T stands for.....some linoprints

After starting over with linocut about two years ago (like many of us I did that back in school and then never again), I always had problems getting the print rubbed on the paper correctly, so it looks nice. Rubbing with a wooden or metal spoon or a felt baren wasn't doing the job for me good enough. And the time it takes. OK, so what? Get a press? But most of these presses cost a small fortune. Then a fellow printmaker recommended Woodzilla presses to me. I bought a little little A5 one in blue (see below, photo by Woodzilla).

Let's make it short: I LOVE the press! Makes printing much faster and the prints are cleaner than the ones I made by hand. Here are some card sets I made: 

Insects with and without colored accents.

Some beach themed cards with additional stamping and a colored sun.

And than I was even brave enough to start a project I was eyeing for a long time: To make one of my watercolors into a jigsaw multicolored print block. So I chose my kingfisher paiting.

Once the block is all finished, ....

....you must be brave and cut it into pieces along the chosen lines.

I only had the time to do some test prints so far and printing with acrylics isn't ideal, even if you mix the colors with a retarder to make them dry slower. So the first colored print was damaged, as the block for the blue cap of the kingfisher stuck to the paper and damaged it, when I pulled th print. But you get the idea. I already oredered some linoprint colors and will try again.

For the drinks and to qualify for Bleubeard and Elizsbeth's T party,  I have a question for you? If you drink tea, do you also drink cold brew teas? I tried some of them, but not all are good. The one pictured taste very minty, but like chewing gum, a bit artificial.

Linking to Altered Book Lover for T stands for....! Happy T Day!

 

How does your garden grow?

 Writing this in the middle of a heavy snow shower taking place outside my window, while the pictures were taken in much sunnier weather.

For the second time I'm growing garlic in my garden during winter. Three varieties planted in November are now showing the first green (ok, light pink in the first photo).

Garlic: Messidrome, Germidour and Sprint are the varieties I planted.

I have four rows in the garden and one pot on the terrace. All looking great, but the pot seems to have it a bit warmer, as I planted this one later than the rows in the garden and it came up faster.

Edives are lookinh good, but where way bigger around this time last year. I think the low temps in January caused this, although I covered them with a fleece.

Celery

The rhubarb is only showing a small ball of leaves.

Besides the veggies there are some wildflowers showing their leafves already: Rose Campion (Silene coronaria), which is not really a wildflower here, but grows everywhere in my garden.

Clary Sage (Salvia sclarea)

I cut down the wild teasels from last year, but I'm sure, there is some offspring somewhere in the garden. They were about 2.5 metres high from all the rain we got last summer. Did you know these plants store rain water in their leaves? Good thing for birds and insects.

And right in front of my compost ( the most impractical place in my garden for BIG flowers) there grow Mullein (Verbascum spec.) and Evening Primrose (Oenothera spec.). Maybe I'll use the other compost during summer. :D

Also the two cichory plants (Cichorium intybus) are coming again and I'm really looking forward to their blue flowers, which are only open until around 11 am, when it gets too warm. Then they are gone. They also grew up to 2.5 metres last year and had hundreds of blue flowers over months.

How does your garden grow?

T stands for....some drawings

 I promised myself to start blogging right away after my Christmas holiday, but....life got in the way and I had to undergo a minor surgery (ok, the surgery was minor, but the healing will take some time).

So here we go, a bit later than planned. Some of the tea bags I used have motivational or funny quotes or puns on the labels, one for example says: "Tea warms the soul, when the sun hides." I love that.

To keep my mind off the surgery and stop myself from overthinking, I did a lot of drawing, for example some meadowflowers from a new book I have. Love dandelions.

I also filled some pages in my A3 sketchpad, mostly with lovely little birdies like Long Tailed Tits...

....or tiny Goldcrests.

I also found the muse to start and finish another colored pencil drawing of a Coal Tit. I'm always in love with colored pencils, when I finish a drawing, but the process is soooooo long sometimes with all the layers.

Most work I do these days to gather "pencil miles" (how John Muir Laws calls it) is small garden birds sketched with pencils like this Goldcrest.

And I really love my new drawing book "How to Draw Flowers" by Anastasia Sälinger. Easy step-by-step tutorials and only few materials. Maybe I share the greeting cards I made from the drawings. Here's a bellflower from the book.

Linking to Bleubeard and Elizabeth for T stands for....

T stands for....a lovely tea advent calendar!

I'm late to the T party, but here we go. I got a very nice looking advent calendar from my co-workers, filled with tasty teas. I'm usually ver sceptical, when it comes to tea advent calendars, as I got some over the years, which had very bad tasting teas included (like they were in a cupboard for centuries and just came out to be stuffed in that calendar :D). But this one from Cupper is yummy. And look at that cute design!

And while sipping a cup of tea I'm in full giftmaking mode. This year it's all about beeswax and things from the garden. Like these cute soaps with beeswax.

I also made some lipbalm and....

....hand cream with beeswax.

And on top some tealights, which smell heavenly.

I also made different varieties of vinegar and oil and some herb salt, all ingredients, except the olive oil and the vinegar, are from my garden. Worked on this for the past months and am so happy seeing it all come together.

I'll pack the sets into these upcycled cereal containers, which I think, look great.

Sharing it all with T stands for..... over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's place.

#10minuteartwarmup or Doodling for Stress Reduction

When I visited my abandoned blog some time ago, I came across a blog post by CJ & Ink about her weekly doodling class for stress reduction. I loved the idea and remembered the #10minuteartwarmup I once participated in. I can't remember who hosted it once, but decided to try and do it daily. 10 minutes of sketching/drawing before office. 

Here are some of the sketches I did so far. Some are done on narrow paperstrips I got from a friend. Those were used for marking transport boxes and go to the bin after single use. So recycling is a plus.

European Robin

Blue Tit

Eurasian Wren

I also got a small sketchbook I carry in my backpack.

Another Robin

Long Tailed Tit

And another Robin. *LOL*

Eurasian Jay

Pied Avocet

I sometimes sketch a whole series of the same bird on an A3 sketchbook page. Here the Eurasian Kingfisher.

T stands for....a new cup (paired up with Christmas card printing and winter gardening)

I finished my Christmas cards and am now looking forward to sending them out to some lovely people. This year I printed them with different techniques like linocut or gelli plate. I found this fun video of creating printing templates for the gelli plate with a hot glue gun. :)

I'm always searching for veggies that can be planted in the garden during winter. Winter here doesn't bring as much snow and cold temps as it did 10 years ago, but it can get quite frosty on some days. So here we have a winter pea, which will bring peas in early spring, planted in November.

There's some winter garlic, which will be ready for harvest in June/July.

I also have some broad beans (Vicia faba), which can deal with low temps and will be ready for harvest in May/June.

And to qualify for "T stands for...." with Bleubeard and Elizabeth, I'll show you a tea can I made at a team building event in office. Was a lot of fun and ofc mine has to picture a bird.

I'll enjoy some tea or coffee from this one in the very near future.