Interview in Trouw

Voor iedereen die vandaag of gisteren de krant Trouw doorbladerden kon het vast niet ontgaan zijn. Er stond een groot interview met mij in het katern duurzaamheid & natuur. Ik was erg vereerd dat de getalenteerde Maaike Veldman mij vond via internet en graag een interview wilde afnemen. Ik ben ook verrast dat het zo'n mooi artikel is geworden. Breed uitgemeten met allerlei foto's van projecten en producten. De grootste foto is van de jurk van het project Staindress. Voor degene die erg nieuwsgierig zijn geworden naar het verhaal achter deze opvallende jurk/verschijning kun je hier meer lezen over dit project. En daarnaast waren er nog foto's van mijn nieuwste collectie handgemaakte Haaknaalden van gevonden hout, en handgemaakte houten naalden gemaakt van meidoornstekels.


All of you that opened the national dutch newspaper Trouw yesterday or today must have given it a glance. There was a big interview concerning me and my work. I was honored to be contacted by the talented journalist Maaike Veldman. Who found me through the internet and wanted to interview me. After a long and interesting conversation with her I was pleasantly surprised to find such a big interview including several of my projects. Under which the notable dress from the project Staindress, for whom is curious about this project you can read more here. Also included where several items of my newest collection containing handmade wooden needles and handmade crochet needles made from found twigs.

NEW Knitting needles from branches

For some time now I have been working with my beloved father on a new product. Knitting Needles made from branches.

These knitting needles are made from pruning wood of different kind of trees.

The trees used have an ideal wood, but is only cut for pruning. The tree has better growth and fruit trees give more fruit after pruning. Pruning occurs yearly to improve mostly fruit trees. So no trees where cut down for these wooden knitting needles! Due to this, this product is very sustainable.

After pruning, the branches are hand selected to mach each other by size.

They are stripped of bark en hand sanded to make them smooth enough for knitting and to keep as much detail as possible.

Afterwards they are treated with a little bit of natural beeswax to preserve the wood.

These unique knitting needles can be purchased through my web shop.

New sustainable collection!

I finished some super cute earrings, wooden needles and crochet hooks made from twigs. They represent what I think is important, use of existing natural materials like found wood or feathers and next to that they are so darn cute! And the best thing is, they are now for sale in two shops. The concept store Urban Nomads and the supercute shop Elle Aime They both have a shop in Rotterdam North (NL) All for very affordable prices, so searching for the perfect holiday gift? Contact me or visit one of the lovely shops!  I'm also on the hunt for new shops to sell my products, If you have suggestions, let me know!

First up I present, wooden needles made from the large thorns of the indigenous Crataegus. The long thorns where traditionally used as nails to attach the shoe-sole onto the leather shoe in shoemaking. The needles because of the irregular shape are perfect for the somewhat coarser fabrics. Handmade by me and treated with a touch of beeswax to conserve the wood. They come in super cute handmade packaging perfect as a gift for textile craft lovers! And the nice thing is they are very affordable. You can contact me or visit Urban Nomads concept store in Rotterdam (NL)

Next up are the crochet hooks handmade from found twigs treated also with a little Beeswax to conserve the wood. They are  in different sizes depending on the size of the found twig. The crochet hoofs are for sale at the cute shop of Lisa called Elle Aime and you can of course also buy them trough me! So feel free to contact me :)

And last but not least, Earrings made from found feathers. Every feather is washed carefully en blown dry before making these lovely earrings. They are sold in recycled glass bottles finished with a used wine cork. A handwritten label attached to the bottle tells you where the feathers where found and also from what kind of bird the feather came from. Every earring is different en unique because every time I find different feathers. And to make it even more complete I decided to donate a percentage of every earring sold to the 'vogelbescherming' (bird protection association). If you are interested in one of these earrings as a gift or as something you want for yourself. Contact me or visit the concept store Urban Nomads in Rotterdam!

never-ending-art publication 2011

A while ago I had the start of an exhibition called Never ending art (see the my blogpost about that here). At this exhibition I presented the work "Bosfeestje". A few days ago this Exhibition came to an end and this was celebrated with a lovely day in the forest where the whole project started and with the presentation of a beautiful publication of this project. All the artists who participated worked together to make a communal art piece in the forest to announce the start of a folly which will be build later on. I took some photo's during this day, so enjoy!

And to celebrate this closing of the exhibition with all you readers I want to give one publication box away! (a description of this box is found below) If you want one of these publications let me know why you want this box plus your postal address and send this in an email to  wieteke"at"wietekeopmeer.nl . I will announce who the lucky winner is in the next blogpost! The publication will be send to you! (if you live abroad please understand that I will charge just the shipping costs because otherwise it will be a very expensive gift) Please note that this publication is in dutch!

We started this day with the presentation of the publication of this art project and giving the first issue of this publication to the director of the foundation of city and nature, Hans Warrink (picture above)

Also nice was that the landscape architect who designed this area was also present. He could tell us a lot of interesting features of this lovely forest near Almere in Flevoland.

The publication consisted of a box with a small booklet containing a description of all the interesting art projects produced for this exhibition.

And next to the booklet the box is filled with A6 format cards with pictures of the artworks. Each artist has their work presented on three of those beautiful cards.

After the presentation the artists all went for a long walk through the forest to determine the perfect spot for our communal artwork, during this walk we found the forest just preparing for spring, which was very nice to see.

After this walk we determined the best spot for a communal spontaneous art work made with recycled materials.

sustainable jewellery for sale now at "het groene warenhuis"!

It seems to be the time of catching up, Remember these photo's of my "second skin" jewellery collection? A whole collection of those lovely pieces made from recycled leather are for sale now at hetgroenewarenhuis.nl  here you can mix and match you're own unique jewellery piece no piece is the same, and all is handmade from recycled leather. Enjoy !

Het lijkt de tijd van terugkomen op dingen die ik heb gedaan. Herinner je deze foto's nog van mijn sieraden collectie "second Skin"? een hele collectie is op dit moment te koop bij hetgroenewarenhuis.nl! hier kun je net zolang mixen en schuiven totdat je jouw eigen unieke sieraad hebt gecreëerd wat helemaal bij jouw past, want elk stuk is uniek en daardoor is geen enkel sieraad hetzelfde! Dus kijk geniet en wie weet vind je wel iets leuks!

 

fiddling and tinkering gloves

Yesterday I planned a day of fiddling and tinkering with a my lovely friend Gracielle Uda. The goal was to just do fun stuff and be together and do some sewing. We had mutually agreed that everything we did was allowed to fail. There was no pressure to make anything substantial or anything "finished". So it was just a day of chatting, eating cookies, drinking tea and just doing some nice sewing together. We used all the stuff I had laying around, old lace, all kinds of fabric, beads, strings and weird things. Against all odds we decided to do a little project, we wanted to make fingerless gloves. We started with some drawings of the look we wanted and ended up choosing some nice fabric and starting to cut, sew and think about how to make them (We both never made anything glove-like). It became a very nice afternoon and the more we worked on the gloves the more excited we became, they started to look like something nice, I even stiched my label in for fun. At the end of the day we managed to both make a pair of gloves that fitted and which we wanted to wear! Below some pictures of mine, hers she took with her before I could take a photo (so maybe next time), they where also beautiful with lovely blue lace. We both where suprised of what a day of fiddling and tinkering can have as a result! We both agreed we are going to do this more often!

Gisteren heb ik een dag met mijn goede vriendin Gracielle Uda afgesproken om een dag te prutsen en knutselen. Het doel was om bij te kletsen en wat naaiwerk te doen. We hadden onderling afgesproken dat alles wat we deden was toegestaan te mislukken. Er was geen druk om iets "groots en meeslepends" te maken. Het was gewoon een dag kletsen, koekjes eten, thee drinken en knutselen. We gebruikten al de dingen die ik nog had liggen. Oud kant, allerlei soorten stof, kralen, touwtjes en grappige dingen. Tegen alle verwachtingen in besloten we om een klein project te doen, we wilden vingerloze handschoenen maken. We begonnen met een aantal tekeningen te maken van hoe we graag wilden dat ze eruit kwamen te zien, en kozen een leuke stof waarna we begonnen te knippen, naaien en nadenken over hoe we ze het beste konden maken (We hebben allebei nog nooit handschoenen gemaakt). Het werd een leuke middag en hoe meer we werkten aan de handschoenen hoe leuker we het vonden, aan het einde heb ik zelfs voor de grap mijn labeltje erin genaaid! Aan het eind van de dag zijn we erin geslaagd om allebei een paar passende handschoenen te maken die we wilden dragen! Hieronder enkele foto's van mijn paar handshoenen, haar paar handschoenen nam ze mee voordat ik een foto van kon maken (dus misschien de volgende keer). Haar handschoenen waren ook heel leuk, met mooi blauw kant. We waren allebei verbaasd van wat een dag prutsen als resultaat kan hebben! We hebben allebei afgesproken dat we dit vaker gaan doen!

I decided to make a pair of gloves with a draw string at the bottom for a cropping effect.

Ik besloot een paar handschoenen te maken waar ik aan de onderkant een touwtje in maakte wat ik kon aantrekken voor een opbollend effect

Above the end result, I left the drawstring extra long so I could wrap it around for a more nonchalant look.

Hierboven het eindresultaat, ik heb het touw wat ik gebruikte om de onderkant aan te kunnen trekken extra lang gelaten zodat ik het om de handschoen heen kon wikkelen.

I beaded the end of the strings with beads I found in my cubboards

Ik heb de uiteinde van de touwtjes van kralen voorzien die ik vond ik een van m'n lades.

I had some left over mother of pearl buttons in different sizes that looked lovely on the top

Ik had nog een paar parelmoeren knopen over in verschillende maten die prachtig aan de bovenkant stonden.

The area of the thumb we decided to finish with a simple buttenhole-like stitch.

Het gebied waar de duim zit besloten we af te werken met een soort knoopsgat-achtige steek.

The house of Gepetto

Recently I visited the storage place of secondhand Lundia furniture, for a wood project I'm working on. It was amazing, it looked like the house of Gepetto (father of pinokkio). The entrance was not really visible with just a little sign saying "lundia" which led to a cold basement-like space packed with beautiful kinds lundia furniture and also some wood pannels. It looked amazing and was impressive, I had a nice conversation with one of the owners, Martin Ackermans, he was very helpfull in trying to find what I was looking for and let me take some amazing photo's of their storage space. I certainly am coming back for some more treasure hunt, only then with a warm jacket! Be sure to check out their site. For the people who can't read dutch, in short his history: Martin was searching for secondhand lundia furniture and discovered that there was no place where he could find this, this made him hire an old cycle shed where he started collecting and selling parts of this Lundia furniture, slowly his buisness grew to the size they are now. It really is nice to see a man who build this quite large buisness from scratch!

Pas geleden heb ik de opslagplaats van tweedehands lundia meubels bezocht, voor een hout project waar ik nu mee bezig ben. Het was echt geweldig, het leek wel op hoe het huis van gepetto (de vader van pinokkio) eruit zou kunnen zien. De ingang was een beetje moeilijk te vinden, er stond alleen een klein schattig bordje waarop "lundia" stond. Dit leidde tot een donkere koude kelderachtige ruimte volgestopt met prachtige meubelstukken en houten onderdelen. Het zag er prachtig uit. Ik had een leuk gesprek met een van de eigenaren Martin Ackermans, hij was heel behulpzaam om te helpen te vinden wat we zochten, en hij liet me een aantal prachtige foto's nemen van dit aparte bedrijf. Ik vertrok met wat prachtige hout schatten en ik moet zeggen, ik ga er zeker nog een keer terug voor meer schatzoekerij, alleen dan trek ik wel een warmere jas aan! Neem ook zeker even een kijkje op hun site Lees ook zeker even onder het kopje "over ons" daar staat het aandoenlijke verhaal over hoe de zaak is begonnen.