Pretty paper

As promised, my new notebooks! I kept them pretty simple because the paper is already pretty enough in itself :) I'd maybe just add a cut-out name to make it more personal.

The one with the penguins makes me smile every time I look at it.
I really love penguins :) Ooh, maybe I'll make one with a cut-out "Penguins are cool"! I'd buy that ;)

Notebooks, Books and Cupcakes

This will be just a little update aboute the things I've been up to lately! My lessons will start in a week, so I'm spending the free time I have now making notebooks and doing fun stuff with my boyfriend.

I made a pile of new notbooks a few days ago. I bought some more colours of linnen to experiment with and a lot of pretty patterned paper! I'll show off the final results tomorrow :)

Also, my books for school arrived... These packages looked pretty ominous to me...

Look at those two enormous English literature books! And they made the paper so thin they managed to cram three thousand pages in one book...

The one on the top has already found it's place to my nightstand though :)

Yesterday was the last time my boyfriend and I were able to spend a whole day together for a while, so we decided to have an elf themed day. We wore green clothes, though about going outside (we would have if it wasn't only 13 degrees...), watched Lord of the Rings and made pretty cupcakes :) We both had no experience with marzipan whatsoever, so I'm pretty satisfied with how they turned out! Even though we got bored with it and just put some leftover leaves on two of them :P

The weather hasn't really gotten any better lately... It almost feels like winter! Most of the time it just looks like this:

I catch myself dreaming about long, wool gloves and hot tea with applepie every time I go out... I hope the weather is better where you live!

At the park + Blogging for Confidence

The weather was very dreary today, so I'll just share some pictures of a wonderful sunny day spent with my boyfriend in the park. And not think about the enormous amount of rain that followed in the evening...

An upside of the massive amounts of rain we had here, is that the grass is greener then ever! And I'll have to do a post about the humongous amount of apples that are growing on our previously scrawny appletree!

Before we eat all the apples that is... :)

 You might notice that the grass in the foreground of this picture looks a bit weird. That's because it's a picnic blanket :)

I wanted to give it as a present for this sweet boy's birthday last year, but I gave it to him months later, because I coudn't stop adding flowers and bunnies to it :P 

I also decided it was time to do a Blogging for Confidence post. Meredith, of one sheepish girl started this series a while back and since then she has been knitting in public, wore bright red lipstick and dyed her hair blue!

So... I'm wearing shorts.

It was still pretty cold though, so I went easy on myself and wore tights under them. I'm so glad I did! I felt self-conscious enough already...

I put above mentioned sweet boy in charge of the picture making, which resulted in pictures where I either look very weird...

...or that are blurry....

And I'll spare you the dozen slighty inappropriate zoomed in pictures he made...

I'm glad a went through with wearing shorts though and that I have the evidence to prove it ;)
Maybe I'll tackle some more confidence issues soon! Knitting in public also makes me feel kind of nervous just thinking about it...

Papercut notebooks

 My classes are starting in two weeks, so I really needed a diary! I bought a plain looking one and made my own cover :)

As you can see I didn't really think about letters being mirror imaged when you cut from the other side, but I decided not to dwell on such trivialities...

I really got in the spirit of papercutting, so I made these two:

The bunny chase...

...and the dreamy fox.

My creditcard should be arriving soon and then I'll just have to make some better pictures and I'll be ready to open up my Etsy shop!
I also gave my friend from school her notebook and she told me that her friend really liked the notebook I made for her and used it as a travel journal on her trip to Japan! I'm somehow really excited that something I made went to Japan :)

A BearBag!

Me and my mother finished another bag today!

  It's a polar bear :)

And my grumpy cat was being nice to me!

 She's actually quite nice :)

By the way, Oh Land is coming back to Amsterdam! I'm already so excited! I hope she still wants to buy one of my bags :)

The pictures: Part 2

Here they are! The long awaited second part of my holiday pictures! You can find the first part here! Our next stop was the most beautiful city in the world: Venice! I have to live there someday... The narrow streets, the pretty bridges, the charmingly dilapidated houses, the gondolas... I get all nostalgic when I think back :)

We took the boat from the airport straight to the San Marco square. This is the doge's palace...

...and the San Marco Basilica.

The square was flooded and the water reflected the lights from the buildings while the orchestra under the canopy played romantic music... Venice by night is so magical...

Venice by day isn't too bad either though :)

We visited the San Marco in all it's glory...

...and went inside the Doge's Palace. (no pictures allowed though :( )

You know you're in Venice when you see the winged lions :)

When we had already booked our stay in Venice, I found out we were there with the Festa del Redentore, a feast to celebrate the end of the plague in 1576. There were so many people!

The best part of the celebrations was the fireworks. They went on for almost an hour! They were quite fond of the green/white/red combination :)

 The next day, we went to visit two of the islands: Murano and Burano.

Murano feels more like a village. The island is well known for the glass they make there. In 1291, all the glassmakers in Venice were moved to Murano due to the risk of fires. Now, almost half of the houses there are glass-shops and I bought a really pretty and really tiny glass swan :)

They also had this really cool glass sculpures...

...with a cute little owl :)

 The first thing we saw on Burano was this cute little restaurant with handmade signs :)

It seems to be a rule on Burano that no two houses can have the same colour. I only saw two white ones! All the colours make everything feel so happy :)

We sat here for a while to recover from the colourshock and look out over the lagoon...

 After a while we had to go back to the boat to Venice  to find some food, but not after a very long detour across the whole island :)

You can't really get anywhere on the island with a car, so the ambulance has to be a boat! You can also see the police (carabinieri) station  in the back.

We also met this sweet little cat!

He yawned every time I tickled him on a particular spot on his chin :)

And he was very very cuddly and sweet :)

 This tower was leaning so bad...

...it needed a strong guy to push it back straight! Of course he only needs one hand ;)

This little extension looked so dreamy in the sky! I would have loved to just sit there for a while...

I felt really sad our last day in Venice had come so soon... To ease the pain we took a traghetto (a gondola that takes you from one side of the Canal Grande to the other) which costs one euro if you look cute and smile a lot and two euros if you don't :P

We said our last goodbyes to the winged lion...

...and to the pigeons on the pink lanterns...

 ...and off we went...

Here's just one more picture of my sweetest guy :)

And a gif of me eating a cookie :) I didn't steal his, we had two ;) Also: I crumble a lot and I get distracted very easily...

Reminiscing makes me feel nostalgic... But I'm working on a new bag design which I'm very excited about! I'll keep you posted :)