Leaving for Surinam in a couple of hours!

Well I can't sleep. Too excited maybe .... My daughter and I will drive to Schiphol, our airport, at 12.00 o'clock. Departure is at 16.00. Then we'll fly for eight hours. Our arrival will be at the J.A.Pengel Airport at Zanderij (name of the place). My niece will pick us up and we will drive to the main city Paramaribo. I intend to stay for two and a half weeks. I love to see the clouds and when leaving/arriving seeing the buildings, trees from above. Before my journey I had to finish four art journal pages, which I have. Love the prompts and it is such a challenge every time again. I did stumbled, but I finally have all pages ready. Two already sent to the USA to two partners. The second pair of two pages will be sent later when we know who to send to.

Already sent; pages of the Art journal page swap - December I hosted on swap-bot.
Prompt 1: How do you spend your Christmas?
Media used: acrylic paint, Cricut Expression, 3D die cut, wooden starts, stencils.

Prompt 2: We wish we had more time.Decorate you page illustrating or journaling about time; days, hours, minutes ....
On this page I used an image of sweetpeastamps and coloured it with acrylic paints. The clock is a rubber stamp from rubbernecker; the dots is a foam stamp from an unknown brand. It sure is a race against time, these days .... and it is just the question 'how we manage time'.

I promised youngest daughter (well, she is fifteen) to make her a birthday card, she can send to her aunt. Since I can't sleep I started the card. The challenge is from mojomonday. The challenged closed before I could finish my card, but it's about the challenge. The sentiment is from Close To My Heart. For me the challenge was to create a card without image. Love it!

I brought the inside of the card to life with a sentiment and some cute flowers:-)

Choices ...

There is so much going on and I which I was a star in making choices. Well .... I am a star in making choices! I make too much of them , hehehehe.... I am so looking forward to my trip. Will miss my blog for two weeks. Four projects are waiting to be done: four art journal pages for swap-bot and milliande. They will be done. Yesterday I started the pages already.
Yesterday I also wrote eight postcards for postcrossers and they are ready to travel by snail mail. The traffic of snail mail can be very slow ... I am waiting on some journal pages. I hope they will appear one day☺

There so much to be done and I felt so week. I was really sick, but I had to get up and get things done:-( Projects, schoolwork, homework, get ready to travel, etc. etc. I was getting somewhere, because I started the journal pages and I nearly finished my school projects. Yayyyy ... I am amazed at how calm I took it. A good thing I would say, but then I got the feeling something is wrong, because I didn't not worry that much. Deep in a corner of my brain I knew I will get things done in time, so why worry, huh??? And to worry is not a positive thing .... well ... I worried about a birthday postcard I thought I had to make yet for the birthday postcard group @ milliande. I spent a couple of days worrying and creating. Then I went to my blog and noticed that the postcard was already sent to the receiver (and received) ...... So to worry is not so good for me. Yes, a good thing happened this time, since I created a second birthday postcard. well I'll take it with me and give it to my sister in Surinam. That's one good thing I'm left with and the great feelings I had while making the postcard. Here it is:

So these days were days on which I created a couple of birthday cards. I have to give these birthday cards to family members and I love my family dearly:-))

For Jonathan: a masculine postcard, created with a digital baseball image from Kennykdownloads. The image is coloured with Copic markers and stamped on "Make' it' colour" blending cardstock (love this cardstock!) and the patterned paper is from a My Mind' s Eye. collection.

A second card for my sister Ria. It is a small card to add to a gift. A small birthday card. Tori Famous is another kennykdownloads digital image. I cut the swirls with the help of my CricutExpression (forgot which cartridge).

Once again to the post office ... mail ... mail ... mail..

Carla's birthday postcard and Mary's page are going out today. These projects are finished. What a joy and fun I had doing these. On the postcard I just went crazy with paint, glimmermist and pearl maker. I used some of that on the art journal page too. It is dimensional and adds a nice glimmer to the page. I found these in a store in Germany and it also functions as dimensional paint. Yesterday I thought why not try to write with it? If it is good to make pearls, why not make letters or doodles with it? And it did the job! Here the birthday postcard for Carla and my finished journal page. While making this postcard I remembered that I am the next to receive quite a lot of birthday postcard from the second group. I'll wait; must be a lot of fun to receive a lot of nice handmade postcards☺

The back of the art journal page.

Handmade postcard for Finland

Already sent to Finland. It seems as if more postcrossers ask for handmade postcards (?). I don't now for sure, but if I have time to create one, I will. This image is a rubber stamp of sweetpeastamps. I coloured this image a while ago and last weekend I finished colouring it. Used mediums: patterned card stock, card board, rubber stamp, acrylic stamp, gems, ribbon, prisma watercolor pencils and copic markers on Gina K. card stock. No difficult techniques used here. Still a beautiful postcard. Have a nice day☺

I finished the back of this postcard with a piece of card board and more or less the same lines you see on a regular postcard, with postcard written on top. I have a couple of  these rubber stamps, but all are different. And I don't know I used this rubber stamp on the postcard above. Just to give you an idea of the back of my postcards, though .... :-))

Lucine's creation for Mary

Unfortunately Mary's art journal with which she particpated in the round robin @ milliande.ning.com in the 15 artist, 15 journals, 15 months art journal swap. So we are creating pages for her to replace her missing journal. The page is longer than an A4 page ... you may see line where I glued the two pieces together. My page for her; it is not finished yet .... I'll post a picture of the final project. Have a nice day☺

Whole page ...

Close up ...