above). Below is the entry for this week. My fingers have been itching to sew lately - there's not much I can sew for myself right now, my water-melon-muggling time is coming to an end in about a month and baby sewing isn't half as fun as costumes.
Or maybe I was just looking for an excuse to make a few rag dolls (like several of you guessed). I just love making rag dolls. This one turned up a lot simpler than the victorian kitties I previously did. It was fun buuut... I think I'll go back to the over the top ones, they are even MORE fun to make, and they feel more unique.
I present you Margot, the old school girl. When I think old school, I almost immediately think of tartan. Don't tell Margot, but I'm jealous of this skirt of hers. I can't wait until I've dropped my watermelon-shaped alien and I can make myself a tartan skirt out of this fabric.

"Vieux jeu", c'était le thème du challenge de l'équipe Europe (European Street Team) sur Etsy cette semaine. Je m'étais déjà bien amusée avec le défi de la semaine précédente,"Forêt Enchantée. Voici ma participation d'aujourd'hui. La machine à coudre me démangeait ces derniers temps. Je ne peux pas coudre grand'chose moi tant que je suis en mode matrioschka (plus pour longtemps), et coudre pour le bébé n'est de loin pas aussi amusant que de faire des costumes.
Ou peut-être que j'avais simplement besoin d'un prétexte pour coudre une poupée de chiffons. J'adore les poupées de chiffons. Celle-ci est beaucoup plus simple que les chats victoriens que j'ai pu faire précédemment. Je me suis bien amusée avec maaaais... je crois que je vais revenir à des choses plus élaborées pour les suivantes, c'est encore PLUS rigolo à faire et plus "spécial".
Voici Margot, une jeune fille adorable et un peu vieux jeu. Le thème me fait tout de suite penser à du tartan, allez savoir pourquoi. Ne le dites pas à Margot, mais je veux la même jupe qu'elle. Vivement que l'alien qui me squatte le bidon soit sorti pour que je puisse m'en coudre une !

Cum pedibus

I know my feet look ok in the picture but trust me, they're not. My feet have the worst karma ever. Just the other day, I managed to break a toenail and slice a toe open by hitting a stool. Not a rough edged, dangerously looking metal stool, noooo... A perfectly homely and peaceful wooden stool with nice, not sharp, well-rounded corners. A stool that has been sitting in the same place fo the workroom for weeks and I just forgot it was there, bumped into it and hopped away crying ouchie. Now you can laugh at me. Weirdly enough, the bad karma is limited to hitting things, and sometimes having items fall on them. This is quite odd given the biggest hazrad for bare feet in our house most certainly is pins. They are stray pins everywhere, no matter how much I pick them up and vacuum, there's always at least one pin on the floor in any given room. It used to scare my Home Geek to death...

Je sais que mes pieds ont l'air ok sur la photo mais croyez-moi, ce n'est pas le cas. Mes pieds ont le pire karma du monde. Pas plus tar qu'il y a quelques jours, j'ai réussi à me casse run ongle et m'ouvrir un orteil sur un tabouret. Pas un tabouret méchant avec de grandes dents et des bouts de métal coupants qui dépassent, nooon... Un tabouret parfaitement paisible et civilisé en bois avec des coins bien arrondis. Un tabouret qui occupe la même place dans le bureau depuis des semaines, qu'il m'a suffi d'oublier pour entrer en collision avec et m'éloigner clopinante. Maintnant vous pouvez vous moquer de moi ! Le plus étonnant, c'est que mon mauvais karma pédestre se limite aux heurts et parfois aux chutes d'objets, alors que le plus grand danger pour un paire de pieds nus dans cette maison est sans aucun doute la présence d'épingles. Peu importe combien de fois je les ramasse et je passe l'aspirateur, il y a des épingles partout, dans toutes les pièces. Ca terrifiait le geek domestique au début de notre relation...

My creative space

I've abandonned my desk and drawing desk and invaded the living room wiht my sewing gear. Can you guess what I'm working on ?

J'ai abandonné le bureau et pris possession du salon avec mon attirail de couture. Saurez-vous deviner à quoi je travaille ?

Green + Happy

Right from the beginning, we have aimed at producing stuff with the lowest possible ecological impact for a reasonable cost. The balance is tricky to find, but we truly do our best to use eco-friendly materials and processes whenever we can. Choosing our paper plays an important part in this, and we are lucky to have found a local recycled paper producer who does an amazing work. If everything goes according to plan (I'm a little cautious here as we've already had many err... issues), their work should get used in our future tarot deck.

Dès le départ, nous avons visé à offrir des produits avec un impact écologique minime pour un coût raisonnable. C'est un équilibre délicat à trouver, mais nous faisons vraiment de notre mieux pour utiliser des matériaux et des procédés aussi respecteueux de l'environnement que possible. Le choix du papier est un point essentiel, et nous avons eu la chance de trouver un fabricant local de papier recyclé qui fait un travail superbe. Avec un peu de chance (je suis prudente, vu le nombre de... petits soucis que nous avons eu), nous utiliserons son travail pour notre jeu de tarot.

Aaaand... I'm extremely grateful, we have been featured in a Treasury West ! It's our first time ! *happy butt wiggle* Thank you so much Gr8 Jewelry ! (who, BTW, really does an amazing work !)

Eeeet... toutes ma reconnaissance éternelle à Gr8 Jewelry (qui au passage fait un travail superbe) pour nous avoir incluses dans un Treasury West ! C'est la première fois ! *youplala*

Silly me !

While sketching and coloring, I'm also working on putting a third trial run tarot deck together. I worked on it some yesterday - well today - let's just say : last time I was awake before now. Then I let it dry overnight and went to bed like a good girl. Or so was the plan.
I made the mistake to go have a look at it during the night, to discover that it had gone awry. The wallpaper was getting wavy and all. After that, I unsuccessfully tried to get back to sleep, but my mind was just running in circles, I kept thinking about how to best fix this mess and other options to make that deck. So I got up again.
I *think* I am going to keep working with the current method. Half of deck #3 is now drying between stacks of books. Here's hoping it still looks okay in the morning.
Silly me although thought I had to go buy fixative. Turns out I already did last time I went supplies shopping !
Now I'm trying to get back to sleep, I need it, but I'll leave you with a little previwe of my "Enchanted Forest" sketch.

En parallèle avec mon travail de dessin, je fais des essais pour la troisième version d'essai du jeu de tarot. J'y ai bossé un peu hier - enfin aujourdhui - disons : la dernière fois que j'ai été réveillée avant maintenant. Puis je l'ai laissé à sécher pour la nuit et suis gentiment aller me coucher. Enfin c'était le plan. J'ai commis l'erreur d'y jeter un oeil quand je me suis relevée cette nuit, pour constater que ça n'allait pas du tout. La tapisserie se mettait à faire des vagues, ack ! J'ai bien tenté de me rendormir après ça, mais impossible, mon cerveau surchauffait à se demander comment réparer ça et s'il n'y avait pas de meilleures solutions pour fabriquer le deck. Donc retour au bureau.
Je *pense* que je vais rester sur ma méthode actuelle. La moitié du deck numéro 3 est en train de sécher sous des piles de livres, en espérant qu'elle sera toujours présentable demain matin.
Ma petite tête de linotte était aussi persuadée de ne pas avoir de fixatif. Sauf qu'en fait j'en avais acheté lors de mon dernier passage chez Arteis !
Ce coup-ci, je vais essayer de retourner dormir, j'en ai besoin. Mais je vous laisse avec un petit aperçu du croquis pour "Forêt enchantée".

Automne

A little sneak peek of what I'm working on this rainy Thursday - yay rain ! Autumn is finally coming and I *love* autumn. It inspires me, autumn colors somehow always work out right on my drawings. Not to mention the heat was a bit hard on me, and being able to open windows and go out again is a bliss.

Un petit aperçu de ce sur quoi je travaille par ce mercredi pluvieux - youpi, il pleut ! L'automne arrive enfin, et *j'aime* l'automne. Il m'inspire, les couleurs automnales sont celles que je dompte le plus facilement sur ma palette. Sans parler du fait que la chaleur était un peu dure à supporter et que c'est une bénédiction d epouvoir de nouveau ouvrir les fenêtres et s'aventurer dehors.