Hand lettered TED talk quotes

I love watching TED talks! Actually... I mostly listen to them, while ironing. Combining the boring with the inspiring. ;-) I love to hear different experts all over the world talk about their newest ideas & insights. This is why I recently started a new little project: hand lettering TED talk quotes... I hope to make many (and get a bit wiser along the way).

Quote from Sir Ken Robinson's witty and clever TED talk "How schools kill creativity". He makes an entertaining and moving case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity. 

Quote from the famous talk "The power of vulnerability" from Brené Brown, june 2010. It has been viewed over 16409107 times today... Definitely worthy of watching, if you haven't yet.

Quote from Alain de Botton, Philosopher. Alain suggests a "religion for atheists" — call it Atheism 2.0 — that incorporates religious forms and traditions to satisfy our human need for connection, ritual and transcendence.

Quote from Susan Cains famous TED talk "The power of introverts". Our world prizes extroverts, but Susan makes a case for the quiet and contemplative.

Can't stop loving stop motion

Stop motion and time lapse videos have always intrigued me. I remember being a small girl, about 5 years old, and watching TikTak... A Belgian children's programme that often used stop motion effects (paper froggies hopping around and such) and little time lapse art tutorials. I loved those most of all! It made each craft project they showed seem so easy.

A few years later I enjoyed watching Postman Pat; a well known British children's television series that was stop motion animated. How DID they make this?, I wondered. When I was about 10 my dad, being an amateurphotographer & gadget collector, made us a little set up to shoot a clay animation. This is a fond memory of mine. I discovered it took a loooooot of time and patience, but what a thrill it was to watch my clay puppet eventually come to life... even for a few seconds. ;-)

Nowadays the most amazing films and short videos are made using these techniques. Recently I loved watching the music video of Paper Plane a song by Massimo Giangrande, animated with wonderful illustrations and paper cuts by Felicita Sala. P.S. The behind the scenes video is just as cool! Also I see more and more cool time lapse art tutorials popping up...

Inspired by all this, I'm now in search for a nice app to make my own short stop motion or time lapse videos using just my iPhone or iPad. If anyone has a good tip? Meanwhile I made this tiny stop motion video using the app iMotion... Excuse me for the poor picture quality & weird sudden ending, but still it was fun to create. Wanting to make some more in the future!

Pattern Parade

Designing patterns is my latest obsession. It's just so much fun, that I can't seem to stop! I would love to turn my repeatable patterns into fabric, gift wrap, wallpaper and other paper goodies in the future... Oh, the possibilities!!! :-D

Ja! Oui! Yes!

Dear friends of mine will be getting married soon! They asked me to illustrate their wedding announcement in a nature / woods-theme. Such a fun commission! Today I received the final card in the mail. I'm happy it turned out the way they wanted... :-)

Couldn't resist fooling around with all those little painted twigs, leaves and flowers...

Arty mail

Recently I started a little creative project with my friend Hoi-Yin. We will be sending each other illustrated and handlettered pages in handmade envelopes. The plan is to eventually bind the pages into a little book. Here's what I send to her so far...

Time flies!

Next Saturday the Dutch pop choir Madame Jeanette will be performing their yearly concert for friends, family and other groupies. The singing ladies will make a musical journey through time. And I've been asked to design the flyers & admission tickets. How fun :-). Here's what I came up with...

P.S. In case you were wondering: Madame Jeanettes are really hot peppers. Not nearly as hot as the ladies in the choir though ;-).

Things we rarely see...

Judith Herzberg, a Dutch poet and play writer, writes beautiful poems. Here's an illustration I made of one of her writings... Freely translated it says:

You rarely see a bird in the sky change its flight, turn, return.

This blue bird is now flying off to Esther, for whom I especially made this... I'm sure his flight will be safe and without any hesitation.