Saturday, December 21, 2013

Delicious no-bake date cake

Browsing through some older photos, I found pics of this delicious date cake. In case you're still in need of an Xmas success recipe, here's your no-bake ticket to fame.


The recipe is from the Dutch 'Bagels & Beans' franchise, who serve this cake and are awesome enough to share the recipe:

  • 500 gr dates (without pits and cut into slices)
  • 250 gr dairy butter (Dutch: roomboter)
  • 150 gr brown caster sugar (Dutch: bruine basterdsuiker)
  • 1 hand of walnuts, chopped into fine pieces
  • 1 tube of Marie biscuits, broken in pieces of about 1 cm (Dutch: een rol maria biscuitjes)
  • 1 egg
  • Caramel sirup (or praline/butterscotch sirup)
  • Cocos flakes for decoration (I like to use quite a bit, as you can see on the photo ;) )
  1. Carefully melt the butter
  2. Add sugar and stir it thoroughly so that the suger dissolves a bit
  3. Beat the egg with a whisk (Dutch: ei goed loskloppen met garde) and add to butter and sugar; while stirring it thoroughly, let it boil for a short while
  4. Add two shots of caramel sirup, boil for a bit longer
  5. Add dates, stir well and let boil for 1 minute
  6. Add biscuits and walnuts, mix everything
  7. Pour everything in a greased spring cake tin (Dutch: springvorm), flatten it well with the back of a tabletspoon, and let it cool for about 1 1/2 hour. The cake should be about 1 1/2 cm thick. When it has cooled, pour the cocos over it and enjoy!

Sunday, December 15, 2013

And then... there was a new post

Yes!
It's been some time. My Industrial Design master education has started and I promptly did not have time for anything else anymore. Currently I'm three and a half month in and in a semi-permanent overload-mode since roughly week three, but just one week left until the Christmas holiday weeks so I hope to recover then.

In the mean time, I received the advise that it might not be such a fantastic idea to keep thinking that I just need to hang in there until the end of the school year, since by that time I might just as well have overloaded myself so much already that I won't be able to start with my thesis and such. Good advice. Difficult to follow since I do not want to get any study delay. I want to be done with school before my thirties dammit! XD

Anyway, part of that advise was also that I really really really should pay attention to my energy level. Fighting energy leaks and making 'energy bringers' a priority. All things I used to do in the past but that I have sort of managed to give up on, going into survival mode. So yeah. It really is time to get back to taking good care of myself. And what really gives me energy? Creating of course!

So, this weekend (the very first free weekend instead of max one free day since I started, I believe...) I took my time making something for lunch and even made a picture of it.

I'm so proud of myself! ;)
Because when being away from home for 12-14+ hours a couple of sandwiches are not gonna cut it, I sometimes boil rice in the weekend to freeze it in in daily portion bags. In the morning I just need to throw one portion in a frying pan with a little water, spices and perhaps also meat and veggies, and I have a real decent lunch to take with me.

This lunch was more extended since I had the time, so I added an union, half a bell pepper (Dutch: paprika), salami, turmeric (Dutch: kurkuma/geelwortel), cajun spice mix and a little soy sauce. It tasted divine on a cold afternoon.

Another project I've done some time ago was daubing decorating my solid green dummy notebook while in the train. After completing it the marker turned out to be wearing off on my hands so I put a plastic cover over it. That made it slightly less awesome but I can live with that.

Before you start commenting on my awesome creative skillzz, the pattern was made largely from an example ;). The notebook is almost full now, so I need to find a new one to start doodling on. Hurray! More doodle space!

Saturday, July 27, 2013

The mystery topping...

I found this picture of a snack I've made a long time ago:

Vaguely, I recall being very enthusiastic about it. Enthusiastic enough to take at least 20 pictures of it. A good idea, as it turns out, since most of them are blurry. And messy, but even sharp pictures can't solve that.

But what it was? Dunno. Okay, let's take a look at the topping. What exactly is that on the plate?

Looks like some mixture. Of chopped black olives and basil. And sun-dried tomatoes, or normal tomatoes. Or both. The tiny beige specs look like pine nuts. I probably threw in some olive oil, sea salt and pepper too. And garlic, it sounds like garlic makes sense in this context.

And then all of that on cracker. Sounds tasty. Not very original, but tasty. Hmmm. Maybe I should make some.


Thursday, July 25, 2013

I am not a granny, I am not a granny, I am not...

...even though I made this hand-sewn and hand-embroidered lavender bag.

Because the lavender has been growing like weed.

Because I'm currently spending near all my time on nerdy/design activities. Which means I still have a few 'grandma' credits left before turning into a full-fledged 'doilies, bears and kittens' person. I'm still cool.

But mostly because it was too ridiculously hot and sunny to move and/or concentrate, while I still needed something to do on my day off. Forgive me, for I had nothing better to do. The weather report weaves tales of a continuing heatwave, so more embroidery might follow...

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Guess who's back!

Yup. Yours truly. I'm baaahaack!

Since my previous post I have been über-busy with all the preparations and first steps of my web design business. But alas! The long days of working and sweating over design mockups and programming training are almost over, and the long days of working and sweating over client design mockups and debugging are almost starting. The main difference: I'll get paid. At least I hope so.

In case you were wandering "did you really need three months for that?" well, I did plan the launch to be in only half that time. However, en route my body and mind performed their united "hey you there, get back here!" routine again so I needed to take things sloooow for a while. Yeah, life and health and sanity and such. The good news is that now I'm both rested ánd well-prepared, beat that!

Since all this work left little time for other projects, I'm slightly behind on pretty much all of my plans. I hope I'll be able to pick them up slowly the next weeks. There might also appear some older creations that I had already photographed and subsequently forgotten about. I'd tell you what kind of projects if I hadn't forgotten about them.

One thing I do remember is going to the textiles market with a friend. Though the reason I still remember it might be that it happened a few days ago. Ah well. In case you are now looking at me with the stern look that says "didn't you already have waaaay to much fabric while doing pretty much nothing with it?", it wasn't my fault. I was morally obliged to tag along for mental support to my friend who needed to stash big time for her sewing plans. And the reason I came home with a big stash of cloth as well was, ehm... Well you don't need an excuse for stashing really nice €1 per meter cloth, really. I just need to find more storage space, that's all.

Among the new supplies is a piece of unbleached cotton (Dutch: kaasdoek). Which is very convenient in the kitchen as well as for drying herbs as my friend told me. Herbs. Whenever I stumble across the word 'herbs' I think of Eddy Izzard's sketch:



The man is a genius.

*Disclaimer: I am Dutch but only speak two languages, the other six have long been forgotten ;). 

Sunday, April 28, 2013

A change of pace, and post cards

Hey hello, it's been a month! Lots of things happened so I kind of forgot about this blogs existence. Whoops. To sum things up:

I decided that I will indeed go back to school again in September, for the Master's course Advanced Product Design at the Technical University Delft, which is basically thé hard-core industrial designer course. I'm really looking forward to it!

My part time job at the cooking supplies shop (which was pretty much my sole source of income) suddenly went bankrupt. So, no more job. Apart from the fact that this sucks - not just for me and my colleague, but even more for the couple who owned the store and had both been working full time on it for 13 years- it means I will have to find a source of income for the months until September.

Since I highly doubt I'll be able to find anything interesting for just a few months -retail is very slow during this time of year, so I doubt I'll find something equal to what I was doing now, leave alone find a temporary (ánd part time) job as designer with no formal experience- I've concocted a new plan *drum roll*:

Web design!

Yep, I've embraced my old 'frenemy' that is webdesign for paying clients. At the time, doing client work next to my part-time day job robbed me of all my time for working on my product designs. This, paired with too low prices and not being prepared well enough for client work (read: communication problems and clients expecting more work than they had paid for), led to a lot of stress and frustration on my side.

At the same time, I still liked web design, I just didn't like it when paying customers were involved. The websites I made for people on a voluntary basis were a lot more fun and virtually no stress. The things is, voluntary web design doesn't pay the bills.

But... right now, things suddenly are a lot more favourable. No day job, so I could spend 3 days a week on client work and the rest on product design. A serious focus on web design also means I can afford investing the time needed to prepare a strong business identity and a standard for dealing with the clients. I could basically prepare a lot of things that would lessen the stress and frustration I had in the past. Checklists to discuss before accepting projects, clear contracts, packages for clients that state clearly what is paid for and what not. And a set time when I'm available for calls and when not, plus a separate phone, so I won't be called when doing groceries...

So right now I'm working on all of that. Business plan, contracts, an acquisition website, business cards, etc. And not completely unimportant, I'm training in designing layouts and improving my technical skills so that the design process will go faster and smoother later on. In other words: I'm busy, busy, busy, but I'm actually having a lot of fun while doing everything so that's all right.

Oh, and I've also been doing other things last month. Things like cooking and baking, even though I've already forgotten what exactly (there is a chance I'll find pictures of them somewhere, so they might be posted later on) and I designed two post cards:


a 'get well' card, and a 'birthday' card:


Once again available in printable format on the 'Downloads' page.

On another note, I completely forgot that May is almost approaching and that I haven't done a single thing for my May wallpaper yet. Bad blogger, bad!

...I'll start on it right now. I promise.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Felt Easter egg cozies

Two years ago (that long already?!) I made these little chicken egg cozies for Easter.
They make a nice Easter favor with a few chocolate eggs.

And even better, they are really easy to make: cut two pieces of felt, stitch them together (don't forget to pick a thread colour that stands out) and round it off by punching out two little holes as eyes. And you're done!

I've finally made it into a printable pattern, which is now available on the Downloads page.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Quiche and whoopies on a lazy Sunday afternoon

It's Sunday again. My favourite lazy day! I'm not religious, but I do keep my Sundays as a day for resting and not being allowed to do any work. That is, nothing 'work' like, like design work for my studio, administration, organizing things like performances for the music group I'm in, household work or anything else that involves a certain amount of pressure -be it from others or from myself.

Since I work independently on my designs and freelance jobs, I find it even more important to draw a strict line between work and relaxation. It is so easy to keep working and working, until suddenly you crash and burn. No energy and motivation left, the smallest problems appear huge and the joy of designing seems completely gone. I've been there a lot.

Therefore: Sunday is resting day, time to reload that battery. On which my mind usually promptly overflows with ideas and plans. Pushing away the daily worries seems to clear up a lot of space in my head. So, even though it's called my 'lazy day', Sundays are usually rather productive days for me.

Today I baked a quiche for lunch from some leftover vegetables:

I also tried baking whoopie pies, or whoopies. They are a slightly dry cake with filling in between. The recipe called for the dough to be put on the baking sheet in small bolls. Since the actual whoopies appeared rather flat, I did wonder if it wouldn't be better to flatten the dough. Following recipes is not my strongest suit, but for this time I decided not to go improvising and, well, follow the recipe. But, as you can see:

Yep, the whoopies were way too round -causing them to roll over making the upper halves slide off. I re-read the recipe. It said "make round bolls of dough (check), then flatten the dough a bit (...oh.)". Curse you, Attention Deficit Disorder!

Ah well, they still tasted good.

The recipes:

Vegetarian quiche for one:

- garlic clove, chopped
- small union, chopped
- mixed vegetables, finely chopped (I used a 'soup vegetables' mix with carrot, leek and cauliflower, about 100 g)
- 2 sheets of puff pastry
- 1 egg
- some milk (I think around 50 ml)
- grated cheese
- salt, pepper, paprika powder, rosemary

Bake the vegetables and garlic in a frying pan for 5 minutes. Grease baking tin, put the puff pastry in (optional: add some breadcrumbs on the bottom), put in the vegetables+garlic, mix egg, milk and cheese and pour it over the vegetables. Bake the quiche in 30-45 minutes on 180 degrees Celsius.

Chocolate whoopies (8 pieces):

- 225 g self-rising flour
- 50 g cocoa
- 100 gram brown sugar (NL: basterdsuiker)
- 1 sachet of vanilla sugar
- 100 g butter
- 2 eggs
- 125 ml milk
- a pinch of salt

Mix butter and sugar, add eggs and salt and mix to a fluid mass. Sift the flour and cocoa and add to the mix, add the milk as last ingredient. Mix to a homogenous mass. Use 2 tablespoons to make 16 balls of dough on a baking sheet. Flatten them (and don't you forget that!). Bake 15 minutes on 180 degrees Celsius. Let them cool off and and put filling in between (I used custard, but the recipe says chocolate cream filling (to be made) or chocolate spread). Enjoy!

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Calendar download: April wallpaper

Huh? Making the deadline, this soon already? Yep! I just felt like doodling last night and finished this one in less than an hour and a half. Yay for progress! The others cost me way more time and I like this one the most so far.

Both available on the Downloads page as usual.

On a different note, this one is not in the graphic style I intended (see this post), because this image just popped up in my head and I wanted to benefit from that. So... Maybe for May. Or June. Or December. I'll get there eventually.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

My newest design: "Day/Night"

Which is really not new (see this post from September last year), but I finally got to make some decent pictures of it, so it is now finally officially 'launched' and for sale in my webshop. It's a 3D printed ceramic egg cup that functions as a candlestick when you turn it upside down. Hence the Day/Night name: it can be put on the table for both breakfast/lunch (egg) ánd dinner (candle). Well look at me being clever and all. Anyway, the pictures:

Now I still need to make decent pictures of another item, my business card stand - which is, by the way, my absolute favourite design - but this is rather difficult so it might take some time (it holds white business cards, and shooting this with a white background is really not easy). And scenic pictures of a business card stand? I still have to figure out how to set that up.

After these and a few portrait pictures are done, I can finally close this chapter - I'm kind of stressing out about all of it but it has to be done (actually, it should have been done weeks ago, I'll explain why in the future). I'll finally be able to work on some other things after that, yay!

In the mean time I'd like to share this link with you: it is a breakdown of the process of creating a stunning watercolour (mainly) fantasy illustration by artist Jenny Dolfen (also known as Gold-Seven). Very inspiring, it makes me want to run to the art store immediately to get a watercolour set and start experimenting!

Friday, March 1, 2013

Grmbl

Recently I noticed some traffic to this blog from a website I did not know. Upon looking I found it to be some shady annoying "make money with writing" site.

On it, the standard story: "I've been doing this for two weeks and now I'm earning $5000 a week while still being there for my poopsie little baby", yada yada yada, you've probably heard it before.

The beauty of it all is that at the end there is a letter in which the author claims that this is NOT a shady site, because Blogger (the '.blogspot' blogs host (a.k.a. Google)) had supposedly sent a private mail to author because people had complained. But, author claims, Blogger knows it is not a scam. So you should also believe author, naturally. Since (s)he said that Blogger said that it is not a scam. The letter closes with:

 PS: Please be assured that this is all true.

Now THAT is solid reasoning!

For those who are wondering: if this is indeed a shady Blogger site, why does Blogger not close it down? Well, because it is not a site hosted by Blogger. Someone cleverly picked a private domain name resembling '.blogspot', I didn't notice this at first as well. But still, the content says enough.

However, somehow a link to my blog is on top of their blog roll. To the people coming to my blog redirected from that site: hi there, and shame on you for clicking on links on shady websites. Seriously, please don't do this anymore.

I don't feel like sending this website an email asking to kindly piss off, because that would disclose my email address to a shady site, which is of course not a smart thing to do. So now I'm just hoping it will go away soon. Grmbl...

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Calendar download: March wallpaper

Phew, made it júst in time. Deadline March: check!


Also I managed to stick to my blogging intention of at least two posts a month, since the previous post was February 1st and this one is on February 28th. Hah!

Now for April, I might try something in the graphic style I'm currently practising for another illustration project. No, I'm not going to tell you about it yet because I'm pretty sure it will be finished after at least a year- if I even get to the point of finishing it at all. It's still way above my skill level when it comes to creating those kind of illustrations. But I'll just keep practising.

Okay, see you later!

Friday, February 1, 2013

Styled product pictures

Remember I told you here that I had been shooting my jewelry pictures with a plain white background because it was easier? Because shooting pictures with styled backgrounds was frustrating and stressful to the point that steam was coming from my ears and my mouth was foaming?

Okay, I didn't tell you that last part, neither is it completely true, however I'm not lying when I say it did not work. One reason might have been the fact that I had already ran ill at the time and being ill ánd utterly stressed out ánd with deadlines at the same time does not enhance your creativity and overall sanity.

Anyway, at the time it was decided (foam, foam) that my styled pictures pretty much sucked and that they were completely useless. Hence the plain white background. But this week after finally daring to open my archived pictures, I have to say I had been overreacting a little at the time. A little tweaking and well, these are the results:

 
Not entirely the super-duper-highly-professional-looking pics I was aiming for, but that was a bit on the ambitious side anyway (wow, really?). I am just a beginner after all... For now, these are good enough. Off to practising more!

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Calendar wallpaper: February download

Whew! I made it, the deadline that is. The February wallpaper is finished before the start of February. I 'recycled' the valentine card because, well, recycling is good. Lets keep it at that.

Cute Cupid is eager to shoot his arrows even when there are no more hearts available. Ambitious little fella.

Once again available on the Downloads page in normal and widescreen version. Hope you like it!

EDIT: uploaded the correct versions, because February does not have 31 days and certainly does not begin on the same weekday as January. In other words, I had simply copied the calender part from the January wallpaper without changing it. Whoops...

Friday, January 25, 2013

Cheese!

Well, well, well, it seems like Valentine's day is around the corner once again. Home-blogs are already overflowing with lots and lots of plain, boring and cheesy valentine decorations and projects. Plain and boring: fine, but not my cup of tea. Cheesy: yes please! Sometimes it's just plain fun to be horribly cheesy.

So here's my first contribution to the Valentine cheesiness:

Okay, I admit, I was just procrastinating because I need to go grocery shopping. And it's cold and freezing and slippery outside. And I don't like that. But now I don't have any excuses left. Darn...

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Calendar Wallpaper: January download

Okay, like I promised: the calender wallpaper for January! To be honest, I'm not thrilled about the result but since it's an exercise I really have to stop whining about that and just start with the one for February. Since there's a deadline to catch!

         

The wallpaper is available on my Downloads page (new! new! new!) in a regular and wide-screen version.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Cupcake workshop

Yesterday I followed a workshop 'Cupcake decoration' together with a friend. The workshop was organized by Hippe Taartjes (Dutch for 'hip cakes') and it was lots of fun. These are the ones I did:

Friday, January 11, 2013

Designing postcards with vector software

A quick explanation for those not familiar with graphic design: Vector graphics are graphics that are built up from mathematical expressions. Vector graphics (images and/or text) can be zoomed in and out infinitely without loss of quality, whereas a bitmap image like a digital photograph image would become blurry and pixelated at a certain point. Thus, one of the advantages of vector illustrations is that once you've created it, you can use it on any size you want, be it a post stamp or a poster, and still have crystal clear lines.

Lots of people use Adobe Illustrator to create vector graphics, but the software I'm using is Inkscape. It is a free (yay!) open source program, and is not as heavy for the computer compared to Illustrator. However, I generally never liked to work with this type of software, be it Illustrator or Inkscape or anything else. I generally didn't like working on graphic design at all, to be honest. It has been on my 'have to practise' list for many years and I've always managed to put it off.

Until I entered the board of my music group, and a Christmas card had to be designed. Within two weeks. And with me being the only board member active in the field of design, it was kinda sorta not much of a question who would befall the 'honor' of this task. Great. Ahem.

So, no more excuses. I had to start creating something. I chose to do it in Inkscape so I would finally get some real experience with it. The result:

Considering the fact that it is pretty much my first complete graphic design ever (apart from smaller things like my logo and business card) and that I was not that familiar with the software, I don't think the end result is that bad. And even though I have been cursing now and then during the process, no complete mental breakdowns took place which was nice as well. Okay, I did say "never never never again!" a lot of times to my friend and fellow board member, but I had pretty much already forgotten about that a day after ordering the cards.

A good thing, because after ordering the postcards (a lot of them) via Greetz, I got an email: 9 postcards to print for free! Some sort of bonus you get after ordering apparently. Nice! No one else wanted to do something with it and the cards had to be ordered within a month, so I took the opportunity to give myself an additional challenge: design 3 or 4 postcards just for fun, learning additional Inkscape skills and graphic styles in the process.

So, there was an incentive (seeing your design in print is actually pretty cool), motivation (graphic design was more fun than I had thought) and not completely unimportant, a deadline. I find that deadlines increase my general productivity a lot, because it prevents projects from dragging on and on and ending up abandoned halfway.

Combining that with a short Christmas holiday and some extra days, and there you have it!

My first design (blue card) was according to this tutorial on urban design. It's a graphic style you see quite often and I've always liked the circular designs, so it was nice learning how it is built. I really love how it came out. Also that it looks still quite different from the example in the tutorial, it's nice to see that personal style comes out even when following instructions.

My second design (red card) was pretty much free form, trying to create a shape and fiddling with it until I liked how it came out on the card.

For my third design (green card), I learned to add textures in Inkscape. A texture is what you can see on the background, a combination between a simple colour and a picture (this one is of rust, from this site with free textures). It gives an illustration a sudden burst of liveliness and character. Creating a simple text and a shape of a flower, and the card was done.

The fourth design (yellow card) popped up in my head and I just tried creating the look and feel I had envisioned, which was quite difficult. Although still different from what I had imagined, the cheerfulness came out just how I wanted it!

I love how quickly your skills improve after tasks like this. For me, it has become much easier to envision and come up with graphic elements (and how to create them) compared to a month earlier. To keep growing, I decided to create a desktop wallpapers for every month in 2013, that can be downloaded before the month starts (there: a deadline). Okay, January will be too late, but you'll see it soon!

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

'People in Interaction' challenge

Drawing people is hard. It requires insight in anatomy and the way people move, general drawing skill and a lot of practise to get things right. Because product design often requires images to communicate how an object is used, being able to draw people is a rather useful skill.

To gain some much-needed practise in this field, I did a 15-day drawing challenge: "people in interaction". Every day, pick an item and draw a person interacting with that item three times, with different interactions or viewing angles. Phew! Talk about challenging!

I cheated big time on the hands and faces, because they are a drawing skill in themselves and will need a separate study to get it right in drawings. Trying to draw those correct as well now would've driven me to insanity, so yea... Mañana, mañana...

After doing this challenge I definitely feel I'm having better grip on drawing people. Of course I still need a lót of practise and study, but it definitely got easier (and faster) along the way. Doing a challenge like this also gives a better understanding of your 'problem areas', in my case I really have problems drawing hips accurately. Also, clothes and drawing poses with arms raised in the air could use some special attention.

Sometimes I used reference pictures to get certain body parts right. A good source for reference pictures (both full body, specific body parts and expressions) is Kxhara at Deviantart. I love her pictures, they are very convenient!