Dare to be different and learn to be lonely

Right after I got back home from visiting ArtZuid in Amsterdam back in September, I did a quick Instragram post with ten pics, meant to be an appetizer for a long picspam follow up on LiveJournal & DreamWidth a couple days later. But then work took over my life for a bit and the final preparations for the SPN_ReverseBang ate up a lot of time too and then I went to London and then I went to Amsterdam for another exhibition and this is the first weekend in a long time where I had nothing planned, so I'm finally getting around to a sorting out my photos!

ArtZuid is an outdoor art exhibition in the South of Amsterdam that's organized every two years, with pieces from sculptors all around the world. For this year's edition I got on a train with my mom and we hired public transport bicycles at the Amsterdam South station from where brotherdearest H. guided us around. I think we only missed 4 or 5 sculptures from the total of about 90! I didn't get good photos of all of them, and some of them had to be captured from more angles; this picspam contains 87 photos in total;) Enjoy!

( Let's get on our bicycles and go! )

J.

I thought for sure I had shared photos of previous years ArtZuid, but the only one I could find was from 2013!

Last Saturday I went to Amsterdam to visit brotherdearest and to do some bookshopping. I had planned this before I was aware it was the day of the Canal Parade of the GayPride week. I'm not a fan of big crowds, so I spent most of my day in the not so busy part of town with my brother, exploring the new subway (plus the archeological finds that were dug up) and visiting the This Is Holland experience across the river. But before all that, I did snap a few photos of the great vibe in the city centre and along the canal:)
Here's my favorite photo of the day.



( More Amsterdam above and below the surface! )
The End.

J.

Last weekend I traveled to Amsterdam for two days of fangirling with sillie82 and bflyw (who flew in from Norway with her daughter A.). On Sunday evening I took the train to Schiphol airport to pick up B. & A. and accompany them to their hotel. I spent the night at my brother's.
On Monday S. joined us and we hung out in the hotelroom to chat and watch Supernatural before strolling through town until it was time for the Station Breaks concert (Check out bflyw's glorious photos!).
On Tuesday we watched some more Supernatural together and explored Amsterdam a bit more. I had a great time:) Here are some photos of our walks...

( Day 1: Rembrandt and Concert )

( Day 2: Chocolate and Canals )

Speaking of fangirl meet ups: I'll be in London at the end of March. If you're in the neighborhood for tea, let me know!

J.

One of the reasons I'm clinging to my LiveJournal is that I have saved over 6000 photos in my scrapbook. (6320 to be exact;) It took me years to figure out how to present my photos in a style that works for me and I'm quite content with the way I now make picspams. So here I am and here I'll stay;)
When I went to Amsterdam for the Women's March last weekend, I also spent some time wandering around town with brotherdearest afterwards. Here are some of the pretty sights we saw on our stroll.

( Amsterdam by day )

I love Amsterdam.

J.

After brotherdearest, my mom, her boyfriend and I finished our Illuminade Walk, I convinced them we also had to do the Boat Route with an additional 20 pieces of light art. *grins* The Theme of the waterpart of the Light Festival is A View On Amsterdam and all the light art is either in, on, or next to the canal called the Herengracht which goes all around the city center. There are a couple of installations in the Oosterdok harbour as well, so the only way to see them all is to take a boat tour. \o/

TEASER:

First piece is Wolfert's Dog by Tatiana Titova, inspired by an 8th century story I had never heard of, about a Norwegian prince who was saved by the dog of a Frysian fisherman after a shipwreck. When they got caught in another storm, the prince pledged to build a city on the first place the dog would lay down. They ended up on the shore of the Amstel with the dog sleeping peacefully under a tree next to them. [Geert Mak - A Brief Life of the City]

( Let's get on the boat for more! )

The special Water Color boat tours run until January 22nd, check out the official Light Festival website for more information. Also for the next edition:)

If you missed the previous two Amsterdam picspams, click here for photos of the Illuminade walk and here for the Ice Sculpture Festival.

Want more? Last year I posted a couple of photos of the 2015-2016 Light Festival in my LiveJournal and in my pictureblog.

J.

After my Birthday I had a day off on which I once again didn't finish my Holiday cards... Then I worked for two and half days before I finally managed to do some festive arts & crafts on Friday afternoon, pfew. I delivered the cards to the Post Office on Saturday December 31st on my way to my mom, where I spent New Year's Eve. Some photos of our sparkles here.
A Making Of of the cards will follow once I know they have arrived. (I already heard they made it to the UK and Germany, yay!)

To start the New Year, I had taken another day off work; on Monday January 2nd I went to Amsterdam to hang out with brotherdearest. We went to the IceSculpture festival, this year's theme was Music Inspires.
( Here are some photos of the awesome sculptures )
IT WAS SO COLD IN THERE! So afterwards we warmed up with hot chocolate and warm Apfelstrüdel with custard.
Then we went to Central Station to rent a bike for me and we cycled to brotherdearest house to chill and do some groceries before going back to the Station to meet up with Mom and her boyfriend J. who joined us for the Lightfestival Illuminade walk at nighttime. More about that later:)

J.

If you rather check out my artwork than my travelposts, I posted some papercutting for the quicky_bang yesterday: Mission Accomplished.

If you've seen that already or prefer strolling through Amsterdam with me and amberdreams and having lunch with her and sillie82, here are some photos of our fangirl meet up two weeks ago:)

( Fangirls and Rembrandt in 3D )

I had a lovely time, ladies! (Too short!)

(I'm catching up on life and LiveJournal, I'm planning to finally answer comments AND post another picspam of my recent adventures later this week.;)

Oh my goodness *sniffs self*. I discovered an old bottle of soap in my bathroom and it IS SO DELICIOUS! The scent gives me all kinds of feelings; you know, the kind you get after reading a really good fic? Bliss. (I'm also testing a set of samples from Deep Midnight perfumes, will post about that later:)
Speaking of good fic: I grabbed myself one in the quicky_bang to illustrate! If you are an artist or know artists looking for inspiration, head on over for all sorts of awesome stories to make art for (so many visuals to choose from!)

Before I'll continue arting, I have a couple of old photos from my latest trip to Amsterdam to share and also this:



My screensaver is a slideshow of my J3 pic-archive and when these two showed up after each other, I just had to combine them for obvious reasons *chinhands* (Credits: JDM - Sam Comen 2010 for Maxim, I could not find an original source or date for young Jensen in his Superman shirt)

( Anyway, here are photos from my bicycle and Amsterdam )
J.

Hahaha, I checked my most recent posts and noticed it was quite a dose of Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Like I have no life. *blinks* But seriously: my current daily life is not that interesting. I wake up, force myself to get dressed, make sure I have breakfast and try to make it through the day with a maximum of job hunting and a minimum of guilt.
Now that I finally seem to have beaten the barking cough, I am able to leave the house again, at least once a day. Often it's as simple as doing groceries or bringing empty jars and bottles to the glass reclycling area, but last Friday I even spent a whole afternoon in Amsterdam, so now I can finally offer you a JDM-less picspam for a change *grins*

( Strolling through town and picking the Nightwatch's nose... )

When I cycled home from the trainstation, I passed by this tree. I thought I had imagined things so I got off my bike and walked back to take photos. (First one is taken while a car drove by; the orbs are raindrops. Close up with flash)


Spooky, yes? I like it:)

J.

Hey, did you see I finally updated my WIP-artposts? You can catch a glimp of my fiddling here. There will be more on that tomorrow. Today I'm sharing 18 photos of my daytrip to Amsterdam. I went there last Saturday for a bit of speedshopping and to go see The Hungergames: Mockingjay, part 1 with my brother. In between I walked around town and in the evening we visited the wintermarket and saw bits of the Amsterdam Lightfestival.

( Want to come with us and see the Christmas Moose? )
Which reminds me of another photoset I made of the Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas) parade in The Hague three weeks ago. If you're interested in Dutch folklore, check it out in my pictureblog:)

Hope you liked this walk!

J.