Le Veauthibault 2010

Sunday the 5th of September we left with 3 cars and 1 van with 10 women and 1 dog from Belgium for 7 days to 

Le Veauthibault in France to create with clay, porcelain, silver(clay), glass, fimo, paint, paper, plaster and wood.

Below the view from my place in the atelier and impressions around the house. 

Usually I would go for a short walk in the morning, sometimes Thibault, the dog of the landlord would walk with me.

We had a real good time, the evening we filled with playing games, visiting the local wine farm or sitting around the fire watching stars. The landlord Jacques made our breakfast, lunch, dinner and entertained us with ghost stories in the cellar.

All in all I had a great time, created a lot of which I will share more later.

Button Wednesday

A few weeks ago I decided to send a surprise gift to my biggest fan and you can read all about that on her blog.
I send her some of my buttons as she is a huge button fan and creates with buttons too.

Here are some other buttons I made:

This set of 3 in red of which one has a little cat is available from the Europe for Charity shop on Etsy, 

currently supporting the people of Pakistan.

EST Challenge

What a surprise (I've been computer-less since last Sunday cause I was off for a creative week in France, no internet, hardly a working cell phone, so no news what so ever) to find I won last weeks EST challenge. So many thanks to Anastasia from L'Accent Nou and sorry for the delay. But here we go, I guess it will be fine to close this challenge the 20th of September (say 20h Belgium time)  instead of the 13th, else there will be very little time to create.

I'd like to challenge you to make something in spired by (your) heritage. Why heritage, well I just spend a week in 16th century house, lots of heritage there and I like history and folklore (hence my jewellery inspired by folklore from the region where I was born and bred), but not in a dusty, rusty kind of way, but as part of today and the future. Please send your entries to annemiek [at] twotrees [dot] be or via an etsy convo.

See the entries here: http://twotreesbelgium.blogspot.com/2010/09/entries-for-est-challenge.html

Happy Stats

Here are my happy stats for the past week:

• packing for a creative week in France
• visting Mix-Art and found they sold more of my creations
• making more story bowls
• firing 2 kilns
• packing for ceramic market in Lommel
• enjoyed the good weather

Picture from last year in Le Veauthibault

Sweet Saturday

For this Sweet Saturday I made for you a recipe with rhubarb. This comes from a book written by Anouck and Joris, who run the lovely B&B 'la maison blanche aux volets bleus' in Bretagne, France. They give cookery courses too, just check out their site to know more.

Rhubarb Pie/Cake - Tarte au Rhubarbe

• 125 gr soft butter
• 125 gr sugar
• 3 eggs, split in whites and yolks
• 125 gr self-raising flour (or plain flour + 2 teaspoons of baking powder)
• 250 gr of rhubarb or 2 stalks
• 10 gr coarse sugar

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Mix the soft butter/molten butter and the sugar, add the egg yolks and flour. 

beat the egg whites until white peaks form and spoon this carefully through the mix. Butter a baking tin with a diameter of about 25cm, I dust it than with flour so the cake will come loose even easier.

Put the mix in the tin.

Cut the rhubarb into thin slices and spread these over the mix. Sprinkle the coarse sugar over the rhubarb.

bake for 30-35 minutes in a 180°C oven.

Enjoy - Bon Apetit!

My Creative Space

As you might know I'm leaving this Sunday for a creative week in France. What will I be doing there??? Well I'll take wood, silver, silver clay, porcelain and dried clay. I'll will mostly concentrate on the coming X-mas season. On the handmade-Europe blog you could have a sneek-peek at what to expect from European sellers this autumn/winter. If you popped over you saw that it also featured my porcelain-star garlands, so I'll be making lots of stars. I will make long, short and even longer garlands with the stars and single stars too. Besides the garlands I have another nice cosy wintery item in mind with stars. When I'm fed up making stars I'll turn to silver, silver clay and wood, to work on some new jewellery designs I have in mind. The dried clay I'll use to make my own paperclay and maybe I'll use it there or I'll just use it later back home. From last year I know that time just flies even if we work all day and some evenings too. But it good fun too and the landlord looks very well after us, cooking lovely lunches, dinners and breakfast with fresh croissants...............hhhmmmmm

Anyway I'm preparing 2 large boxes filled with all above and the according tools. Why am I packing 3 days beforehand, well we have to deliver them to the person whom drives the van beforehand. Besides packing I'm also finishing some last little ceramic items to go in the kiln tonight. As I will not be firing or glazing in France I can do some glazing tomorrow and fire it all on Friday night.

Have a creative day!!

My Creative Space

Currently I'm making more bowls for the fair on the 12th of September in Lommel. As you may know a lot of my bowls feature animals. Sometimes I need to see some pictures just to get the shape and porportions right in my head. I google the animal in question and look through the pictures.

I already made a bowl with a standing bear today and wanted to make another one in a different position. Browsing I came across this story and I just have to make a bowl with bear and a cat now.  If it survives the firings you can come and see it at the fair in Lommel.