The Biggest Challenge in Any Art

I have started to believe this: the biggest challenge in making art is to relax and let go. No need for stiff lines or regular shapes. That's my rule anyway.

Today I was not feeling relaxed at all. So I created a mental wall, trying to assure it's safe to doodle whatever comes to my mind. I think the protective attitude shows in the result but it does not really bother me too much.

When making these collages, I try to be quick and not to calculate too much. I love fast strokes as they leave no time for consideration. Lately I have started to concentrate more on the intuitivity of the process than the plan that I am going to accomplish. It gives me so much pleasure when I am not analyzing every move.

I have noticed that art journaling is becoming more and more popular. No wonder. It is something not to be taken too serious. And what I have seen, people are often more successful in their fast made sketched pages than in their really serious canvas paintings. It is a bit ironic sometimes but that is art: relax and let go!

Little Luxury

This is my little luxury: having fun with colors!

I took a paper full of tiny doodles, colored it and added some scrap pictures over it. This way I made a deco book front cover and then could not resist decorating the back cover too.

Decos are small books that circle around person to person and each one decorates one page.

More about swapping decos in the blog post from December.
I also made a page for one deco using the same technique. And this really is a color splash!

Most of the scrap pictures shown here are found in the local supermarket! Suprisingly they had a greater selection than many craft stores!

Doodling on Fabric

Crazy doodler, eh? I made a new folk bag and added doodling on it, even on the back side of the fabric.

See more pictures at my Etsy store, it's called Aurora Borealis.

What Is Valuable?

My answer is: Little things with big stories.

A tiny piece of hand decorated paper. How long have I practiced to achieve it - tens of years! It seems ridiculous but it represents a lot to me.

Plain wool. Some might think it's nothing. But this wool is really big for me.

My friend has bought it raw from the area where I lived as a child. She has spent months and months learning how to find and pick the right kind of wool, how to process it and find people who can do it in bigger portions. We have shared hours and hours around this wool, learning its qualities.

And yes, small thinks can grow bigger.

I got this fleece from my friend. It's grey finn sheep, Kainuun harmas, wool, processed for spinning or felting.

In the near future you might find a small portion of my friends fleeces available at my Etsy store.

If you are interested in yarn instead, well there are plans for that too. Dyed fiber or yarn? Planning ...

Join my newsletter Peony And Parakeet Specials if you want to be alarmed when there's wool available.

Budgie Pages and Style Talk

I have had pet budgies for almost 20 years. So when I started scrapbooking in the beginning of last year, it was natural to make some pages of them too. Here are my budgies pages so far. Now that I look at them, there might be a maybe a slight style change in my scrapbooking.



This is my latest layout. It is made for the LOAD scrapbooking challenge. The first day's prompt was about making a basic layout with a photo, a title, some journaling, cardstock and patterned paper.


Well, there's really not much basic or simple in my style but I honestly tried. Ok, I did not succeed in making anything plain but I quite like the result, very unplanned but turned out ok in the end. Now I wonder, why do we use so little hand drawing in scrapbooking, I am definately going to try to include that more in the future.



This and the next one are my newest budgies and I have used baby colors for their pages. I love little bits and pieces of embellishments and I used them generously here.



The last layout is about my very first budgie. This page was made during the Amy Sorensen's scrapbooking course called Textuality. It focused on writing and I really enjoyed writing my budgie's story.



There has been a lot of talk about style in scrapbooking. There are even courses about how to develop your own style. When I see something that I like, I try to analyze why I like it. There are often the same elements that really catches my eye. When I repeat them in my own work, I get pleasure creating them.

The funny thing is that the more I learn about my own style, the easier it comes to play with the style. It also enables making something in a totally different style when being aware of the elements that affect the style in general. I have began to maintain a moodboard of my style at Pinterest to have pictures that I love all in the same place. If you have tips about style, leave a comment!