Coat of arms - The secret of our ancestors

The coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield, which was originally used by medieval knights to cover, protect and indentify the wearer. The design became a unique symbol to an individual person or family.

I found myself searching for clues of my family name in the internet. There are lots of websites that provide information on the origin of your family name. More information can be purchased together with little souvenirs or a print out of the family history. I don't know how reliable those websites are but they information provided looks intriguing.

Since I started watching the TV programmes "Who do you think you are?" and "Finding your Roots", I am curious to find out more about my ancestors. Both series investigate the family history of their famous guests with traditional genealogical research, though the series "Finding your roots" also uses genetic research to determine hidden cultural origin.

It's not about the life of people, who found their way into History books. It's about the people, whose stories have been forgotten, but who achieved incredible by trying to survive - History becomes all of a sudden very vivid and personal.

A story that impressed me very much is the family history of British actor David Sachet, shown in the 5th series of the British version of "Who do you think you are?". He discovers that his paternal ancestors were actually Russian Jews. Due to imminent persecution, they had to flee Russia over the Turkish border. From there they had to travel via Prussia, South Africa and France, to finally arrive to the UK, where they were able to settle down. During this journey they had to change their names a few times to hide their Jewish origin, which finally resulted in the French sounding surname "Sachet".

I need to make my project one day and search on websites like ancestry.com or myheritage.com for more information on my family tree. Those websites have access to an online database where billions of historical records worldwide (birth, marriage, death, census, military and immigration records) are uploaded, which makes it comparatively easy to trace family history. 

For now, I made it my project to sew a family banner with the coat of arms of my boyfriend's surname.

I was searching for clues on mine and Steve's surnames, when I found to my surprise an entry on his surname on Wikipedia. His name has apparently Irish origin and is closely connected to the history of Ulster. To have a Wikipedia entry on your family name is really cool, so I had to honour it by sewing a banner with his coat of arms.

Here is a list of what the symbols could refer to:
The Lion represents a great Warrior or Chief.
The open red hand is a symbol of the Province of Ulster.
The crecent is the hop of glory or the sign of the second son.
Red is the colour of a Warrior and symbolises Military Strengh.

There were two things in the process of crafting the banner, which were new to me.

First one is a technique in embroidery called couching, in which yarn or other material is laid across a fabric material and is fastened in place with small stitches of the same or a different yarn.
I used this technique to frame the banner with a grey woollen threat, which would contrast the white ground fabric and the ruby coloured motives.

The second technique was making a tassel. It's a lovely creative ornament which is similar to the making of a pom-pom. If you are interested to know more about the how-to, here is a link to a YouTube video tutorial.  

I hope this little excursion to history was inspiring and maybe make you want to learn more about your ancestors and family tree, too.

The Great North Run - Keep calm and run this thing!

The Great North Run was an amazing experience! And to my surprise I ran the whole distance of 13.1 miles (21.1 K) in 2:43 h. For someone who just started training this summer, that’s an achievement.

My achievement

The event itself was mind blowing, too. It's the biggest half marathon in the world, with about 50.000 people participating this year. Steven took a shot from the bridge that overviewed the starting line. People as far as the eye can see. I was in the last wave of people running. For people who would run 3 hours plus. To give you something to compare: The Gold Medal winner Mohamed Farah did run the whole distance in one hour. A trained runner can run the distance in 1:30 h

Starting line

It was really encouraging to run in a group of people. People were dressed up in funny costumes, as Sponge Bob, or a Minion... which made the event fun and kept my mind distracted. People alongside the road were cheering on the runners. Some of them even provided little snacks like biscuits or mini sausage rolls. Bands were playing music on several cheering points alongside the course. All in all it was an amazing atmosphere. Newcastle can be proud to host such an awesome event. 

I am still collecting money for the MIND charity. If you would like to donate, I would be really greatful. Please find the link to my fundraising page here. 

I've been nominated for the Liebster Award

Thank you very much, Tiny Tang from Life as a Petite for nominating me for the Liebster Award.

I thought if I ever get nominated I would definitly nominate you, but now you were quicker.

I love your blog because you talk about the things you love (fashion, craft and lifestyle) in a very personal and cute way. 

To give you a little introduction - the Liebster Award is an online award which is passed on by bloggers to other bloggers with 200 or less followers. It is a great and simple way for the blogging community to get to know each other a little better. 

The rules for the Liebster Award are:

1. You must link back to the person who nominated you.

2. You must state 11 facts about yourself.

3. You must answer the 11 questions given to you, from your nominator. 

4. You must nominate other bloggers, and set 11 questions for them to answer.

5. You can't nominate the person who nominated you.

6. You must tell the people you've nominated them, so they can take part!

11 quick facts about me;
Although I live now in Newcastle upon Tyne, I'm originally from the North of Germany, from a beautiful town called Lübeck.
I studied Art Therapy and did an apprenticeship to be a bookseller. 
I love reading books and some of my favourite writers are J.S.Foer, John Irving, Haruki Murakami, Nina Blazon and many more.
I love all kind of art, from Street Art to Guerilla Knitting (I have a thing for Anarchy) to Nicolas de Staël and Giogio Morandi.
Since I live in the UK I have discovered my passion for sewing and crafting, and enjoy reading crafting blogs and browsing on Pinterest.


And here are my answers to the questions given by TinyTang. 

What's your favourite colour?
My favourite colour is white. White can be combined with every other colour and still looks great. White is refreshing, it reminds me of fresh laundry or sailing on the open sea on a sunny day.

White is the colour of a blank canvas, a place where my imagination can run wild and I can express myself.

White is like a mystery, like a thick fog, or deep snow. White covers all things and keeps it a secret. It lets you guess what’s behind the layers.

White light contains according to physics, all colours. When you add all coloured lights, the result is white light, that fact always fascinated me.

If you could have one superpower, what would it be and why?
My altruistic wish would be that human kind would come to their senses and would value life & health more than fictional money & fame. I do not understand why innocent children have to suffer from starvation when people on other parts of the planet thinking about building a lift into space.

My selfish wish is to learn a language quicker (like Neo in “The Matrix” just simply downloading the content). It would be awesome to travel to other countries and to speak the native language. Socialising and learning about other cultures would be so much easier. For starters, I would love to speak Italian, Chinese, Spanish and Polish.

Name 3 of your fashion must-haves
NEON pink - Although more of an accessory, otherwise I would look like Barbie - and that’s not desirable. Pink is one of those secret pleasures of being a girly girl.

A good quality handbag – Even if you wear simple clothes, combined with a quality handbag , you look mysteriously awesome. The same principle applies to good shoes.

Confidence in your own style – Don’t just follow trends, make it yours, be individual, mix it and make the world a brighter and more colourful place.

What's your pet peeve(s)?
I’m getting really annoyed with people who skip a queue as if they were a VIP.

What's your most used word(s) or phrase(s)?
I have lots of geeky running jokes with my boyfriend Steve - depending on what movie we are watching.The all time classic is  from 24 and applicable in a lot of situations is...

“We are running out of time! We don’t have choice!”

6. Do you have any hidden talents? 
I have some awesome cabaret moves. My jazz hands are unbeatable.

And I can fall asleep nearly everywhere. Just give me a minute or two.

7. What's your favourite thing about blogging and where did you get your inspiration to start a blog from?
My favourite thing about blogging is that I can share my creative ideas and hopefully inspire and encourage others to get creative.

I’m not quite sure how it exactly started, but after a chat with my friend Irina about online business, as she is currently programming a language learning website, I was inspired to know more about blogging and bought the book "Blog Inc.” by Joy Cho which turned out to be a great source of information.

In the chapter “Why Blog” the author lists several reasons why we should start our own blog although there are literally hundreds of millions of public blogs out there.
A simple answer of hers is - " we have something unique to say too".

That finally encouraged me to start my own blog, and I am very happy since to have a dedicated space to my creativity.   

8. Have you met any celebrities? If so, who was your favourite?  And if not, if you could meet any celebrity, dead or alive, who would it be?
I have never met a celebrity apart from the usual, seeing them in concerts, on at a convention or at a reading.

I would love to meet Simon Pegg. I am a huge fan of “Spaced” and I follow him on Twitter. He is so mischievous and funny! He pranked his colleagues on the set of “Star Trek – Into Darkness” by claiming they needed to use neutron cream against harmful ionic effects. Eventually the whole crew got involved and even the Make-up department created actual jars of cream to pass around and were telling people they have to shake their hands to release the ions from their body. Epic! How lame is the 1^st of April?

9. What’s your guilty pleasure?
I love watching romantic comedies and reading girly teen novels - they make me happy.

10. What's one food you couldn't live without?
Does coffee count as food? If I’m honest, I couldn’t cope very well without coffee. That reminds me, I’ll be back in 2 minutes, just making some ...

11. Take a picture of your favourite item of clothing/accessory.

I love my embroidered red shoes from Dune.

My nominations for the Liebster Award are:
Tierschutz geht uns alle an
Loosing weight and keeping it off

And my 11 questions for the nominees are:

When you have 1 hour of free time, how do you prefer to spend it?
What was the best gift you have ever received?

If you could go on a vacation anywhere in the world, where would you like to go?

If you could travel back in time, which place in time would you like to visit?

What do you miss most about being a kid?

What was your favourite subject in school?

Who would you like to be your mentor, if you could choose anyone?

What’s your favourite movie or television series?

If you could be a Disney character and live in their movie world, who would you like to be?

What is your favourite book, and why?

What songs would be included on the soundtrack of your life?

I hope you have fun answering those questions :)

Filou, the flounder

I can re-assure you, Filou is still alive. I haven't eaten him, I promise!

How it all started: I love flicking through the cooking books of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. Not because I'm looking for recipes (you know that cooking is not my favourite past time, although eating is), but rather to enjoy the lovely illustrations. I particularly like the book "Hugh's Three Good Things", which has previously inspired my vegetable bunting. 

I have to write a little bit more about Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall as he is such an inspiring person. In 1999, the London journalist moved to the countryside of Dorset, to film a TV show about how he dealt with becoming a self sufficient small holder in the series "Escape to River Cottage".

 Along the way he shows how he deals with occuring problems due to his own inexpericence, gives insight in country life and  introduces the local farmers.

As the TV Series becomes more popular, he started expanding his adventures - included fishing, foraging, going on mushroom forray, seasonal farming, chicking holding, cheese making, bread baking, preserving, home brewing and much more. Besides his cooking books he has another more specific series of books "River Cottage Handbook No.1-10", in which he lets specialists detail about their own area of expertise (e.g. bread baking, brewing). 

He now supports many campaigns, like Hugh's Fish Fight (saving certain areas in the sea for fish population recovery. By the way, Tim Mälzer is a huge supporter of this campaign in Germany), Chicken-out Campaign (to stop chicken from being reared in cages for egg production or fatting them to sell the meat), the Land Share Project (to re-purpose unused land for allotments) and much more.

I respect Hugh as he is a man of simplicity who likes to share his gifts with others, is happy to trade knowledge and talent, he enjoys engaging with the community and promotes healthy living, and all in all he's very down-to-earth. It always inspires me to see what a single person can do to help others.  

Coming back to where I started ... I saw the quirky drawing of a flatfish in one of Hugh's cooking books, and so I decided to sew one just for the fun of it. 

I finally got round to using the embroidery foot of my sewing machine to embroider the felt patches and to create the textured scaling of the fish. Unintentionally, the embroidered scales created bubbles, which although probably wrong, I think looks great.

Another premier was the "quilting" of the fins and tail of the flounder. I stuffed the pre-sewed fabric with wadding and embroidered it with a wave like pattern.

I used up nearly all of my fluorescent NEON thread which I bought at Lidl, so I was very happy when I discovered, that Hobby Craft now finally stocks the NEON thread from Gütermann. I could stare for hours at my new NEON threads, my little gems.

What do you think of the new NEON threads from Gütermann and for what sewing project would you like to use them for?

Durham Lumière Festival 2013

I'm currently working some extra shifts for Christmas and it is difficult to keep posting regularly. I don't know how other bloggers manage to keep up so well. So, I'm a bit late with the post on Durham Lumière, which was at the end of November (14 -17 Nov.), but I made sure, that you would get the best pictures from it! Here you are, I hope you enjoy it.

Durham Lumière is an amazing event, organised by the outdoor event planner Artichoke, it occurs every two years. During the festival time, the city is transformed into a magical place using interesting lighting to illuminate Durham's buildings, streets and public spaces.

Durham Lumière 2011 had some impressive art works (the waterfall bridge, the monument that was transformed into a huge snowball globe, the heavenly installation inside the cathedral, the fire alchemy in the cloister garden), so the expectations were high. 

I have to admit that this year's Durham Lumière wasn't quite as impressive, but it did have some spectacular and magical installations.

My journey started in the marketplace. I was expecting something monumental as this is the city centre; I was left searching for a hidden treasure in this crowded place. I finally found it - a phone box, transformed into an aquarium, off the beaten path. 

Due to a large crowd, I waited patiently for my turn to view it up-close; the phone box had been turned into a lit aquarium with colourful swimming fish.  An exotic little world, a quirky living universe at the heart of Durham. 

Looking at it, made me dream of the crystal blue water on a tropical island. The goldfish reminded me of quirky images I've seen in movies - a girl bringing home a goldfish in a plastic back, which she had won at the funfair, or a lonesome little goldfish, swimming in one of those tiny, empty fish bowls.

The next thing that grabbed my attention, was some colourful street decoration which turned out (upon closer inspection) to be made of lots of plastic bags. It irritated me that something I would normaly associate with pollution, could create such a happy atmosphere. 

I continued to walk down the beautifully decorated Durham shopping mile, which lead me directly to an unconventional Christmas tree...

To see this beautiful Christmas tree was certainly a surprise. As far as I am aware the artist wanted to make us visitors aware of the pollution of our environment, but this was quite a different picture from the growing piles of rubbish away from our everyday view. It illuminated the place with colours of yellow, orange, blue, white and green. Even the children were fascinated by it, and were drawn back to have a closer look.

One of the highlights was the lightshow "Crown of Lights" at Durham cathedral itself. The cathedral is one of my favourite places, but seeing it illuminated in such bright and clear colours, was amazing and breathtaking. 

The light show retold the history of Christianity in the North East with images of the ancient book, the Lindisfarm Gospel. Images of the attacks and destruction of holy island by the Vikings, an all-exciting fire, and the re-building of the cloister were only some of the powerful images displayed on these ancient walls. No words, just music, and pictures.

If you would like to view a more vivid interpretation of how the Vikings attacked the holy island with the Lindisfarne priory, watch the television series "The Vikings" - S1E2, it's quite the eye opener.

Another pleasurable experience was at the sanctuary, several neon bird boxes were hidden in the trees at the old graveyard of St. Oswald church, accompanied by the soundtrack of bird calls. It seemed rather creepy to me, standing in the middle of some old stone tombs, and hearing the voices of ravens, but the sound began to turn into morning bird song and I felt reminded of spring. Strangely enough my body reacted with a tickling nose and several sneezes. It was definitely a magical place, where I would have loved to resided longer.

This installation showed a model of the sun on a more approachable scale. A huge helium balloon was flying in an open space between the university buildings, changing colour to simulate the turbulence of the sun's surface, accompanied by a growling background noise.

I took several pictures of the balloon itself and its changing surface, but it could not truly catch the atmosphere and do it justice. Finally I decided to take a picture of its mirror image in one of the university building windows. Maybe we are used to see the moon, looking outside the window, but certainly not a view of the sun in this size so close.

Like in a scene from Jurassic Park, where the protagonists could feel the Tyrannosaurus Rex approaching them by the rhythmic stamping of its heavy footsteps (depicted through ripples of water in a glass), you could hear the heavy footsteps of this elephant hundreds meter away.

The sight was mesmerizing. The elephant looked real and its movements were natural. It looked like it was trapped within a huge canvas, and made me wants to get closer and console him by feeding him some vegetables. I couldn't help but feel a sudden urge to visit a zoo. 

Just like last time, I was lucky to visit Durham Lumière twice. Once to check out the initial big attractions, and a second time to enjoy my favourite ones again. I hope that Artichoke and Durham Council will continue this successful partnership and I'm looking forward to Durham Lumiere 2015. 

What is NaNoWriMo? The National Novel Writing Month!

Maybe you have wondering where I have been the past week? I came across the abbreviation NaNoWriMo on Google+ and saw people posting random numbers like 11200 or 6450. I was intrigued to find out what the buzz was about. 

I fired up the search engine to do some research, and it came up with the website of the National Novel Writing Month  (NaNoWriMo). As I was always keen in writing a novel myself, I was curious to find out more.

NaNoWriMo is actually a free creative writing project that takes place every November. The aim is to write a 50,000 words novel (or simply 50,000 words of a novel to be completed later) writing an average of 1600 words a day. There is no emphasis on what your story has to be about or a strict rule on plotline, you can simply follow your stream of consciousness and discover your characters. 
The reason this is, is to encourage people to start writing and overcome their fear of failure. The community gives you support with daily writing challenges (there are even regional meetings, hosted by volunteers) and the deadline works as an incentive to get the story going. Popular novels like "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern or "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen have been written using NaNoWriMo. 

NaNoWriMo was founded by Chris Baty in 1999 - he started with a small writing group of 21 people, and has now grown into a huge community of 300.000 participating writers. In 2006 NaNoWriMo became a non-profit organisation under the name "The Office of Letters and Light". Donations keep the NaNoWriMo events running as well as letting them host other creative writing projects like the "Young Writers Program" for children and teens. 

It was middle of November, but I'd missed the start of the writing month - but I felt compelled to jump right in and to give NaNoWriMo a try. I started writing on Microsoft Word, but then discover 'Scrivener', and soon changed software. It gives you a much clearer view of different chapters, ideas and characters. My aim is not to write great literature, but to write a story that my writing buddy Anne will find entertaining. Anne and I had a phase ten years ago, when we used to write and share our stories regularly. It was always exciting to hear what our main character and his love interest were up to and what they had to struggle with. It's an amazing experience to create a whole new world and bring characters to life.
Although I won't be crossing the finish line at the end of November, I have learned a lot in the past few days. I wrote more words than ever before for my novel and I discovered an encouraging online writing community.

NaNoWriMo 2014 - Count me in! :)

As creative people we are vulnerable by our dreams and creations and it is important to surround oneself with people who believe in us and encourage us in our work. Sometimes it is difficult to see the value of our work with so many talented people out there, but every voice is unique and there is an abundance of ideas out there! Let's rock!

I'm so lucky to have my creative allies!
Thank you to Steve, Brigitte, Michael, Anne, Stine, Amelie, Vanessa, Mieke and Irina for sharing COFFEE and bringing about a lot of creative sparks!

What's his name, Mr. Bauble Bunting or Mr. Potato?

I made this little Soft Toy as a birthday present for a friend. I gave him the name "Mr. Bauble Bunting" inspired by christmas baubles and bunting. It's a catchy name that resulted in my boyfriend singing his name in Jamaican reggae style (and became a tune that sticks to your head!). 

Since the actual Birthday party, Mr. Bauble Bunting had a name change, because everyone called him Mr. Potato man. I guess this name does fit much better!

One of my favourite parts in the process is picking the colour scheme. 

The felt is available in so many wonderful bright colours, which makes it fun to experiment with.

My choice of a 5 colours scheme was: yellow, pastel green, pink, orange and turquoise.

You will need:

- Felt (5x different colours)

- Plain fabric (I used Lenda Beige from IKEA)

- Pearl Cotton thread or a fabric pen

- Pencil

- Scissors

- Cardboard for the stencil

- Pins

- Sewing thread / needle

- Ribbon

Quick tutorial

1. I made a stencil out of cardboard and marked the shape onto the fabric with a pencil. Then I 

    cut around the shape creating a 1 cm boarder to have some overlapping fabric for when 

    sewing the back and front together later in the process.

2. I cut a few felt triangles from each colour and placed them on the fabric. Then I fixed 

    triangles of the same colour in a row with needles (when attached like this, you can sew 

   easily over them with the sewing machine).

3. I sewed twice over the row of felt triangles. 

4. Then I repeated the procedure with the next row of felt triangles...

5. ... until the rows were complete. 

6. I drew the face with a fabric pen and then stitched the lines with the indigo pearl cotton 

    thread. I cut out two little circles of the pink felt to use as cheeks and hand sewed them onto 

    the face.

7. I used some ribbons for the hair and sewed them to the fabric pointing inwards.

8. I fixed the overlapping felt with needles, so that when I sew the insides together with the

    sewing machine, they won't be caught in-between the seam.

8. Then I turned the toy inside out and stuffed it with wadding. 

One of my favourite moments when making soft toys is the moment when you finally can turn the inside out. Then you finally get to see how the idea works out, and how the soft toy comes to life.

I guess it's up to my friend to get to know him better, she has him now - so I can't tell you much about this guy. 
I will ask her though next time I see her how he's doing :)

Have you ever made a present, where the recipient of the gift saw something else in it and named/used it differently?

Creative people: Berlin based artist Vanessa

In today's post I would like to introduce you to the artist and friend Vanessa Puschmann, and show you some of her work - which always inspired me. 

Vanessa is a mixed media artist, working and living in Berlin. I met her when studying Art Therapy in Bremen, Germany. She left after a few terms to study cultural science, but we stayed friends.

With her background as a dressmaker and her theatre experience, she connected with the art scene in Bremen on various quirky projects:

“Sproutbau” (2007)
For one month about 70 international artists lived and worked together in a high-rise block, which was planned to be destroyed. 
Vanessa, as a part of the textile studio, and other artists worked towards a final festival week, to present exhibitions, readings, performances and concerts. 

“EphmerisKosMusTanten” (2008)
For one month artists installed a fictional temporary state "Ephmeristan" in an industrial building area. Different artists worked on various projects and prepared for events for the festivals final weekend. 
Vanessa was part of the fashion performance "EphmerisKosMusTanten", which was a collaboration project of 6 fashion designers, a make-up  artist and some experimental performers. She designed the costumes and also performed on stage.

After finishing her studies, Vanessa decided to move to Berlin. She quickly connected with the art scene and frequently participates in exhibitions and cultural events. 
As a mixed media artist she uses paintings, textile art and performance to explore questions of identity, physicality, spirituality and society. She works as a solo artist and also on collaboration projects.

Here are two recent projects of hers, which inspire my work.

"Kiezkinder" (2010)
Vanessa used old fabric, old clothes and every day materials to tell the stories of some characters of Berlin. Please find below some of her art puppets "Kiezkinder" (Children from the Berlin district Kiez).

Pepe and Joe

William, the Flying Fox

Oda, die Taube

Uschi & Freddie 

Kalle Strassenfuchs 

“Djangos fahrende Flickwerkstatt” (2012)
Textile artist Vanessa, photographer Effrosynio Kontogeorgou and writer Dorothea Ahlemeyer set of to Eastern Europe. With the medium of the puppet Django, they visited the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia, and engaged with people on questions of happiness, sorrow, hope. Due to interaction with these people new puppets were created with found fabric and materials. The result was a patchwork of stories, pictures and experience, which is documented in an art book.
(Winner of the competition "kultur-im-dialog.moe 2012" - a programme of the Schering Foundation and the association MitOst e.V.)

Django Weltenbummler and his buddies

Django Weltenbummler

Mick Mücke from Berlin

Ludmilla from Bratislava

Lamela from Grgurici

Grrrgz wants to go home…

I had a opurtunity to interview Vanessa this week about her work and future projects, which you can read below:

What do puppets mean for you as an art medium?
I love to think about identity and to create them. The puppets are one possibility to do this. And I can create what I want. I love it, when they look like real personalities, when you feel them. 
The thing with the puppets grew out of a birthday present for a friend. I did it with another friend of mine. I liked to do it and tried more and then more ideas came, e.g. using text to describe their character and it was a feast to do, and to see what happens with the different puppets.

Did you depict typical Berlin inhabitants?
Some of them YES. "Kalle Straßenfuchs" (I created him together with my boyfriend) is one who lived all of his life on the streets of Berlin. He had so many adventures in his life but also some accidents, you can see the wounds on his body. He lost the half of his tail in fight with a car... So yes, you can find them on the streets. In Berlin you see lots of different characters. I really like it! Of course I'm inspired by this diversity. My puppets are mostly inspired by people of the districts of Kreuzberg, Neukölln and Friedrichshain.

Can you tell me more about the puppets which were created on "Django's Journey"?
The puppets are made of old fabrics and stuff from people who gave it to me as a present. The puppets Lamella and Ludmilla were part of an art and culture project in 2012 "Djangos Journey". The idea was to meet people around the Balkans, talk to them, listen to their stories, get some personal stuff from them and create a puppet out of the people we met. So every place has a character with its own identity, including every story, every person we met and of course my interpretation and artistic view.
As a frame to our trip we had the story of puppet Django, he is an adventurer and loves to travel! I created him in 2011 as a present for my friend Doro, after a while he inspired us to this project. Ludmilla was made in Bratislava. She was the fourth puppet. And she looks like a traditional woman. Lamella was the last one, I made her together with Grrrrgs. For me both were the hardest puppets to create. It was at the end of the trip and I was full of stories and experiences. It was hot and I was really tired. I had real problems, but when they were born, I was so happy! I loved them. I had the feeling, Grrrrgs was my first child.

Where do you find the materials to create the puppets and will your future work include puppets as an art medium?
I use old stuff, old fabrics, plastic... different things with their own histories. People give things to me or I find them on the streets or somewhere else. The material inspires me. My newest puppet, called "Alienfounding", is made out of an old dress I made, and I think it started a new way of creating puppets for me. The dress (which I loved) was made of white wool with a hood. After a time I decided to dye it brown. Unfortunately I forgot it was wollen and after I washed it, it shrunk to a child size - Shit. So I cried and thought about what to do... and the idea of the puppet came to me. It's a tribute to my old dress. 
The new thing is, that it's bigger and not so cute - it's more spooky. I began taking photos of it and I think, I will go in new ways directions from here. Perhaps I will do take more photos or make a small film - I'm not sure yet, but I'm positive that the ideas will come to me!

If you want to know more about her work, please check out her website and Facebook page:

Vanessa's website
Vanessa's Facebook page