Our first BeColourful book!

There’s more awesome news to share with you all. Maybe you already know, are even have it in your possession! What it is.. it’s our first book ever! Yes, a real BeColourful book, featuring all, well, not all, but almost all of Jacqueline’s beautiful designs in it.

Jacqueline is a quilt designer as you may know, and designs for more than 20 years beautiful quilts. And there are so many pretty and stunning designs, and to see them gathered in this beautiful book, well, it’s a treasure. How does it started. Let me tell you.

It was close to Jacqueline’s 53th birthday, and her dearest wish was a photo album with all of quilt designs in it. And I thought that was a lovely gift. It took me some weeks to make this album, and the result was really beautiful. I had chosen high gloss photo paper, on which the pictures came up really colorful. I made a kind of real book of it, with an introduction, and some bible versions that suits Jacqueline. It turned out to a wonderful photo album, and to see all those stunning quilts and amazing designs gathered in an album, it was just so beautiful. And my dearest sister was so happy with this very special album, it brought tears in her eyes..

 Jacqueline thought it was a lovely idea to send one photo album to the American Quilters Society, to Meredith Schroeder, as a thank you gift, because this lovely lady has done so much for Jacqueline in the past years. And with sending her this fantastic photo album, Jacqueline wants to thank Mrs. Schroeder  from the depths of her heart. And I thought Mrs. Schroeder loved this book. So much that she thought it was a great idea to make a real book of this album!

And so it happened. All of us came in action by sending photo’s to the AQS, some quilts needed to be photographed again, and text had to be adjusted. Well, all kind of things that’s needed to make a real book. And July 1th there it was: the first BeColourful coffee table book. Almost as beautiful as the original photo album. It has the same size, 11”x 11”, and the same layout as the original photo album. And there are 54 striking photo’s of Jacqueline’s designs in this stunning book. That makes it really very special.

For me, it is kind of strange to browse the book. I know each and every page, every photo, every little detail I had made, things I had changed, replaced, and more. And to see it in real life, as a book, well..it was strange in a way. It became a beautiful book, but to be really honest, not as beautiful as the original photo album, because that was a gift specially made for my sister, who I love so very dearly.

If you want to have this striking artwork yourself, it’s avaliable at https://shop.americanquilter.com/the-becolourful-quilt-collection.html And believe me, you will love it! 

Love, Bridget

BeColourful at The Quilt Show

It’s been quite a while since our last post. And there is so much happening since! A lot of great things, I can tell you that :)

Let’s start at the beginning. It was at the International Quit show in Houston, that  John Anderson from The Quilt Show came to our booth. In his hand he had our DVD, How to make a BeColourful quilt. Okay.. that’s great, was our thought. He came to our booth with a question, a request.

He asked us if it’s okay to have our DVD showing at the Quilt Show for 3 months. You can imagine our reaction: we screamed and jelled and danced in our booth, high fived each other, running down the aisles with our arms up in the air. No, that was what we did in our heads.. Our mouth answered with all the right lines ;) Can you imagine how we feel? It is such a great honor which the Quilt Show is given us! This is more than amazing!

And that brings me to the next chapter. We thought it would be the easiest way for them to copy the files by ripping the DVD. But when you do that, you lose some of the resolution, and we don’t want that to happen. And that’s where I (Bridget) came in. Because the DVD files are at my laptop and in HD, the people in charge at the Quilt Show want to have those files. And there were a lot of files to transfer.. Meanwhile it was mid-June, and we’re running out of time. Because the first of July the DVD has to be online.. So I started uploading the files, via Dropbox. But the files were that large, sometimes it took more than 8 hours for one file to upload! Dropbox was way too slow. So I started We Transfer at the same time. And with Dropbox and We Transfer it took about 5 days to transfer all the HD files to the other side of the ocean. But we succeeded!

And it worked out so very well. July 1th was the first episode online. A lot of quilters bought the “Happiness” pattern to quilt along with the DVD. And I’ve seen some results and they are so very pretty!

Well, this is for now. There’s much more happening, I come back with more!

Love, Bridget

Yeah! An article!

Oh wow, this is so awesome! Jacqueline has an article in a great needlework/artwork  magazine. How incredible is that. 

It was somewhere in February, I came up with the idea to write at some magazines. It was my thought, because Jacqueline’s company BeColourful has her 10 year anniversary. And so I did. And there was this one magazine that was interested, Handwerken zonder Grenzen, a needlework magazine.

A few months later Monique Bons came to Jacqueline for an interview. And what a lovely lady she was. Monique was so interested in BeColourful and Jacqueline. The interview was great, and the article ended up in 5 pages.

Of course the article has to be enlighten with a few pictures, and that’s my part :) You maybe know I love photography. I’m the photographer of all the pictures you see at our Facebook page, at Instagram or Tumblr and of course at our website. Anyway, taking care of some photo’s is not a problem at all for me. I’ve chosen quite a nice collection of pictures where they can make a selection of. And it was great to see my pictures in a magazine. :)

The article was great, Jacqueline was so very proud to see her work on paper. And at the cover a beautiful detail of one of her new designs.

Love, Bridget

Fun at Pinterest

It has been a while since we have launched our new website and we want to tell you how happy we are with the response from all over the world.

It was a lot of work for Bridget, Harm and Johan, they have put a lot of effort to make it as colorful and clear for you as we could.

 And as we read all the sweet compliments, we think we succeed!! Thank you so much for all the lovely words! 

Since a year and a half we are also very active at other social media like Pinterest, Instagram and Youtube. When Bridget started this, I had no idea how important social media is for a company like BeColourful. I’m so blessed that Bridget is my sister and that she put so much time and effort in BeColourful. She is always looking for nice things and items related with colors or BeColourful to share them with you. I think is it is very time consuming for her, however she is a social media addict ;-)

One of the social media pages that we have is our Pinterest page…We have a lot of very nice mood boards….. I love it! A lot of our thoughts, ideas and inspirations comes from these mood boards.

At our Pinterest page you will find about 24 mood boards such as Dreamy fabrics, Sewing room inspiration, Beautiful quilting, Quilt labels, Inspiring colors.......

And also my favorite mood board: Quilts and Pets. It is so nice to click onto the pictures and see all kind of quilt related items and….so many more… see for yourself.

Love, Jacqueline

How to make a website

Okay, time for a little update from the BeColourful team. As you may have noticed, we finally have a brand new  website. The old one was very dated, and it was time to make a fresh new one. And I can tell you that was a lot of work. A whole lot of work.

I was the one who was making this website. Our webmaster made the frame, and when finished, it was my turn. I had never done something like this before, and I can tell you it’s quite difficult.

I love to work with all kind of things, Instagram for instance, I like to do that and Tumblr is also one of the social media sites where I like to post some pics now and then. Pinterest is also one of my very favorite sites to visit to search for great ideas. Facebook, well, you all know that Facebook BeColourful is like my baby, how I love to be there, and keep you updated with all kind of posts. And I love YouTube, I would like to do more with that stream, but you know, there’s only so much hours in a day..

Okay, back to the website. Did I mention how difficult it was? I think so.. At first, I had to think about how to get every photo and picture on the right spot. And where. Sometimes that was a hard decision. And can you imagine how frustrated I was when I was working on this site, and the photo’s didn’t do what I expected them to do? As in stay where they are? Once I added a photo, great, but after I had find the right spot for this photo, it kept hanging at my mouse. It followed me everywhere on the page. I wanted to scream, not that was of any help and it didn't work either.. I tried everything to get rid of the picture, but it keeps on following me. It was not funny anymore..

Oh, and at one time, I had the whole page scrolling without my permission. It scrolled up and down time after time. I didn't know what I’d done, but finally it stopped. Until now, I have no clue what I did to make it stop. Anyway, I think it looks good, and I’m quite happy the way it turned out. It’s a bright and colorful website, just as bright and colorful as Jacqueline’s designs.

As you explore our website, you may notice some poor English sentences.. Feel free to e-mail me and correct me. I don’t mind. You know, English is not my first language, and although I do my very best (with a little help of Google Translate now and then ;) ) there’s no doubt I make mistakes.. So please, don't hesitate to mail me.

Love, Bridget

How a girls dream turned into a nightmare..

When I was a little girl I had a dream… I want a horse, I want to ride on a horse, I want some lessons on a horse riding school etc. etc. I think every girl has a dream like that… Unfortunately there was no money for things like that. Mom and dad decided music and swimming lessons are more important than riding a horse.  And it became a desire, a dream that I want to try it…….

Last Saturday it was girls day out, and the girls and me go for a beginners ride. OMG, I really had the feeling that the BIG day finally was there. My pink-girly-day-dream came true. I’m riding on a real horse!!! I have never been that close to a horse than seen one on a picture in a magazine….o yes.

That morning my sister-in-law Victoria and I drove by car to the riding school in Schoorl, a one hour drive, of course we were there the first. We parked the car and we went in to the riding school. The horses…. well they look really big. But we saw many young girls, riding full of self-confidence, on the back of those big horses. Well if they can do it, we can do this… right, we can do this, we can do this, we can…

Finally all the girls arrived and we tried on some riding caps and boots and off we go. We were able to ask for a special horse. Mariska asked for a “sweet one” and she got a sweet one, Fiory asked for a smaller one… and she got a small horse. Everybody had a special request… and me, well I’m not the skinny type I’m afraid, I love to have a horse that can carry my weight. And then there was my horse….. My God, it was the biggest horse I have ever seen! I was not able to look over his or her back.

She was enormous! I had no idea how to get on her back, I’m not an athlete you know. And to swing my right leg in one movement over her back… well “in your dreams fluffy”. I definitely need a ladder or stairs to get on that horse ;) Well, I won’t tell you how I finally got on top of the horse back, but after a while I was on top of my BIG horse, with the name Whisper. What I didn’t know, someone whispered in his or her ears that she can eat whenever she wants and wherever she wants. And that means she stops at every bush and tree. She don’t wants to listen to me, she only wants her bushes and trees.

After 30 minutes I was done with horses, horse riding, horse poo, bushes and trees, I really want to go back. But unfortunately we booked this beginner class for 90 minutes….. Yes, 90 minutes! The last 30 minutes I was worried how to get of this BIG horse. I was so cold and stiff and because it rained the entire ride, there was not a dry piece of cloth on my body. Finally there was the riding school. They showed us how to get off in a very relaxed manner. But because I was so cold and stiff, and my horse was so BIG and the ground was so far, far away from my feet….. Well, I was able to get off. And no, I won’t tell you how inelegant I finally get of Whisper. Use your imagination ;-)) I was so happy with both my feet on the ground, I almost could kiss the ground, almost. And I know that there will be a day that I can walk again without the intense myalgia. Horses and me…. I don’t think it is the right combination…. I’ll better keep on quilting..

How a girls dream turned into a nightmare……..

Love Jacqueline

Social Media and a sneek peek.. :)

Okay! It’s been a while since the last time you were here. Well, there’s a reason for that. While Jacqueline was in America, teaching you all, and showing off at the Quilt Show in Padukah with Harm, I was the only one left behind at home. Poor little me..

However there was a little bright side to it. Because with Harm and Jacqueline both at the other side of the ocean, I had time to do my thing with BeColourful. No one to disturb me with endless phone calls, no one to hunt me down with emails, only some text messages which I could ignore… No, just kidding, it was really too quiet and boring and I didn’t like it at all, them not being here.. I missed them a lot, because we’re very close with each other. We speak to each other on a daily bases, so you can imagine what it has to be for me, when they’re not here.. Yes, poor little me..

And you know, I’m doing my share with BeColourful. Keeping every stream updated! Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and of course Facebook. 

We also have our own You Tube channel, and with only 5 videos so far, that needs a little attention of me too. But you know, with my daily job, the necessary housekeeping and all the BeColourful work, there’s not much time left. And above that, for new videos I’ve to see Jacqueline who’s living more than 2 hours away from me, and shoot some new videos to add to it. And there’s so little time for it…

But I’ve have great news for you all. And that’s why I thought to make this time the blog myself. We’re working on a brand-new website!

How great is that! The old one is very dated, I can’t even look at it L But this new website is so great! Our web designer chooses the format, and I’m doing most of the “filling” (I’m sure there’s a better/other word for that, but I think you know what I mean) We all have our ideas what has to be added, and how we want it to look like, to make it just as sparkling and colorful as Jacqueline’s quilts. And I think it will work. I added some “making of” videos, make a page for classes and shows, a page with all the beautiful BeColourful quilts you all made, 

and so much more! I think this website is going to be great. Hopefully this month it will be released, and I can’t wait for you all to see this beautiful website!

Hope to speak to you soon, when we’re online!

Love, Bridget