ROYAL DELFT GIVE AWAY AT LITTLE BLUE DEER!

Beautiful Shari of Little Blue Deer blog is doing a give away! Her blog is one of my favourite daily doses of inspiration. Shari is very resourceful, creative & fun!
The give away is a set of boxed notecards that I designed for the Royal Delft museum last year in celebration of 400 years trade relations between The Netherlands and Japan. Each illustration contains a Delft blue object from the Museum collection combined with blossoms. There are 10 (2x5 designs) double cards in the box, blank inside for your own message, with envelopes. So far I have designed 16 boxed note card series with different themes, including a culinary range. You can check out all designs on my webstore. And if you are not winning this box there will be another opportunity soon at another beautiful blog...

A big THANK YOU to Shari for hosting my give away!

Highs & Lows

 Blue Bird & Blossom in Purple feeling high in Paris

Everybody is familiar with days that are filled with highs and lows (and if you are not you must be from another planet).  To mention a few from my side:

Highs
* Featured by wonderful Louise on Table Tonic blog
* Featured with give away by beautiful Shari on Little Blue Deer
* Fabulous Dawn of The Alternative Wife blog as follower number 100
* Moving into my new inspiring studio
* Painting for 4 hours non stop in my new studio

Lows
* Hardly time for blogging, let alone responding..
* Hardly time for following my blogger sisters (and brothers), let alone commenting..
* MAJOR car trouble (bless my apple green bike as back-up)..
* A house that feels "amputated" as I moved 4 car loads into my new studio (probably my car feels it too)
* ONLY 4 hours of painting since a week

BUT I am still happy to live the highs and the lows, there is nothing more human!

NOTE: If you wish to add a bit of high to your day enter the give away on Shari's Little Blue Deer blog, a set of 10 boxed notecards that I designed for the Royal Delft museum.

You're a Gem - Dutch artist Anook Cleonne (and it's a give away!!)

Anook

The "You're a Gem" pin for you to win!

Flower Drawing by Anook

Flower Drawing by Anook

SORRY dear blogger friends! I know there are promises from my side to report more on Paris and notorious Queensday, but today I make space for wonderful artist Anook Cleonne as I had lunch with her last Saturday. Actually it was supposed to be just a coffee from which we moved to lunch and then to a bottle of white wine :).
Anook is a wonderful artist who graduated cum laude from the prestigious Dutch Art Academy "The Rietveld" and her work is in the collection of various museums. We had great inspirational talks and we could have gone on forever (and we probably will).
Anook recently started the initiative "You're a Gem". A very original gesture/gift to say thank you. She handcrafts wonderful gem pins: a porcelain pebble glazed in real gold, mounted on a silver pin. None of the pins are identical.
And guess what! She has donated a pin as a give away!
Here are the details to ENTER the GIVEAWAY:

• Visit her website Je Bent een Kei  and take a peek (she also has a website on her work but it is in Dutch only)
• Leave a comment in this post letting us know that if you were to win the gem pin WHO you would give it to and WHY

The winner will be chosen on Monday May 10!

To illustrate that Anook is more than the Gem girl I have included 2 images of her fabulous flower drawings which are on my wishlist!