Culture by Night

Every year at the end of October, a special event is organized in our city. It is called 'De Nacht van de Nacht'  (translation: the Night of the Night). During this event, attention is paid to the environmental pollution in our region, and in particular to light pollution. The city where we live is close to great areas of industry and greenhouses, which produce a lot of light. Together with the city lights, the effect is clearly visible when it is cloudy; the sky by night is often not dark blue, but orange. Most people that live in this region are already used to this, which also applies to me. But when I travel from the city to rural areas or when I'm on a holiday in the forests, I am reminded of the differences. 

The goal of 'De Nacht van de Nacht' is to make people aware of the use of energy and the effect that it has on the environment. It is also introduced to herald the Daylight Saving Time ('wintertime'). Art and culture are used on this evening to achieve a feeling of solidarity among all visitors. 

Playlist #3

I have never been an autumn person. Everybody around me is talking about how wonderful the world looks with those beautiful colours, and how romantic it is, and how much they like their new sweaters. I don't like sweaters. And I don't think there is anything romantic about dead leaves and cycling to work in the pouring rain. To me, fall is just wet. Wet and cold.

Of course, as anything in life, even fall has its good sides. My favourite thing about fall is sitting in my room with a steaming hot latte and my CDs. As the music blends with the ticking of the rain on my window, nothing could make me happier.

Autumn Promotion (Free Skull Bracelets!)

Today we wanted to go outside and make some pictures of the fall scenery to use for a new promotion campaign that we came up with. We wanted to capture the nice details of this season, like the colourful yellow and red leafs, spider webs, mushrooms and the late afternoon sun shining through the trees. But unfortunately, this day did not turn out as romantic as we hoped, as the fall caused exactly what it does best in the Netherlands: a lot of rain. So we decided to stay inside and have a meeting online, with a cup of tea :)

Rotterdam

Rotterdam is the nearest place for us to go to when we want to have a big shopping day. It has the most trendy clothing stores in the region, great restaurants, large warehouses and media stores. Rotterdam is also recognizable by its art and culture, to which much attention is paid. The most notable part about Rotterdam however, is its architecture.

Meeting at DE Café

Last weekend, we met at the Douwe Egberts Café in Rotterdam to discuss some new ideas for our shop. The atmosphere in this café is very cozy and homely. At the same time the interior has a modern look and has place for people who want to chat with friends, but also for people who want to study with their laptop or read some magazines. This place is really inviting to have an informal meeting on creative projects like ours!

Supplies

For our jewelry shop, we have many supplies. Not only do we have a lot of different beads and charms, but also tools, cards, envelopes, bubble wrap and of course the finished bracelets. It is difficult to store all of this in one place; we have tried different chests, containers and boxes, but non of them were quite suitable. Fortunately, Lisa still had a wooden Ikea cabinet 

and after a little redecoration, it turned out to be the perfect storage for all our stuff. In this way, everything is well organized, easy to find and stays dust-free.

Playlist #2

This week has been loaded with music. I went to a concert last weekend, spent hours playing drums and guitar, and finally found some time to listen to the enormous pile of CDs that had been growing on my desk over the last few months.

Last week, I mainly listened to quirky upbeat pop songs, but this week I found myself listening to some heavies blues-, folk-, and indierock. Moods can change so quickly.

Lush

One of the best ways to recover from a long day of work, is a nice, warm bath. And when I take a bath, I prefer the whole shebang: scrubs, facial masks, body butters, everything! Most of the cosmetics I use for my extensive bathing, are from Lush.

Playlist #1

I love music, and I love to share music even more. So, my first idea for this blog was to start a "song of the day" for which I would upload one of my favourite songs for you, every single day. The problem here is not a lack of favourite songs - theoretically, I could easily post songs for five years or so, without ever repeating myself. The problem is that I am not structured or disciplined enough to do this everyday. So practically, I would not even make it through the week. 

Therefore, I have come to the following compromise: every once in a while, I will gather all the songs that I have been listening to recently, and make a little playlist for you!

Creative Day!

Today, Lisa and I met at my place to let our creativity flow and make some nice, new items for our webshop! 

Some time ago we came up with the idea that we wanted to use leather cords as a new basic material for our bracelets. It fits perfectly with the rest of our collection because of its natural appearance and moreover, it is very suitable for men bracelets! We also ordered some nice beads on Etsy, where we found an enormous assortment of ceramic skull and peace beads in all kinds of colours. 

Garden

The last couple of days have been wonderful! The sun is finally shining, and I feel like I must enjoy every minute of it.

So, a couple of days ago I just sat down in my garden to relax for a while. Our garden – which is more like a tiny courtyard - is not very big, but at the moment it's a gorgeous explosion of plants and flowers.

"Working" at Ivanna's

Dear readers of our new little blog,

since we had both spent some time away on holidays, and unfortunately had to spend a lot of time on our studies as well, we had not worked on our jewelry shop for a while. Therefore, we decided to meet at Ivanna's and work on some new stuff. We did not spend a whole lot a time on that, though, because we got a little destracted.(This happens a lot!) The reason for this is that we had been working on this blog for a couple of days and were really excited about this. So, while we were talking about it yesterday, we thought it would be fun to make some photobooth-style pictures of ourselves to add to the “About Us” section.