New U.S. Polaroids

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 I took my Harry Potter Polaroid camera (common known as a Fujifilm Instax 210) with me during our trip through Utah, Nevada and Arizona last April. America is such a photogenic country and even more when you look to it through a Polaroid camera lense! I love the pictures I took so much, that the ones I took home seem now a bit too plain to me, actually.

So here we go, a whole new batch of snapshots (in no particular range)!

 A (very) old mobile home on Grand Canyon Camper Village. (The blob on the left is a big black dog on a very long leash.)
 A handpainted sign in Golden Gate park, our last day in San Francisco. It was a beautiful bright day, with perfect light to shoot Polaroids with (I learned that light is very, very important when it comes to taking pictures with a plain camera like this Polaroid).
Another sign warning for crossing Prairie Dogs in Bryce Canyon National Park. And yes, that’s snow on the sides of the road! The weather was bright but so cold (and I kept refusing to put on any other shoes than my flipflops (flipflops give me that extra holiday feeling), so you can imagine how cold my feet were that day :-)
It’s sometimes hard to be stubborn *LOL*

(I am changing the lay-out of my blog by the way, so please don’t pay too mutch attention to the fact that it looks a bit silly at the moment…working on it!)

Swans, greyhounds and Lisa

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Last Sunday I visited the Swanmarket at the ROTABS Stylecenter in Rotterdam.
And I almost got home with one picture of some flowers and a bunch of greyhounds. (Because, I’m crazy of greyhounds. In fact, if I would ever get a dog it would be a pug or a greyhound and the greyhound would be called Frank…in case you’d wonder.)

But shooting pictures of things that don’t have anything to do with that lifestylemarket wasn’t what I came to Rotterdam for. I had to drop off some little deer I made for Lisa Manuels’ brand new shop Elle Aime, which opened it’s doors also right that day. In Dutch we call that combining the practical with the enjoyable (I risk sounding very silly when trying to translate Dutch sayings to English, but I still can’t find a good English sayings dictionary on the internet, so I’ll have to settle for sounding silly).

(Lisa in her shop, when it was finally a bit less crowded.
Don’t you just love those Formica candy coloured chairs?)

Lisa selected the most beautiful handmade goodies for her shop and displays them so simple and yet so beautifully, I’m very proud my little deer will be for sale there. So if you’re in the neighbourhood, be sure to pay her a visit (and don’t forget, like me, to buy a parking ticket).
For more pictures of the shop, the collection (and Lisa’s own work!), check out her Elle Aime blog: http://www.shopelleaime.blogspot.com/


The loot of the day: a screenprinted scarf, some Jessica Nielsen cards and (at last!) a handmade brooch by sweet Erica of MikoDesign…
and a parking ticket (so I even made a car-park attendant’s day…one big sarcastic hurrah!)

My Harry Potter Polaroid Camera

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Aaw, my sweet poor Polaroid camera. After our Bumpy Start, he really thought we were fine. But then I took him for a 12 hour trip to the other side of the world in the chilly cargo hold of a plane, which already made him a bit grumpy.

And then I took him to the Grand Canyon. It was a wonderful sunny day, I shot one picture with him and then I thought: I think it would be a good thing if I’d attach that strap-thingy to him, so I can hang him around my neck. Thing is, I’m not very good with attaching strap-thingies to camera’s (or attaching whatever one thing to another, I have the locomotion of a turtle, to be honest). Next, I took a stroll along the rim of the Grand Canyon with what I thought a firmly hanging Polaroid camera around my neck…which turned out to be a bit of an illusion. So after shooting one picture with my Polaroid, the not-so-very-firmly-attached-strap let loose and made the camera meet up close and personal with the canyon rim down below.

Woopsadaisy.

I guess at that moment the camera was really fed up with me. He refused to give one single sign of life and stubbornly kept displaying this giant ‘E’ one his display.
*Sigh* Stupid turtle skilled girl!

Luckily I married a guy that liked to dismantle and assemble electronic devices when he was a little boy (and still does). So that damaged, not working camera was just another nice electronic challenge for him. (“No worries dear, I’ll fix that Polaroid camera for you and could you please stop crying about it now?”) He fixed it of course. The little plastic cap that houses the batteries broke off though, so that is hold together now with a giant piece of white tape, the kind you normally use for bandages, or in Harry Potter’s case, to fix your glasses with.

For those who read this blog for a while now know I love imperfect things. So the large Harry Potter tape on the side of my Polaroid camera makes me love him even more. And I love the yellowish, dreamy pictures I shot with him. But I wouldn’t be surprised if one day my camera has left to find someone who takes better care of him. Someone who likes things to be perfect and who has the locomotion of a cat.

Above: The majestic Grand Canyon made us fall into silence.
Middle: I love these kind of old-school signs.
Below: Llama’s and trailers in Escalante, near Bryce National Park.

There and back again

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We are back from our big road trip through Utah, U.S. We visited about every National Park that’s there to visit, we couldn’t get enough of it.

Made so many pictures, it’s insane.

For old times sake, we spent the last couple of days in San Francisco, a city you should visit at least once in your lifetime. It’s laid back, it’s beautiful…what can I say, I feel almost home there (and it takes a lot for a city to make me feel home)!

Now my head is filled with memories of the wonderful red landscape. Of the soft-colored houses in SF…the sweet Hummingbird we saw in the Golden Gate Park (so closeby, so tiny and so precious I could cry)….I could go on forever.

I will be starting up the shop and everything else again in the upcoming weeks.
But first I need to get my head around this major jetlag that I have. I feel like sleeping at the most odd moments of the day, like now for example :-D

It’s good to be back though! You can imagine how happy we were to be united with dear little Molly, our family and friends, our home. There’s always so much to go back home for.
I made some cool Polariods too, can’t wait to show you those!

Above: Monument Valley, after a sandstorm (red sand is still coming from my ears and nose ;-))
Below, left: the last day say we saw this Hummingbird sunbathing in Golden Gate Park.
Below right: a super-retro 7-Up neon-sign in San Francisco

Our Sunny Dutch home on Apartment Therapy

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…no wonder Molly doesn’t want to leave the house.
According to Apartment Therapy, it’s already very sunny inside.

A warm welcome for those who are new here!

(The former owners painted the house in typical Dutch dark brown 80s colours, so painting the outside timberwork is a major project that needs to be executed this Spring. We’re planning to turn the dark brown into grey or dark blue combined with bright white.)
I must really be off to bed now, must be my bright happy self tomorrow, it’s our anniversary…!