***Monday Friend*** - Sarah

Well then, without further ado, here she is:

Sarah McCay from "A Lost Feather" is Monday Friend number One.

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As soon as I had decided on ***Monday Friend*** as the new blog project, I knew that I wanted Sarah to be the first person featured in it. Imagine how happy I was when she agreed to join in!

Sarah is 26 years old and lives outside New York City. I love her blog because it is not only inspirational but also very light and full of sunshine - her blogtitle says it all!

Sarah gave me the following five things to include into my drawing:

1. Boyfriend/ Family/ Friends/ Dog. I had a conversation with one of my best friends this morning about the most important things in our lives.. at first I listed "art" as my #1, but I realized that without the people in my life, nothing else would matter. They are definitely my #1.

2. Art. Last July I quit my full time desk job to follow my dream of becoming a full time artist. It's a lot of work, but I love it.

3. Hiking. I started getting into hiking after I visited the Grand Canyon in 2008. Now I go as often as possible. Even though the mountains here on the east coast of the US are a lot smaller than what you'll find out west, we still have some pretty amazing trails.

4. Photography. I studied Fine Art Photo in college.. I never go anywhere without a camera.

5. Blogging. I love being part of the blogging world. I am sooo thankful for the people I've met and I hope to one day be able to look back through my posts with a huge smile!

They're all there. :o) I included Boo especially, Sarah's little dog. Because I think little dogs just like to be in pictures. Who knows, if I left him out maybe Boo would have been insulted and give Sarah a hard time and that's not what we want. ;o)

 

Sarah not only sells her wonderful jewelry and art in her etsy shop. Very new and precious is her other shop "Currents of Air", where you can buy cute illustrations for your blog or website. Such a great idea!

I hope you liked the first Monday Friend. If you have a minute's time, why don't you hop over and say hello to Sarah, I'm sure she'd love your comments!

All photos and the blog banner are copyright to Sarah at A Lost Feather and are used with her kind permission.

Do you want to be a Monday Friend? I would be thrilled to hear from you. Just drop me a line at shiny_bubbles (at) gmx.ch

New feature: ***Monday Friend***

Hello everybody!
I'm so excited to introduce my new blog feature. It's called ***Monday Friend***. Every Monday, I'm going to introduce you to a great new person I know from the internet.
I ask all my Monday friends to name five things that define them and/or their blog/website. With this information and all the impressions I've had from their website, I will create a little illustration to represent them. Of course I will also include additional information about what they do, who they are, and some pictures in the post, to give you a more detailed impression.

I have the first friend post lined up for you, and I'll be putting it up tonight after we get back from a concert, so stay tuned!

Have you entered my friend-giveaway yet? Hop to the post to read all about it. There is still time to comment on the post until next Saturday to enter the drawing for a cute little illustration I made especially for you! Also, if you are on blogger, be the next (=10th) person to follow me and you will win one of the pictures for sure!

project reStyle: Pink and plaid

Creativity has all been about sewing lately. I'm really in love with it.
My newest project included an old Tee and some checkered fabric. It was rather complicated and is far from perfect. I don't think it's the perfect fit, either. I love to wear it all the same, because it's so wonderfully silly.

Grateful for: Friends! {*Giveaway!*}

Hey people, psst! Look at the sidebar there, on the left! See something? See it? No?

Well.

I don't think you'd notice, because, unlike me, you might not check the sidebar about ten times a day to look at the numbers. The numbers of people who liked me on facebook or follow the blog. I look at them so often because it is such a great thing to see when the numbers go up. I always feel so excited and grateful that people obviously like this page enough to click these buttons.
And now, I am up to 29 likes and 9 followers. Wooohooo! Who might be number 30/10??

I was so delighted to see that, that I decided to have a little celebration-giveaway. Just to say thank you to all you nice people who stop by and take time to read and even leave comments.

I've made three little illustrations that I will be sending out to the winners. Two of them are for whoever is next to follow the blog or click the like button on my fb page. For the third I will draw a winner out of whoever comments on this post, so everybody who's already following/liking can win something, too.

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The giveaway will close earliest next Saturday, or whenever follower/liker number 10/30 have joined us.

Thanks for being here, wonderful friends!

More gratefulness, as always, over at Maxabella loves...

My creative space

It's still colorful around here. I'm doing better though, must be practise and all that jazz. ;o)

Self portrait Thursday - W21/11

lookout

Honestly, I have no clue where this one came from. I sat down to do the self portrait, and whilst I was still thinking about what to draw, this came right out of the pen, just like that.

Whatcha wearing on your birthday? (WWW)

Oh boy, what a day! It was my birthday yesterday and I would say one of the nicest ones I've ever had.
It started with a yoga lesson down at the river. What better way to start your day than doing yoga outside, meditating and doing something good for your body? Afterwards we sat in the sun next to the water for coffee and morning smoothies.

Once back home I popped some muffins in the oven and prepared stuff for a picnick in the evening. Soon it was time to leave for my birthday treat: A tragus piercing.

I love how that little sparkle goes with the silver ring!
Trev got his eyebrow pierced. I thought it was very unfair that mine hurt quite a bit whilst he didn't even twitch when he got it done.

In the evening we had picnick in the park with lots of great friends. I was so happy about how many people came to spend time with us. My sugar-free muffins were quite tasty, and everybody brought fruit to share, which was great because I got to eat that too. Must be the summery weather that made everybody buy healthy stuff. It was so warm I went barefoot all day. Oh how I love that. It always reminds me of when we were small and my birthday was that time of year we'd be allowed outside without shoes whenever we wanted. :o)

Photo by Martin Strauss

Photo by Martin Strauss

Thanks to Martin for snapping these great pics! His gallery is here!

Look, that's me wearing my golden tutu and my birthday hat. Oh, and the heart shaped sunglasses of course. There the must-have item of the season. Well, at least in my little fashion land.
This hat is my treasure! I bought it off ebay for a riddiculously low price, it's a real silk tophat and it's gorgeous. Sadly enough it only arrived after I'd done my hair, so atm it doesn't really fit me. Once I get the dreads out, I'm gonna wear it every day!!

Bagpuss claimed it was his birthday too, but nobody believed him. That's him, dressed up as the Cheshire cat. ;o)

I thought since this Wednesday outfit was pretty crazy, I'd add a more down to earth one. That's what I wore today. The belt was a birthday gift from my friend Alvaro. <3

What a wonderful birthday! :o)

Sheila

This is a post for Björn and Tali, to prove that Sheila is doing fine here with us. :o)

In fact, she is doing a bit too well, in my opinion.

This cat is stealing my boy!

And I only get my feet cuddled.

You see, we love your little princess! ;o)

Let's have an adventure!

Wow, today has been such a productive day! I could fit almost everything in that I planned on doing, and it was a lot.
But there's one thing I'm really excited about that I made today. Remember that we watched "Up!" on Sunday? Well, that movie just really inspired me. I even thought it was more impressive than the first time I saw it. I instantly decided that I needed an adventure book of my own. And since tomorrow's my birthday, I thought it would be a good time to start a special book and aim at filling it with lots of exciting things until next year.
I found the perfect book at the brocki today: 

Just an old, ugly photo album with a plastic cover. But I liked the format, the way it is bound together with a piece of string, and the black pages.

I cut out all the seethrough pages that you get in photo albums and ripped off the covering paper on the front and the back.

Then I wrapped it in some cute fabric, glued new paper on the insides and made a label. I must admit that I got a bit carried away. It always happens when trinkets and a glue gun are involved...
This is the book from the movie:

And that's mine:

Do you think it's too girly for an adventure book? I seem to end up with girly stuff a lot these days. I've never been the girly type. Hey, I can hear you laugh over there!

I can't wait to start filling it! I added "Trucs à faire" to the first page, because Ellie has it in her book, too. Somehow the writing in the movie version that we had was in French, so that stuck with me.

On the fabric is a little quote saying: "Life is too short to be comfortable!"
I added a little drawing of a girl ready for adventures, and another quote:

"What you see depends on what you are looking for!"

I found all of Russel's scout badges for downloading (oh, fantabulous interweb!) and I wanna print them and add them to my stories.
Wow, I can't WAIT!

Also can't wait for tomorrow, I'm getting a birthday piercing and we're going to have a lovely little picnick in the park in the evening.
I hope you will all have a great Wednesday full of little adventures!

365 things - week 21/11

We are taking digitalising seriously. Today, a box of CD's said bye bye at the brocki down the road. The guy there was so sweet and gave me reduction on the stuff that I bought.

I can't tell you what it was because it is a surprise, but you'll read about it once it is safe! ;o)

Hope your Tuesday is going great!

Books in cages and a lizard stuck with an angel

The last time I was in St. Gallen it was rainy and really, really cold. This Sunday the little town greeted us with glorious sunshine. Initially, Trev was going there to pick up a synthesizer he had bought from a guy off ebay. But we thought it would be a good opportunity to visit the famous abbey library and have a little stroll through the old town.

We saw a very sad bear and a lot of impressive buildings.

The library is great! I have never seen so many old and precious books all in one place. They were all caged in their shelves to keep people from touching them. Some of them were really quite tattered.

The pictures are from the website because you're not allowed to take photographs in there. We also had to wear funny slippers over our shoes so as not to wear out the old wood floors too much.
I love books and looking at them was very inspiring. But as you can see, the architecture of the room is equally fascinating. There are vast ornaments and lots of the little baby angels (putti they're called, I think). Each of them is dressed up to show one of the trades the monks used to work.

When I was looking at them, I suddenly saw that somehow, somebody had stuck something on one of them. At first sight I thought it was a plastic model of a dinosaur. But when we had a closer look we realised it was a real stuffed animal, some sort of big lizard, or maybe a baby crocodile. It had a piece of tiger fur wrapped around its belly...
Now don't laugh, I'm telling the truth!! I have no clue how that thing got there, it's clearly not part of the architecture, but it's not a random object that any prankster would pull from their pockets. Maybe that particular putto was the zoologist?
I could bite my own ear for being too dazed to think of going and asking a staff member about it. I mean, they would know, wouldn't they?

We made it to the train just as a little thunderstorm struck and rain started pouring down.


In the evening we had Chinese food and watched a movie and then we built a little tent and then ate popcorn and had tea in there.
It was a really great day.

Squiggly Sunday

Hello and happy Sunday everyone.
Just popping in to tell you that Rachael at Squiggly Rainbow was so kind and let me write a guestpost for her Squiggly Sunday series. It's quite word-heavy and maybe a bit sad, but those of you who're interested in depression might be interested to have a look!
You can find it here.
Happy weekend!

Grateful for: THIS tutorial!

Apart from the fact that Danny really did a great job in this video tutorial about showing all the steps in a very clear and yet concise way and that I ADORE his drawings: This tute was just something that really sparked in me. Do you know that feeling when something comes just at the right time? I've been crafting things off my to-do list for a while and whilst it is very satisfactory, it just misses the sort of childlike go-with-the-flow spontaneity that I really like about crafting. This post really brought that back to me. I saw it and just went: "Yes, I want to make this RIGHT NOW!"



Mini-book from danny brito on Vimeo.

We made one of these during my studies once, they called it little book companion and it was for writing essential things down during a seminar. That was such a cute and useful idea. And it reminds me of happy times. :o)

Happy weekend to you! What are you grateful for?
See what others say on Maxabella loves

Self portrait Thursday - W20/11

Ooops, I kind of lost track of the weekdays and missed SPT. But no worries, here it is! Haven't thought of a title for it, yet. Maybe 'catlove'? ;o)

ouchies!

After a beautifully sunny afternoon yesterday, I somehow got me a bladder infection and spent the whole evening on the toilet... :o(
So I snapped silly pictures and toyed with a new polaroid app in order to distract myself.

Showing you my great fish hair accessoire

Then I decided I wanted popcorn and burned them all.

I was so frustrated, but Trev made some nice popcorn from the leftovers, and it was really good!

My creative space

It's all about colors, and I'm not the biggest fan of that. My talent is more with whipping things up, quick lines, some dots and stitches here and there, and then I lose interest. To make going into details more bearable I am working outside in the sun.

More creative spaces.