Build-A-Bear Workshop is one of the most creative ways to get yourself (or your daughter, son, niece, nephew – any excuse acceptable) a unique plush toy-friend of your own making. It’s an American chain of shops – or shall I say “workshops”- present also in Europe, in which you are presented with the concept of “create-your-own-stuffed-animal.” You start by choosing a “naked” mascot, and then proceed to dress it up and accessorize it by choosing items from a wide range of options, all in order to make your New Best Friend – exactly the way you like it. Fun to do, fun to have, isn’t it? Visit www.buildabear.com to learn more and check if there’s a teddy bear workshop next to you!
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Mulled wine speciality Since I set foot on the Christmas market in Budapest – which was more than 6 years ago – I’ve been crazy about them. A Christmas market is like a bright and warm light in the middle of winter gloom, a magic place with thousands of tiny lights, shiny decorations, wonderful smells and delicious food. It is the best opportunity to go for mulled wine – both red and white varieties, to buy small original gifts, and to take a dive into the ocean of Christmas atmosphere. Unfortunately not all countries have what I’d call a real Christmas market – the best ones are to be found throughout Germany, Austria and Hungary, but they also exist in Holland, Belgium and a few other places. And this year one of my birthday gifts was a visit to one of the biggest Christmas markets in Germany, not far from the Dutch border – in Oberhausen (see the photo gallery below for some impressions). Even though our trip was plagued with bad luck, we managed to do all those things which are almost compulsory to really get the feeling of such an event – we drank mulled wine, ate local specialties, bought cute presents for our families and enjoyed the decorations. So if you need a pick-me-up in the middle of the autumn gloom, go to a place of magic – a Christmas market – and enjoy their unique atmosphere (and mulled wine, of course ;-) Decoupage – a decoration technique in which you use cut out shapes from newspapers, photos, wallpaper etc to decorate the chosen surface - is something I’ve always glimpsed in magazines, but never actually had a chance to try – until this workshop came along this past Saturday. It turns out decoupage is much more difficult and definitely much more time consuming than I’d thought, but its effects can really be astounding (if you’re patient enough). This workshop was about decorating a pretty big wooden box, and for this I prepared a few scrapbooking papers with the Botanica theme (I’ve always wanted to use for something but the theme is too strong and defined to use it as background for pictures). It sounds simple enough. First you need to choose a paint colour which suits the cut-outs you want to use in your decoupage and then paint the box – the tricky part is to apply a thin but even layer of paint. Once it’s drying, you can start attacking your cut-out materials (newspapers, magazines, serviettes, scrapbooking papers, pieces of wallpapers, photos etc) with the scissors. How difficult that step is depends entirely on you – I could never cut things out nicely and evenly, so I went for pretty simple geometrical figures, but feel free to go for people or flowers if you’re up to it (and have the patience). Once the paint is dry, you need to have a go at it with scratching paper so that the surface becomes even more even (believe me, you really need to make sure that the paint is dry before you start with it), and you’re ready for pasting. You need the glue which is a strong one and can be applied with a brush or a roller, but at the same time can be washed away with water – since it’s not humanly possible NOT to get it all over your fingers. The difficulty – and length – of this step depends on how many cut-out shapes you have for pasting. The final step is to varnish your box – usually at least 4-5 times!!! And of course in-between the coatings the box needs time to dry – during the workshop I only had time to varnish it once, and the other coatings I have yet to do. Sooooo, with only one varnish layer, it took me 4 hours to do this box – 4 hours of non-wavering attention and sweat and patience testing – but also 4 ours of pure creativity. I have to say I really love my Botanica theme box – it turned out even better than I’d expected. And the advantage of this technique is that thanks to the varnishing the paint is not going to chip and the cut-outs are not going to tear – so the box can stay with you for a very long time;-) A perfect Christmas gift! Earl Grey Boquet I am a tea addict – this fact has been established quite some time ago and I’m not ashamed of it – after all everyone has an addiction to something, so why not tea? But it has to be black tea – preferably Earl Grey – since I cannot stand all the fruit-and-flower varieties the market is flooded with. Apart from the Earl Grey addiction, I have a husband who not only enjoys and supports my creative ideas, but from time to time also comes up with one too. This resulted in me getting a Tea Bouquet for my birthday – a perfect bouquet for someone like me, and a great gift idea for other tea-lovers out there!!! The bouquet consists of tea bags of different kinds (my bouquet is all from black tea, with my favourite brand –Twinings – being in majority) and some tea-additives like spices, placed on a circle of decorative paper which gives it a distinctive bouquet-shape. Original, funny and creative – definitely worth considering as a Christmas gift! (For those who prefer other tea brands and flavours – these bouquets are available in a number of types, so you can choose whatever you like most.) The upcoming weekend is what I call my Birthday Weekend, since today is indeed my birthday ;-) I have some very creative plans for the upcoming two days which will give me lots of interesting material for blogging – so stay tuned! And in the meantime, my friend has sent me this mega-cute birthday wishes – great, aren’t they? I saw the slogan “Life is short. Talk fast.” on one of the promotional posters for the Gilmore Girls TV series, and I thought “bull’s eye.” Never has a series been so well summarized by barely a few words - without the fast talking of the two main characters – the two Lorelais - this series would not have existed. Even though I tend to lean towards fantasy and science fiction when choosing what to watch, and usually give family series a wide berth, for Gilmore Girls I make an exception – more than that, I even watch reruns on the TV. Why? Because it’s funny, warm and colourful. Because it deserves an Oscar for its sharp and often crazy dialogues. Because it’s full of eccentric people living in a small cute town which hosts at least 3 crazy festivals per month. The characters are far from perfect, their problems are neither trivialized nor over-moralized, and because the two main characters have awesome clothes and watching them is a study in hip and sexy casual elegance. It is, admittedly, a rather female-audience-oriented series since the main theme is the relationship of a mother and daughter (the latter being the more crazy ones) But I did catch my husband peeking at the screen when I was watching it – which proves best how irresistible it is. So for a gloomy winter evening indoors, I recommend one of the most creative (dialogue-wise, clothes-wise and characters-wise) series ever created – The Gilmore Girls. I am trying to follow the lucky streak so I took part in another photo contest – this one appealed to me a lot since it’s not really about photos, but about what you can do with them in Photoshop – the more creative the idea, the better! So I have sent in the Twirl-the-Bird photo which I also put here on the blog earlier this month, and another two – one is black photo showing the “growing cycle” of a yellow tulip (originally it was a picture of yellow tulips in Keukenhof, with one flower slightly in front of the others). The other one is called “The Fire Sourceress” and the fire was actually created from two sunset photos and a lot of Photoshop effects ;-)
If you got a minute, go vote for me by clicking the 5-point rating note underneath the photos at www.galerie.foto.com.pl. There’s a December edition of this FOTOVISIONS contest running at the moment, so if you’re feeling creative – why not participate? ;-) It’s official now – Christmas is coming!!! We have reached this gloomy and windy part of the year when everyone desperately needs something cheerful to look forward to – and what’s better than Christmas!?
Those weeks leading up to December 24th are for me one of the most creative ones – there are presents to think of (and make), decorations to prepare, cookies to bake, the apartment to pimp-up, Christmas markets to visit, moose to hunt – and so much more. This year I’ve started with something quite original – let’s call it a “modernistic Christmas tree.” I got the idea when I saw the silver “hanger” on display in the gardening centre – it looks a bit like a tree, with a silver stem which near the top divides into a number of cascading silver wires, each of them finished with a clasp – as you can see on the photos above. You can use it for displaying all sorts of things – pictures, beads, small stuffed animals – but you can also use it for hanging Christmas decorations – the way I did. The only thing is that here in Holland some of these decorations are quite non-Christmas looking (at least to me) and include birds, feathers, Indonesian-style beads and many others. So the final result is also rather…original, as well as splashy and glittery, but also creative – our own modernistic Christmas tree (although I do miss the green of the real thing – I’ll need to get one of these too). “Christmas is coming!!!” – that’s good news, isn’t it? Except where it comes to coming up with gift ideas for those few members of your family for whom you can never quite figure out what to give, and there is no way a drinking cup or socks are going to work yet again… So here is one great gift idea for those to whom you’d like to give something really special – a Photo Book. Think about it as a new generation of photo album, but instead of pasting prints on the album pages, you “place” them there digitally in a special software programme and then it gets printed in a book format, with a nice, thick glossy cover. Yes, a Photo Book can be just an ordinary photo album with shots from your last holidays, but why not make it into something more special? Last year I took all my photos from Holland and put together a book – with photos and short descriptions of the places shown – and put the title on the cover – “Holland through my lens.” After adding a personalized dedication on the first page, what I had in hand was a beautiful book with pictures, and a personalized gift in which I’ve invested hours of work – the kind of gifts most people would really appreciate. Currently Photo Book is a service provided by majority of photo shops/studios. In Poland, one possibility is FOTOJOKER, in Holland, both HEMA and Albert Hijn have it on offer. The principle is always the same – you need to download a free software programme from the website, use it for compiling your book, and deliver it to the photo shop (usually on a CD) so that they can “publish” it for you. Depending on the software, you get many options – different sizes and cover options, various frames, backgrounds, masks, clip arts etc. – a real creative challenge with hundreds of possibilities, and a gift your loved ones will never forget! In general, I am against generalizing and try to avoid applying stereotypes whenever possible, but…I can’t help if some of them are true in my case. Because I am a woman, and I do love clothes – and new clothes especially (which means – shopping!!!) – and no, there is nothing to be ashamed of. I think it’s even been proved by some American scientists that buying new clothes is, for a woman, one of the best mood boosters. And in this case I am certainly not going to argue with science – few things are a better pick-me-up than a new shirt or dress. So last weekend, having suffered through two weeks of stomach flu and simultaneously two weeks of Dutch autumn weather (both really not fun), I decided I do deserve a shopping mood-booster, and I ended up with the most original skirt I’ve ever had. Look at the picture – it’s not a bird cage, it’s a skirt with birds and bird cage bars sown on it. If an ordinary piece of clothing makes you feel better, think how much bigger a boost you’ll get from a creative one! I love this skirt – it’s original, it’s fun, it draws attention, it goes well with a lot of plain tops, and it has a great slimming effect (which should be no surprise – vertical elements like the cage bars are optically slimming). So why go for creative bits of clothing? Because If nothing else works, they might give you that small extra bit of incentive to crawl out of bed on a gloomy autumn morning and go to work… |
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August 2012
AuthorA fiery red head, a writer and a photographer in love with beautiful design and all things creative |