swallow summer souvenir

My weekend: Met my friend Anneli in Amsterdam (who's my Swedish distributor and owner of Cosas). We talked, walked, laughed, drank and had dinner at night. It was good to be 'out', especially with Anneli!

Yesterday Annemieke, Ellen and I went to the promising 2nd part of the Paper Biennale in Rijswijk. I went to part one in the Coda museum some time ago and it was a stunning little paper exhibition. Yesterday it was the last day of the Biennale, therefore the Rijswijk museum even had a Paper Market. Sorry to say: it was a deception. Maybe I am a spoiled brat concerning paper, but I didn't feel the inspiration that I felt in the Coda museum. And the market: it was boring, dusty. They could have attract so many nice young paper crafters in Holland! Nevertheless we had great fun just spending the day together. And that counts.


Inspiration? I find it in small things, like the new swallow bracelet by my dutch friend Björke. She gave it to me together with some sweet Swedish souvenirs (she bought piles of presents at Lagerhaus) that I hope to take pictures of some other time....

car booth treasures

Friend Linda and me went to a car booth sale early this morning. The sale was held on a field between gardens and greenhouses, next to the river Amstel. Sunshine, nice people and lovely little treasures, what a good way to start your Sunday!

flowers in da house

I love the last flowers of the season...

functional vintage

Last week I came back from the 2nd hand store with some of the usual small bowls and retro mini vases and even an original Japanese kokeshi doll...but also with something Functional.
It's a ceramic pull string container! Even the men in my house - who prefer functional above beautiful - liked it.

toddler art

Inspired by the words of Picasso Ingrid from ING-THINGS mentioned in her weekend post: "Every child is an artist, the problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up" I suddenly looked at the 'toddler art' collection of my two sons in a different way. They are 11 and 12 years old now, hope they will still make dangerous dragons (and great mice and cows) like this in ten years!

there was light...

And now for some uplifting news: Saw these great lamps in a magazine the other day. Designer is award winning Benjamin Hubert. Of all his designs I like his lighting the best: basic beauty, down-to-earth materials and a little hint of the seventies.

powder warning for those using a laser printer

My 10 months old huge colour laser printer was out of order already for some weeks. Quite annoying since I am rather dependent on my hardware as a designer.

A big white stripe on the right side of the page, loose powder everywhere.
After days of phoning with Epson, checking, cleaning and trying to print, Epson asked me whether I had used clone (fake, which means non-Epson) toner cartridges.
As a matter of fact: I did! It saves like 30% compared to the real Epson ones and everyone seems to be totally happy with the quality. I allways thought manufacturers only tried to 'threaten' us with those stories about bad quality, in order to earn even more money than they already do. Well, now I know they don't!

I checked the cartridges and yes.... the fake ones were all somehow broken and leaking toner all over the place, the Epson ones were ok.
And now I feel stupid (and dutch!): tried to save money buying the clones and I completely ruined my beautiful printer. The toner itself is great, it 's the cartridges that seem to be of inferior quality.
So please learn from my mistake: don't buy fake-toner cartridges for your laser printer!