Ayka

I ALWAYS SEND MY SWAPS IN TIME. IF YOU DON'T GET THE PACKAGE, IT'S PROBABLY STUCK SOMEWHERE IN TIME OR PLACE. IN CASE THIS HAPPENS, I'LL GLADLY RE-SEND.

I'm a mother of three (9, 7, and 4.5) very good sleepers and I like spending my evenings creating. I've been living in California for 11 years now, but am originally from central Europe. I love California, its weather and nature. However, it's too crowded for my taste and earthquakes don't make my sleep deeper. I'm a sucker for magazines, adoring Somerset Studio and home improvement magazines. I deeply admire artists whose work shows play and creativity and hope I could achieve the same one day. Antique shows, flea markets as well as art and craft stores positively raise my blood pressure and I can easily see myself living in any of them.

I like doing ATCs, postcard size pieces, and smaller scale work in general. Altering things is my favorite part of creating. I'm an avid recycler and believe recycling is the future of this planet. Most often I work with paper and paint but I also dipped my hands in polymer clay and beeswax. I don't care about scrapbooking. It seems too artificial to me (please don't send me to hell) but I love all the beautiful papers, pens, stamps, ink pads and all other yummies. I also tried carving my own stamps and am definitely going to keep trying.

Celtic Woman, the three tenors (Pavarotti, Domingo, Carreras), hits from the Beatles and other hits from sixties, seventies, and eighties (Don McLean, The Monkies, ABBA, Queen etc.), Gypsy Kings, music from musicals (Hair, Phantom of the Opera West Side Story), basically anything I can sing to

I used to read a lot (A LOT). In the last nine years, though, I only read craft and art books. Other than that, I read, and highly recommend, The Time Traveler's Wife and a biography The Glass Castle.

Secondhand Lions, Everything is Illuminated, Amadeus, Firelight, American Beauty, Little Miss Sunshine, Pride and Prejudice, The Name of the Rose, Marie Antoinette, Hotel Rwanda, Pulp Fiction, Love Actually, Nowhere in Africa, The Piano, Out of Africa, Divided We Fall (2000), Zelary, The Pianist, The Red Violin, Something's Gotta Give, Bramwell and more

I'm more of a throw-your-tv-out person. We mainly keep it for DVD watching. The only shows I watched (on DVDs or streamed from Netflix, anyway) was Deadwood, my all time favorite Six Feet Under, Aristocrats (British series, wonderful for family saga lovers), Mistresses (another British series). Oh, and Seinfeld!

office supplies, buttons, postcards, postage stamps, rubber stamps, interesting papers, vintage anything, glitter, ink pads, pens, anything handmade (except for doilies), every single color you can think of, history, Paris, France, Prague, Vienna, old Europe in general, castles, 17th century French fashion, things with visible character like torn books, but also very beautiful new things - e.g. Martha Stewart's absolutely gorgeous line of papers, glitters, punches, ribbons and rub-ons, traveling, America's ghost towns, summer, camping, mountains, ocean, beaches, shells, precious stones, heart shape stones, summer rain and storms

candy, gum, nuts, disney and other cheesy stuff, crocheted doilies, not big on religious stuff (unless it has something to do with art), hypocrisy, arrogance, wearing more than one layer of clothing, other people clutter, cold coffee/tea, and wet socks