Welcome Back To The Angry Girls Club

So... I sold out the previous run of my Angry Girls Club patches in a single day. It was pretty amazing, and quite obvious that there was a demand! The Patch Club only does very limited editions of their collabs, so I looked around for a place to work with so I could get a bigger order in. I found an embroidery workshop in the Netherlands who were lovely to work with, and they made a new version of the patch, which is available now!

The new version is a tiny bit larger and a bit more detailed than the previous one, due to the fact that it's been produced by a bigger workshop with bigger embroidery machines! I love both versions, it's still super cool to see one of my drawings in this form.

I put one on my green denim jacket, and can't wait to wear it out once the winter is over!

Quite a few of these have already been sold and shipped, but I do have plenty available this time. If you'd like one you can get it here!

Welcome To The Angry Girls Club

Quite a while ago, I made a sticker:

I made this because I felt in this day and age girls and women have their reasons to be angry, and I was proven right when this sticker resonated with a lot of people! I've had requests to make this into a patch since the beginning, and it finally happened!

I got together with the lovely ladies from The Patch Club, a small patch embroidery business here in Antwerp. They produced a very limited run of my design, and it's now available on my Etsy!

I'm so stoked about this. It's a very small edition (I have four available at the time of writing) but I'm hoping to be able to produce these in a larger quantity in the near future!

Thank you again to Kim and Sharon of The Patch Club for making this possible, definitely go check out their designs as well!

The Worst Fortune Teller

I seem to have taken a bit of a blogging break! It's been a bit crazy around here, a lot of things were made but not really documented. The biggest thing I made the past few weeks was a project for a drawing festival called Tekenpudding, organized by my amazing friend Charlotte Dumortier. It's a sort of drawing funfair with, apart from the usual talks and zine fair a bunch of attractions. They had an open call for booth ideas so me and my Veranda buddies got together, submitted an idea and then heard we had the all clear to build it!

We wanted to build our own version of the automated fortune telling booths we'd encountered on our US roadtrip last September (Zoltar being the most common one, although we did find an Elvis or two), with a little twist: the fortune teller would only predict bad news. However, our skills are a bit limited when it comes to building robotic wizards. Our solution: make a costume and get into the booth ourselves. Now we only had to build a booth. Easy, right?

Well, it did work out! We ended up having a pretty tight deadline when it turned out that two of the three people involved were a bit too busy to get started already, so I tried to prepare as much as possible by making a costume and sourcing fabric for the decorations. I went through some fabric shops in my area and returned with a bunch of stretch velvet, some golden poly taffeta and a load of poly brocades. I then tried to make a wizard's costume (or at least, the visible top half) in a day and a half.

I don't really have clearer pictures than this, but it was... Quick and dirty! Three different people had to fit into this, so I traced one of Dimitri's sweatshirts (since he was the biggest) to get a basic shape to start from. The under layer is a plain t-shirt with very wide sleeves, with a little robe/jacket on top of it. I cut the collar of the jacket on a single layer to save on fabric and finished the edges with bias tape made from golden taffeta. I also used the same taffeta to add a little decoration to the sleeves and finish the sleeve hems. Sewing this very non-giving taffeta to slinky stretch velvet was an adventure, but it worked!

I ended up attaching the jacket thing to the shirt at the shoulder seams and sewed it together in the front, covering that with two decorative buttons. This turned out to be a good idea because now we wan just pull the costume on over our head without having to pay attention to things laying right! Finally, I made the hat by ironing a heavy interfacing to two cone-shaped pieces of brocade, stitching them together and turning. The edge is finished with more bias tape to tie it together. The hat is a little big (there was wig talk at first) but I might have worn it to a bar afterwards. A cheap costume beard finished the whole look!

With this sorted out, we tackled the actual booth. I think it was a good idea to make the costume first so we could choose our paint colours around that, since it's much easier to source a paint colour than a specific fabric! We sourced a few wooden beams and leftover pieces of plywood, and I made a little sketch of how things could go together. It had to be somewhat sturdy, not too precise, and not too had to take apart and put together again (since we would have to transport it in pieces). We ended with a wooden frame that was the same width all around, with all the wooden crossbeams postitioned so they would be covered with panels or fabric. The back part is open for easy access, and there's a little table at the front for props, cards and dramatic leaning.

The biggest job was painting. We primed everything and then I spent a couple hours putting down the base colours (plain old acrylic paint). After this we went through all our books with old etchings, tarot cards and other magical things and sketched out a bunch of things for inspiration! Me, Hélène and Dimitri then all got thogether and covered all the panels with drawings in gold paint marker. And I mean covered:

We were very happy with things at this point, and relieved it worked out! Our idea was that people would insert a coin into a slot at the front of the booth, and then get a little spoken prediction and a printed card with an illustration and some more wisdom, most of it bad news. At first we were going to have it printed somewhere, but then Hélène got all next level and decided to screenprint the cards. I designed a little tiled pattern with little things we'd drawn (recycling a fabric design I'd made before) and each of us made two small illustrations for the front. We then wrote a few short words of wisdom/horoscope type predictions and all this made for some really cool looking cards to hand out!

We were at the festival all day and had such a blast! People really wanted to hear how their lives would go wrong, and I actually did a few scarily accurate predictions. This is something I definitely want to do more of, all we need is an occasion!

We had a lot of fun working together to make this, especially because it wouldn't have been possible without a few other amazing people. All the love to Heziz for helping us source some materials, and to Viktor for helping out with the heavy machinery and tolerating us in his workspace! And of course, the entire Tekenpudding team for letting us do this!

The Lady, The Hare And The Hawk

More drawing!

A while ago my friend Dennis told me about a group exhibition he was putting together. The theme was 'Coupe' (cut) and of course, my papercutting work would fit right in... I had plenty of time but ended up doing most of the work at the last minute, as usual!

The hardest part was that almost everything I make is cut out, so anything would fit the theme, really. I toyed with a few different ideas about surgeries and anatomical illustrations, but in the end I went back to things I like: animals, ladies and skulls.

These are among the largest papercut pieces I've ever made! They are around 70 by 50 cm, which allowed me to get in a lot of detail, but also made things a bit more unwieldy to work with. If I make pieces like this (where the original is presented and not an edited scan or print) I'll draw a mirrored version of the image on the back of the paper to use as a guide for cutting. This also makes things a bit more complex at times, especially with text! (If something has to be edited anyway I don't bother with this, just draw it the way I want it and mirror everything in photoshop)

The opening of the show is on April 11th at E²/Sterput in Brussels! I'll be there in the evening, so come say hello if you're around. There's a lot of cool stuff being made by others as well, and I'm looking forward to seeing it! You can find some more information here.

This Is Where I Draw The Line

I've been drawing a lot lately. If you already follow me on Instagram you might have seen some of these pop up. I'm working on a big project that I'm very excited about (you can still send me stories! I'm working on very rough storyboards so it will be a while before I can actually show anything interesting, but stuff is being done!). But there are some other things I've been doing/working on that got me inspired! One of them is the weekly Zine Club at Muntpunt in Brussels, where my friend Gabri (and guests) shares his wisdom. Every workshop has a theme but it feels very free and low pressure, and allows me to just make stuff for fun. A few weeks ago me and Hélène collaborated on a zine about an Emily Dickinson poem, and we were surprised by how much we liked the result!

Tomorrow is the last workshop, but I hope we can keep this vibe going somehow. It's very inspiring!

Hélène and I did recently discover that we seem to work well together, and had an idea for a series of drawings about disappointing mythical creatures. This is another low pressure thing to work on when we have the time, and it makes me laugh. Here are the two I've made so far, the first one is a mermaid, but both her halves are fish. The second one is a unicorn with two horns. There's a vampire who just feels more comfortable in his bat form in the pipeline.

I've also done some more serious work when Thijs invited me to come draw for one of the Relaas podcast evenings. It's a monthly event where people come tell a story about something that happened to them, and illustrators make illustrations to go with these stories. I love this kind of stuff, and had some fun making these! One story was about a girl who got hot tea spilled on her legs at a bar and suffered some serious burns, the other was about an improvised arm wrestling championship in Kyrgystan.

Right now I'm working on a few larger pieces for a group exhibition I'm in, keep an eye out for those!

Folktaleweek

If you follow me on instagram you've probably already seen these! My friend Laure organized  a drawing challenge along with a bunch of other illustrators, and this one was right up my alley! The challenge was to make seven folktale inspired illustrations, based on a list of prompts. I decided to base my drawings more on local folklore, and had a blast researching tales of witchcraft and ghosts!

Day 1: Forest

I decided to start the challenge with a pretty general subject. This is how most of these tales start: with a traveller walking home through the forest at night. Anything can happen!

Day 2: Magic

I looked into stories told by people who had been bewitched or knew about others who had been victims of witchcraft. Most of the effects seemed to be illness or other types of misfortune, but a few unlucky people got their feet turned backwards.

People would describe being touched by an 'Evil Hand' before suffering the effects of witchcraft. Or maybe they just got sick.

Day 3: Witch

A lot of the stories about people seeing witches are from men walking around at night who then stumble upon a bunch of witches dancing naked somewhere. Sounds like one hell of a party.

Day 4: Ghost

I started this drawing in my usual papercutting style but it looked too much like a shampoo commercial and I didn't have time to start over, so I worked on my sketch a little longer. These are Witte Wieven, the ghosts of witches or fairies who haunt burial places and lure people into swamps. They take the shape of women dressed in white or just plain wisps of fog.

Day 5: Insect

I don't know what the deal is with luring people into swamps, but a lot of creatures seem to enjoy it. This is a bit of a stretch theme-wise but one possible explanation for Dwaallichten (will-o'-the-wisps) are fireflies. So my drawing of a peasant woman sinking into a swamp is still sort of insect themed in a way.

(I just wanted to draw someone in a swamp, really)

Day 6: Mirror

A huge part of being bewitched was finding out who bewitched you, and there are loads of stories about that. Someone got sick, and someone else told him or her to go see someone who 'knows things' and uses magic to show them the face of the bad witch in a mirror. Fixing witchcraft with more witchcraft!

Day 7: Animal

I had something else planned for the last prompt, but then had to say goodbye to Jakkepoes, so I decided to honor him in a way and draw him as a witches' familiar. He would rock that hat.

So these are my drawings! I'm happy with some of them and would be happy with some others after a bit more work. I had planned to prepare this challenge but other things got in the way and I ended up making every drawing the night before. I hope it comes around again next year, because this was nice!

A Sketchy Post

I kind of disappeared lately, for various reasons! I was working on a few different things I either couldn't show you or aren't finished yet, and it was way too hot to do anything apart from the things I absolutely had to do! There's a sundress waiting to be photographed, but in the meantime I'll show you some of the recent scribbles from my sketchbook. If you follow me on Instagram you might have already seen some (most) of these, I apologise for what is essentially a very lazy blog post!

This was a sort of diary sketch from something that happened in London the last time I was there. We were hanging out in a park on a Monday morning, enjoying the sunshine, slowly waking up and watching all the other accomplished people jog and do yoga. This one shirtless young man seemed to be doing really well with his sun salutations when a very drunk shirtless man walked over and tried to join him. It looked really funny from a distance, but the poor guy seemed so confused!

I released a new postcard a while ago (get it here) and have been thinking about the next one. It's going to be an apology card and it will probably involve bird poop.

When I visited my parents a few weeks ago my mother gave me an old book about the space race and moon landing that I loved as a kid, and I spent an afternoon scribbling astronauts for shits & giggles. It's very different from what I usually draw and I really need to learn how to draw smooth shiny things (fur is easy guys!) but it was a lot of fun. I like tiny details (sometimes).

There has also been some fabric printing lately, and of course I needed stamps for that! These were supposed to go onto the summer dress I recently made but the print did not show up well on the fabric so I used a black sweatshirt jersey instead. This means you'll have to wait a while before it will make an appearance, because black sweatshirts are really low on my list of priorities now.

And lastly I've been drawing these little guys because they were in my head and made me smile. Not sure what will happen with them!

The Lengths I Go To For A Pun

Some time ago, I tried to find fabric with a hand print. As in, not necessarily hand printed, but with actual hands printed on it. TRY FINDING THAT. So in the end I decided to just do it myself, and go through a great deal of effort to be able to point at my shirt and say 'It's hand printed. Get it? Heh.'

It was also below freezing the day we took these pictures so it's a miracle not all of them look like this:

First things first: the fabric! I picked up this lightweight grey denim in Paris with Hanne last August (don't go to Paris in August btw, everything is closed). In hindsight it was maybe a smidge too heavy for a shirt, but this does make it warmer and I suspect it will soften up in the wash. I carved two hand stamps (a right and left one) and got printing one evening. It didn't take too long to cover the entire length of fabric because I went for a kind of random placement, not even trying to create a repeat. I also left a part of the fabric blank because I thought the smaller parts of the shirt would look better being solid (since the hands were bigger than those parts anyway and would be cut off).

Printing fabric like this really isn't that hard and you don't need a lot of materials. I do make my life easier by using a block printing ink for textiles that fixates by drying for a week at room temperature. Nothing worse than ironing each printed section of a few yards of fabric for five minutes straight.

(If you are interested, I wrote a pretty detailed post about block printing fabric here!)

Now for the actual shirt! I used the Grainline Archer again, but sized down a bit after remeasuring myself and measuring the pattern pieces. My previous plaid version still gets worn loads but I wanted a slightly slimmer fit on this one.

I cut the entire pattern on a single layer to have more control over the print placement. The body, sleeves and pocket have hands on them, but the cuffs, button band and collar are solid. I had plenty of fabric for once so this was smooth sailing!

There's not much I can say about the construction of this shirt that I haven't said before. The only time I looked at the instructions was for the sleeve placket, and I used this method for the collar and cuffs (which I always do by the way, it just seems both easier and more accurate in a way). The yoke was sewn using the burrito method and the side seams are flat-felled, but I have to admit I didn't topstitch the sleeve seam. This was already tricky on my previous version, which is two sizes larger, and this fabric was a lot less flexible. I decided to let that fight pass.

The hem was finished with bias tape to reduce bulk, and then my shirt and I were ready to go hang around with friends and watch them roll their eyes at my joke. Another friend also said it looked like the hand of Saruman, which can only mean that I... Secretly wish I was an Uruk-Hai? No idea.

Time For Shameless Self-Promotion

I don't really do New Year's resolutions, but one thing I did want to do was get a bit more serious about my artwork. I've been selling prints of my art for a while now, but it was a bit of a hassle (you had to e-mail me to get a Paypal invoice) so I bit the bullet and opened not one, but two shops!

The first one is an Etsy store, to replace the whole 'e-mail me and we'll work something out' thing I had going on. I'll be using this to sell zines and prints, and I'm planning to add small items like patches and pins in the future, so keep your eyes peeled!

me shilling my wares

Now, I actually have a lot more ideas for things I want to make available, but tedious and boring things like not having the space and budget to make and stock all the t-shirts in all the sizes were holding me back. So instead I opened a store on Society6! I have uploaded a few designs and you can get them on all kinds of stuff, from bath towels to coffee mugs. I know for a fact Hanne already got herself a new phone case.

Another thing I did was create an online portfolio to showcase just my drawings. I felt like I needed something I could show people that would clarify what my artwork is like, without all my usual rambling. So if you want to see what I've made over the past few years, head over to angrygirlsclub.com!

At the moment I'm working on lots of different things: there's the Carlita coat Joost has just made available on freesewing (but that deserves at least two posts on its own) and I've been drawing a lot, like this picture proves:

The friend who took this conveniently cropped out the toddler I was entertaining, but hey!

So yeah, that's what I've been doing. It's been a lot of administration, scanning and editing things and figuring out stuff, but I'm really excited to see how this goes!

But Mom, All The Other Witches Are Going To Make Fun Of Me!

It's like, so annoying.

Year In, Year Out

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a lovely time. I had a nice dinner with friends and watched the fireworks from an attic window in their new house. We also tried to take a family portrait:


I haven't posted much the past month, not because I haven't made anything but just because most of the things I'm working on are long-term projects. So instead of a nice series of photos of a finished thing I now give you some rambing about loads of different things. And a skirt.

I spent a large chunk of my time knitting these past few weeks. The Stonecutter pattern has been on my wishlist for AGES but I was too chicken to go for it, so then I bought the yarn and bullied myself into starting. It took some experimenting with swatches to get my gauge right and I have to stay REALLY focused on the cable charts, but I can proudly say the back is almost done, with only one obvious mistake (which I'm not correcting):

The yarn is Cascade 220 because this is a yarn-eating beast and I have to keep a budget in mind, but it's lovely to work with so far. I was a bit worried about wether or not the cables would show up well enough in a dark colour but I love it!

There's been quite a bit of drawing as well. I made a sticker!

It's something I had in mind for ages and just finally got around to doing. I've been handing these out and putting them up for the past few weeks, and it's exciting to see them pop up in different places!

I've also been sketching for a project that sort of fits this Angry Girls Club theme (and this other Medusa drawing I did earlier this year). It's also a good excuse to draw naked girls on goats.

I usually don't do resolutions, but this upcoming year I want to try and spend more time making things just for the sake of it. A lot of my creating is done with a purpose, either because it's a comission, or I want to make it into something I can sell, or it's an item of clothing I need or want for a specific occasion. Earlier this month me and my friends Hélène and Nena got together to make papier maché Christmas decorations, and it was so much fun. We were using our hands just for the sake of it, without any pressure, and it felt really refreshing! I gave most of mine away, but kept a skull and a unicorn:

Nena was a bit more ambitious and tried to recreate the Koekelberg Basilica. I spent the night at her place after New Year's Eve and we went outside in the rain to try and get a picture that accurately represents how well her project turned out:

We failed.

Which brings us to one of the only finished things I'm going to talk about: a golden skirt. I got this beautiful sparkly fabric at the Dries Van Noten stocksale earlier this year and decided to let it shine by using it for a simple circle skirt. I'm not sure what it is, but it feels like a wool with golden threads woven through on the right side (the wrong side of the fabric is black and soft). I wish my pictures did it justice but alas, the rain made it into a pretty miserable experience.

This is just my basic circle skirt with a straight waistband and an exposed zipper in the back. I added a lining because the wrong side of the fabric is a bit textured, and I didn't want it to catch on my tights too much. The fabric is really really gold in some light, and a bit more subtle at other times.

So. Cold.

I'm going to finish by saying something about a bigger project me and Joost have been working on for... over a year now? We wanted to recreate the coat Sherlock wears in the BBC version, and I can proudly say that the men's version is now available on freesewing.org! There is a women's version in the works and I hope we can get that done soon, because I have some beautiful coating here that's just begging to be made into something...