Moose

Update Dec 2019 I see that it has been 7 years !!! since I last participated in a swap here. I'm thinking about starting again, so I'll have a look around to see whether there are some interesting swaps I could participate in. Still up for private swaps (see below).

Update July 2012 OMG, I didn't realize that it had been such a long time since I last logged in ! Still not active as far as swaps are concerned, but still available for non-crafty swap ;-) My first year of art school is finished, with very positive results. Still 4 to go ;-)

Update November 2011 I'm taking a break from SB again. I have to much work for art school at this moment. I'm always in for non-crafty and personal swaps though.

Update April 29th 2011 I'm back. Having been disappointed a number of times by the quality of swaps received, I'll be choosing the swaps I participate in more carefully. I'm still open for private swaps as I describe below though.

Update march 6th 2011 I have been dealing with some mental and physical issues lately that caused me to be less concentrated than normal. I'm taking a (short?) break from swapping until I feel up to the responsibility again !

I always put a lot of effort in the quality of the things i send out but i regulary get disappointed by the fact that not everyone does ...

Therefore i would like to do more private swaps. Please PM me if you are interested in :

• a sort of photojournal (Who am i. This is were i live, etc.) around 10-15 pages

• ATC's

• handmade postcards

• sort of journal collaboration (a +/- 20 page journal travelling between me and a partner, for more details, please PM)

• open to other ideas :-)

I use all kinds of techniques : collage, printmaking, painting, coloured pencil... I would like to illustrate children's books, but so far, I'm just making things for my own pleasure.

I also love making photographs, but haven't been doing that much lately. Some of my Sweden-photos are on the link above.

The reason I joined swap-bot is mainly because I find it interesting to make contact with other artists all over the world. I always try my best to get things out on time and have absolutely not the intention to flake ! So if you are expecting something from me that doesn't arrive, please contact me before you give me a bad rating. I will resend things that get lost in the mail !

I'm Swedish, but born and living in Belgium. I'm married, no kids. Love animals and gardening My hubbie Steven and i have a very good relationship in which there is room for each one to develop own interests and friendships.

Favourate colours orange. I also like blue (ultramarine), lime green, red. Actually there are not many colors i absolutely don't like if they are used well.

I have a Spanish waterdog, Galileo and a few aquariums. I love my dog to bits ! He's not been very easy to train because he's quite insecure but people he knows love him ! He needs some time adjusting to people he doesn't know.

I also have two pet rats and two chinchillas. They are living in my studio.

I'm a 54 year old creative soul who likes to try almost anything creative. I enjoy taking some leftover of garbage thing and thinking of a way to reuse it. I.e. i have woven baskets from plastic strips that come around boxes, i've found out a way to use waste handmade paper strips and snippets by using a method with woodglue, etc.

Collage, drawing with oil pastel, painting (acrylics), printmaking (relief printing), drawing with markers, ... I don't like the commercial scrapbooking style, but have recently discovered journalling. I've been drawing in sketchbooks for the last 15 years or so.

I also love working with clay, but have no kiln of my own. I mostly do coil based pots.

I'm very interested in graphic design and typography. Occasionally i try some calligraphy as well.

Collage materials I like : old snapshots (usually the ones other people think are bad ;-), things from the 60's and 70's, animals, flowers, children's illustrations (old ones preferably)

I love drawing materials, fountain pens, brushes, paper, etc.

Things I could send : collage materials : handmade paper snippets, book pages in Dutch or Swedish or French, music pages (have an old book containing 100's of pages of music for collage), old dictionary pages (illustrated ones), postcards (the free kind you can find in public places). Let me know what you are looking for and I'll see what I have. I love nosing around in the second hand store, where they have all kinds of old toys, puzzles, etc.

I would like to make shadow boxes, but haven't started with that yet.

I do a lot of photographing, except for last couple of months due to not having a decent camera. I use it to document my life, and I like to find abstract composition around me. Don't photograph people so much, but I do take a lot of pictures of my animals (dog especially). Love not-perfect images, snapshot type where something is not quite right ;-) But I'm not sure what to do with my pictures yet. I will start using them in collages and journals, i suppose.

I just ordered a Diana Mini lomography camera. I love that style of photography and i'm looking out for a Lomo or similar do experiment with that.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot : I do crochet, I made som keyholders (it turned out to be a kind of amigurumi, now that i looked it up on the internet). I'm making a blanket out of 100's (well about 140 actually) of squares, trying to crochet sort of a dotee doll right now.

I plan on making teddybears as well. I did that when I was young and already have some stuff I have been collecting for the past year or so. But I will wait a little bit untill I really can make the time for that.

I'm a big Star Trek fan, not the original series, but Next Generation and Voyager. Other older series I watched : X-Files Things I watch now (often and occasionally) : Lost, Criminal Minds, Judging Amy, Medium, The Simpsons, good Swedish detective series such as Beck, Wallander, Höök, ..., some older Swedish children's TV (Pippi Longstocking, Emil, ...) Also Belgian series, they make good ones nowadays.

Totally addicted to NCIS nowadays. Abby ROCKS !

I like animated films, digital as well as stop motion : The nightmare before Christmas, Corpse Bride, Wallace and Grommit, Monsterhouse and most of the popular Pixar & Co stuff

"Intelligent" thrillers. Since Seven there are a lot of badly made movies that try to imitate the original and I don't like those.

And almost forget : I LOVE Lord of the Rings, seen the trilogy at least a dozen times. At some point, i also reread the books almost every year

Other favorites : The Shawshank redemption, The sixth sense, Chocolat, A beautiful mind, The butterfly effect (1st one), and and and ;-).

Some drama, but not the romantic stuff, although when it's funny sometimes I can appreciate it.

Favorate actors/actresses : Jack Nicholson, Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Michael Persbrandt, Peter Haber, Jake Gyllenhaal, Max von Sydow, Renée Zellweger, Kathy Bates, Patrick Stewart, Viggo Mortensen (a co-Scandinavian ;-)) and lots more

This is what comes into my mind right now, will have to be completed ;-)

Joseph Cornell, Milton Avery, Robert Motherwell, Ben Nicholson, Nikki de Saint-Phalle, Pierre Alechinsky, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg

I love graphic designer style from the 50ies and 60ies. Just acquired a wonderful book about the work of Charley Harper

(will have to be completed too ;-))

I often see this in other profiles and find it easy to see what people like or not, soooo :

First of all : i don't mind used things as long as they are still functional and not completely ruined (haha)

L I K E S : - black and white composition books : i use them as a diary. I received some of the "normal" size ones, but it seems that there are smaller ones as well so .... ;-) (And i just found out that they exist with unruled plain paper too, those would also be very nice)

• speedball pens for calligraphy and drawing. Other speedball supplies also welcomed (lino carving tools, carving blocks etc), but i think they may be too expensive.

• old photographs, especially your own, with a story behind them (a good scan is also ok)

• vintage magazines (like Popular Mechanics and "lady magazines"

• vintage children's books/pages/illustrations

• unused US stamps covering plain international postage (for SASE's)

• favourate colours : orange, yellow, red, lime green, dark blue, ... in fact i like most colours when they are well used

• kawaii vinyl figurines

• ticket stubs and other ephemera from the place where you live

• nice graphic designs (can be publicity, postcard, some ad you see in a magazine, ...)

• nicely designed food wrappers from your country (like chocolate wrappers, food can labels etc.)

• actually almost anything that can be used for colllage making ;-), except for commercial scrapbooking supplies

• crochet needles : BIG ones ;-)

• craft or art magazines (not necessarily new ones)

• markers : Letraset or Copic or similar (ones that don't fade and blend well). I prefer light shades of any color (i.e. pink, light blue, light green, well, light anything) as i already have the bolder type of colors (think you could call them Manga style colors)

• black fineliner pens such a sharpies. I love to try brands i haven't used before. Always searching for that perfect one !

• lego blocks (even small amounts ;-)). I prefer the older ones as i have old lego myself (yes, i'm a grown up and still "play" with lego blocks sometimes. I like building things when i'm out of inspiration

• postcards with (childrens books) illustrations on them. Some of my favorites are : Moomin, Jip&Janneke (or anything by Fiep Westendorp)

• free ad cards that are good designs

• glass tiles for making glass tile pendants

• special buttons

• tiny things (watch parts, other metal parts, well, about anything you can use for shadow box making and steampunky things (just starting with this)

• plant seeds

• vintage fabric scraps

Oh, and i'm addicted to Thai seaweed leafs that you can eat as a snack. It looks a bit like the seaweed you use for Sushi, but it's not entirely the same.

N O T R E A L L Y I N T O :

I DON'T USE commercial supplies such as ready made stamps (except alphabets), commercial scrapbooking paper, stickers, embellishments etc.

• overly cute things
• gothic and dark stuff
• religious items meant to convert me. I do like to use old bible pages and images of saints and angels in collage
• stickers (except some)
• commercial scrapbooky things (ATC's, postcards, ...)
• not particulary interested in Victorian stuff, but i don't really mind it either

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I love Swedish thrillers and I prefer reading them in Swedish. Favourate authors are Henning Mankell, Arne Dahl, Marianne Fredriksson and other Scandinavian authors such as : Unni Lindell, Anne Holt, Gretelise Holm, Leena Lehtolainen, ... I like to read them because I sometimes really miss being in Sweden which I regard as my "home". I have many books on art and techniques and a collection of children's picture books. Lots of books on nature and animals too.

I have been thinking about adding this for a while now, after having been flaked on a couple of times. I'm not a flaker and I don't intend to flake EVER, but I do realize that sometimes things happen in your life that make it impossible to fulfill obligations on Swap-bot. So : if ever you do not get a swap from me, nor a message telling you there's something going on, I'm probably in the hospital or something else has happened to me. Since for me the worst part of being flaked on, is not knowing what's happening, I decided to put my husband's e-mail address here, just in case I am unable to respond to any messages myself. Please only use this if you haven't been able to reach me for some time : steven.de.kesel@telenet.be

I try to rate as soon as I get a swap. If for some reason you're waiting for a rating, please let me know. I'm only human and I do sometimes forget things, as we all do.

Not being rated to me feels even worse than flaking. I always take great care in sending nice things to my partner, I read profiles and try to make my package a bit personal, if possible. So not being rated feels like my partner doesn't care for the effort I put into my swap.