Our Creative Space...

This week a peek in the urchin factory :) Some people might think that we just find the urchins and then glue them on a ring. The real fact is that the preparations are alot of work, dirty work.

Finding the urchins takes hours, often they still have spines although they are not so strongly attached anymore after they die (of natural reasons, we find them on the beach). Cleaning the spines is often painful and messy as the spines litteraly fly everywhere. Then we fill them with foam, a very dirty difficult job (this is the stage you see them in the pictures). The foam needs to be cut off once dried and then they have to be cleaned thoroughly with all kind of brushes and needles. And finally the epoxy, again a dirty messy job, which takes hours. So it takes alot of work and time till the urchins are actually useable for the things we make with them. Making the jewelry is the fun part :)

You can see more workspaces at Kootoyoo's blog!

Flickr Favorites and Swap Packages

1. Baby Scops Owl, 2. Mr and Mrs Nature Owl, 3. Owls well, that ends well...., 4. Masked Owl

Owls have always fascinated me, their amazing faces and looks. And the fact that they can turn their head 135 degrees in either direction; they can thus look behind their own shoulders, with a total 270 degree field of view.

Hop over to ArtMind's blog to see more mosaics or to play along!



My inspiration of this week's mosaic came from the owl Psarokokalo sent us for the swap. If you fell in love with mine you can get your own in her shop. Maria also makes jewelry and naked men, mostly made of recycled material. Thank you Maria, this sweetie stole my heart :)

ViltalaKim sent us a wet felted heart, perfect to adorn a cupboard and such.

She makes beautiful felted scarves and other things.

Thank you very much Kim!

JealousyDesign has sent us gift tags, handmade and carved out of wood, perfect for special gifts. She makes gorgeous sterling silver jewelry with natural materials.

Thank you so much, Carita!

Gypseharte has sent us a wall adornment, with a heart and a star, representing our shopnames together, sweet! Joyce makes adorable felted and fimo made creatures.

Thank you so much Joyce!

Stoic has sent us a lovely pouch, thank you so much!

Tia has a shop full with scrabble tile pendants, great for presents!

Challenge Review IX

Already time for another challenge review (you can see the previous one here). These challenges are so much fun, that we don't miss any of them!


The colors that make you happy by IraGrant:

The Hidden side by LaTouchables:

Mystic by SteinSchmuckDesign:

Burst of Colors by JaneBoFelt:

Tim Burton style fantasy gothic by Toosis:

Food by DinaFragola:

Our Creative Space...

After seeing many blogposts of 'My creative space' on several blogs, I finally gave in and decided to play along. As we are the two of us I had to change it in 'Our' instead of 'My' but further then that I will play among kootoyoo's guide lines. We have a new 'toy', a jewelry polisher/ tumbler. As we have many many vintage supplies this week mum has been having huge fun with it. We are doing our own things while the fairies are busy with polishing all the darkened metals!


Here it is, the little piece of magic. Simple but so hard working :) The round part just turns and turns while the soapy water and the shot are brushing against the metals.
And here the result, shiny and as good as new (maybe even better), yaay!

You can show your workspace too or explore other's at kootoyoo's blog!

Flickr Favorites- Modern Crochet

1. Live under the sea brooch - crocheted and felted N.23, 2. crocheted belt, 3. crochet bottle cover, 4. Freeform crochet ring

Not long ago crocheted items where more associated with grandma's then with modern art and fashion. Nowadays crochet is fancy and cool, and is in a new dimension. These 4 are only a small example of modern crochet works, you can find many many amazing works on Etsy too.

See more mosaics at ArtMind's blog!

The Story Behind a Toe

The last 5 days my big toe was hurting and walking became a bit difficult. I waited so that it would pass away but when it started to get swollen I decided to go to the doctor today. The doctor gave me a scare by telling me that there is a rheumatism that loves big toes, Yikes. So blood tests where made, nothing. Then a film was made, apperently there is some fluid around the bone, got some medicine and ready to go home. 4 hours and quite some money I left at the hospital.

In Turkish there is a saying: 'Para sıkışmıştır', meaning that some money got stuck in whatever was broken, like your car etc, this time there was some money stuck between my toes!

Well atleast nothing bad is going on and it gave me some fun material for a blogpost :)

This and that

Summer is still going hot and strong over here, and it will take atleast a month to cool down a bit. Doggies are happy and a bit overheated as you can see :)

At the previous blogpost I mentioned that I went to Kütahya but not the reason. The reason was that we have a very old house there (built in 1902). The house needs a renovation and we don't have the money for it so it is just standing there. No one wants to buy such a burden, except the goverment. The reason that the goverment wants it is beside to renovate it and give the city a fresh look is that the first president of Turkey, Atatürk has visited and maybe even stayed in our house. In almost every city of Turkey is an Atatürk museum, they now want to make a museum of our house. Of course the goverment wants to pay such a small amount of money that we needed to go there to talk with the mayor of Kütahya. I went there with our lawyer, the road is not a problem if you go on your own or with a friend. But this time it was HELL, the lawyer did not stop talking....*sigh* so two days long I had a terrible headache during the journey.


The blue one is ours, it is huge! About 650 square meter of living space, but now impossible to use. Of course the mayor preposed a joke of a price and we went back empty handed. We will see if we will ever hear from them again, we will keep you posted :)

On the way back, we went on sunday and returned on monday, I was so tired of listening to the verbal tornado of our lawyer that I took some fun pictures of the night with lights :)

Flickr Favorites- Road Trip

1. Billybanks Car Park #2, 2. Brezza di primavera, 3. Gracious God, 4. Road Trip

I'm just back from a road trip to Kütahya, a seven hour drive. This mosaic is inspired by this trip.

Explore more beautiful mosaics at ArtMind's blog!

During the journey we passed the 'Salt Lake' it is so salty that it is very white as there was a cloud you can't see the whiteness so good. In real it is fascinating.

Turkish Engagement Party

A close friend of mine got engaged yesterday. I knew it would be boring but as she is my friend I just had to be there. The 'Party' was without music, there was an half hour praying, where everyone almost fell asleep. I just wanted to show you a fun Turkish detail, the ring ritual...


The rings are bound on a red ribbon, so may the bound be forever (red ribbons are also used at wedding as you can see here).

Again a little prayer before cutting the ribbon.

Flickr Favorites- Honey Business

1. Shot to the Moon, 2. Too Close for Comfort, 3. looking for the perfect hexagon, 4. surreal atmosphere

This week's mosaic was very difficult as I was inspired by the wasp nest at our front door, I wanted this theme but without frighting anyone away from our blog :)

I decided to focus on the wonderful hexagon structures they make instead of the creatures themself, I think I did the right thing...

More mosaics can be admired at ArtMind's blog and you can join the fun!

Here is the picture of the nest I was mentioning, I think they made it in just a few days as I would have noticed it before. To avoid an even bigger nest I bought some poison and had to kill them, as it would have been impossible to enter our home in some more days (the nest was right above our frontdoor). I was suprised to see that there were about 30 of them, who knows what would it have become of it if we had noticed it much later...

I couldn't resist to show our challenge entry of the Wasp challenge we had a while back, as they are so matching the theme of today...