Two Sides of Digital Creativity

My new website has been published and the blog has moved to the new address.

Check it out: www.peonyandparakeet.com

The location of the new blog: www.peonyandparakeet.com/blog

And a new blog post is up! Go to the new blog to see it: Two Sides of Digital Creativity

Yearning for Beauty

My new website has been published and the blog has moved to the new address.
Check it out: www.peonyandparakeet.com

The location of the new blog:
www.peonyandparakeet.com/blog

And a new blog post is up!
Go to the new blog to see it:
Yearning for Beauty

Nefarious

Here's my take for the current Art Journal Caravan's challenge. The inspiration word was nefarious which means wicked or criminal.

I wanted to make the image shiny and beautiful but still add some tension there too. There's a shadow for every light and sometimes it is difficult to keep the good and the bad far from each other.

Digital Flow State

Here's a digital art journal page that I made for Art Journal Caravan's weekly challenge. The theme was "Machination".

I wanted to make a page with interesting asymmetric composition with both geometric and free shapes. As always I started with a plain white background and started adding my own digitalised elements and photos. While creating the page I thought about how powerful the nature is. It truly is the biggest machine of all and the greatest source of imagination!

Many people say they work with computers and do not want to create anything with them in their free time. So did I. But within time I have noticed that it is more the question of if you really can get into the flow state on a computer or not. For me, the big thing was to get to know the program very well (I use mostly Adobe Photoshop). After that I have been able to forget the tool and concentrate on creating.

Digital Art Journaling Hit Me!

It really hit me hard: digital art journaling! I have enjoyed digital scrapbooking for quite a while but now I have tried digital art journaling. Oh, I love it!

Part of the enjoyment has been Tangie Baxter's Art Journal Caravan which I joined few days ago. She organizes challenges that really challenge both intellectual and creative sides of the brain.

I know that there are digital art journaling elements for sale as digital scrapbooking supplies but I have a huge strorage of my own stuff so these are all my own copyright. 

The challenge: Impervious. My interpretation: Impervious to sadness.

The challenge: Game of Life. My interpretation: The checkers game with the logical and the intuitive parts of me. 

The challenge: Apolaustic. My interpretation deals with the controversal issues of the word.

How I Survived a Scrapbooking Marathon

In September I attended a scrapbooking marathon, organized by Big Picture Classes with Lain Ehmann as an instructor. The marathon lasted 26 days and you were supposed to make 26 layouts, one each day.

I was busy with a craft fair for the first two weeks so I started 14 days later than the others, determined to make all 26 layouts. My advice: don't do like I did if you ever attend this kind of challenge, start in time - no start ahead if you can! I had to make 2 to 3 layouts each day. Sounds impossible for someone who has a day job and who usually makes one layout in 4 to 6 hours!

But I did it! I accomplished 26 layouts in 12 days! How did I do it?

1) Scrapped in digi. I scrapped 23 digital layouts and only 3 on paper. Digital scrapbooking is so much faster!

2) Found photos easily. My photos are pretty organized. I star them using Stacy Julian's method: I give 3 stars for those that I want to scrap, and 2 start for those I might scrap. I also use a limited number of keywords to tag them and have created plenty of smart albums (albums with predefined rules) in iPhoto.

3) Made some smaller sized layouts. 5 of the layouts were in 8 by 8 size. I usually scrap in 12 by 12 inches but I discovered a new concept with 8 by 8 size. I use only one photo on the page. The subject of the page is "Today". The photo is taken on the same day that I scrap it. I write about miscellaneous stuff connected with that day. This concept suits so well with my life! I might take an odd photo with iPhone, then just go to my computer and scrap the page. I have made plenty of these after the marathon and it is one of the greatest discovery for me provided by the challenge.

Here are a couple of the layouts I am particularly proud of.

I am a terrible cook but as everyone in scrapbooking is crazy over cupcakes and there are so many designs to got with cupcake photos, I baked some! And the cherries on top are from the cherry tree in our garden! The digital elements are from Mary Pop's kit I heart Sweets.

The guidance for the last day was to let go and do something wild and break the rules of scrapbooking. I decided to use my own elements only, few photos, a poem written by myself many years ago and some doodling. It all came so easy, knowing then that I am passing the finish line!

Never Not Doodling!

I am participating this week's Get Inspired scrapbooking challenge with this layout. It has my budgie's childhood photos. The first two of them has been taken by her breeder Annica Haga. This is a digital layout and most of the elements are from Michelle Underwood's Wild Hearts kit.

What I really like in digital layouts is adding some doodling with the pen tablet. I have Wacom Intuos 4 in medium size. I have used it for the title. The digital page looks so much more personal when some hand writing or hand doodling has been added on it.

Talking about hand doodling, I have spent some non-digital quality time too. Here are the papers I decorated yesterday. The blue one is my favorite. They are for sale as a set in my Etsy shop. Check them if you are interested adding some wild stuff for your art journal, cards or what ever you like to craft from paper.

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!

That Little Push from ScrapHappy.org

Here's a scrapbooking layout that's my entry to ScrapHappy.org's sketch challenge in April. It's about making circles and why I love it. I have used my hand decorated papers for the layout and I quite like it how they work with the photo and with the peaceful background. (I try to keep hand decorated papers available in my Etsy shop from now on so if you like to try them, see Peony And Parakeet at Etsy).

Now you might wonder what is ScrapHappy.org. It's a community hosted by Lain Ehmann, a famous scrapbooker. It has a monthly fee and each month you get blog posts that have challenges, videos, audios and other fun and inspiring things for scrapbooking. I like the way Lain brings her personality online. You also get to participate her Layout a Day challenges where you scrapbook layout a day for the whole month. Those repeat three times a year.

What I really like with Lain is that she really tries to make scrapbooking easy. The sketches are very simple and her tips about taking time for scrapbooking are practical. Sometimes I need that little push to get the page done!

Creativity Heals

Here's my entry for Inspiroidu scrapbooking challenge #145. It is about my dear beagle Toni who passed away just few weeks ago.

This was a very difficult page to make but I felt I needed to do it. When I started scrapbooking a year ago I thought I could only make happy pages. But as life goes along sad things do happen. I did not want to document Toni's last days. Instead of that I summarized how handsome and sweet he looked at all ages. He was a very special dog. I will be making many layouts about him and his life with my other beagle Cosmo but with this page I try to accept what happened.

Creating Keepsakes magazine, January 2011 issue, has a great article about scrapbooking difficult events with the title Creativity Heals.

Using Cake Paper and Two Languages

As I have both english and finnish speaking readers I have decided to change this blog bilingual. My aim is not to translate every word but include both english and finnish in every post now on. Feel free to leave comment in either of the two languages.


Koska blogillani on myös suomenkielisiä lukijoita, kirjoitan vastedes osan merkinnöistäni suomeksi. En käännä sanasta sanaan, vaan kirjoittelen vapaasti. Kommentoida voi molemmilla kielillä.
Here's a layout which I made for this week's Inspiroidu scrapbooking challenge. The challenge was to use any stuff found in kitchen. I immediately knew I had to use this cake paper as I had just read instructions from May Flaum how to use die cut circles for a page. She advised to cut them in two pieces and use the other one for the photo and the other for the journaling. This page is about my african violets!


Osallistun tämän viikon Inspiroidu-haasteeseen tällä sivulla, jossa esittelen saint paulia -innostustani. Sain idean käyttää kakkupapereita May Flaumin ohjeesta, jossa hän neuvoi halkaisemaan ympyrän muotoisen skräppipaperin ja sijoittamaan tekstin toiseen ja kuvan toiseen puoliskoon.


Speaking of May Flaum I will be attending her scrapbooking class called Scrap Camp at Big Picture Scrapbooking. I have very high expectations as I was so pleased with my previous class, Textuality by Amy Sorensen.


Olen ilmoittautunut May Flaumin pitämälle verkkokurssille, jonka nimi on Scrap Camp. Sen järjestää Big Picture Scrapbooking ja odotukset on aika korkealla. Osallistuin keväällä Amy Sorensenin Textuality -kurssille ja se oli aivan huippu. Voin melkein lajitella tekemäni sivut kurssia ennen tehtyihin ja kurssin jälkeisiin.

My First Teddy Bear

I am taking part of this week's Inspiroidu scrapbooking challenge with a layout made today. The theme of the challenge is toys and it immediately brought my old teddy bear to my mind. I found an old photo of me holding him and asked my husband to take a photo of us today. We have both got older but our spirit has stayed the same! The hanging teddy bear is to remind me of the evening when I had eaten too much berries and accidentally vomited on him. My mother put him to the washing machine and hanged him outside to dry.

Text, Photos and Scrapping

A scrapbook page "April in Pictures".

In April I participated Picture Spring course organized by Big Picture Scrapbooking. I think it was more about stretching the creativity by completing the assignments than really learning about photography. I do not recommend this kind of course for someone who does not know much about how to adjust the camera as the course was merely a daily challenge than anything educational. Luckily I was familiar with all the basic settings of my SLR camera so that was not a big problem for me. And, I got few really nice photos during April and I am pretty pleased with the result. I really put a lot of effort for taking photos and shoot thousands of photos (really!) during April. My daily picks can be found in my Flickr folder.

Now I am taking part of another course, Textuality. It focuses on writing and is just wonderful. Very educational and full of instructions and examples. Here's one of the exercises I have completed, it's about our kitchen and it is filled with text! The photo has been taken in April - I have so much photos now to use on the layouts!

A scrapbook page "Our Kitchen and How We Would Change It"

I especially like the colors of this layout.

I am taking part of this week's Inspiroidu challenge with these two layouts as I also made them to match this week's theme: using a big alpahabet in the beginning of the title.

A scrapbook page "Why I Love Peonies".

Above is the first layout I made for Textuality - and a bit of the mess I make when I scrap! I have always enjoyed writing but have not really realized the opportunities to use a lot of journaling for scrapping. I intend to improve my layouts not only by taking better photos but also by adding more text and meaning for them.

Small Wonders of Everyday Life

A scrap book page "Hearts in Everyday Life"

I am taking part of the weeks Inspiroidu challenge with this layout. The challenge was to make a page showing life's wonders. I think that the everyday life is filled with little things that really make life wonderful. The patterned papers used here are from Bella Blvd and Cosmo Cricket.

One Summer There Was a Puppy ...

A scrapbook page "One Summer There Was a Puppy..."

I am taking part of Inspiroidu scrapbook challenge with this layout. This is the first time I use stenciling and Glimmer Mist spray in my pages. These photos have been taken years ago but I do not mind scrapping about things in the past. Actually, I really enjoyed spending time with these puppy photos of my beagle Cosmo.

Towards Spring

Here's my entry for the Three Muses Challenge of the week. The theme is Angels. I thought it would be great to have springtime there too as even if it's very winter in Finland we are getting nearer the summer every day.

This is actually a page for the deco booklet called "Wings". And the style is boring old me, too much of everything! I cannot understand how I can enjoy overdecorating, even after designer studies. I do now the rules of using space and all. It is just so much fun letting it go!

This weekend I made a very special scrapbook page about last summer's vacation at Barcelona. I just had no time to photograph it yet. 12 by 12 inches pages do not fit my A4 scanner.

I am so hooked in Cathy Zielske's scrapbooking books, I have to blog about those next time when I have the scrapbook page to show.

It's Cold in Finland!

A scrapbook page "With the Help of Wool"

This is my first 12 by 12 inches scrapbook page made for the Finnish scrapbooking challenge in Inspiroidu blog. The challenge was about ice, not very difficult subject if you consider the extremely cold weather that we have currently in Finland! The photo was taken this morning by my husband. I took the dogs for a walk and they wore knitted sweaters that I made years ago.

First Beeswax Projects

Tags using beeswax.

I purchased Rangers Utee Melting Pot last week as I wanted to try beeswax in my collage work. My first trials were inspired by this week's Theme Thursday challenge: bookmarks. Beeswax makes the surface a bit sticky so these are more gift tags than bookmarks. I did not have quilting iron to smooth the surface so the surface became a bit uneven. I have ordered one though so I am looking forward my next beeswax projects.

The poem in the right side tag is: "Happiness held is the seed. Happiness shared is the flower." I found it on the net and it's so beautifully said!

Long Ago And Far Away

Mixed media collage "I am here at last"

Here's my entry for the week's Three Muses Challenge, themed "Long Ago And Far Away".

I started with my husband's photograph, taken at Barcelona in Sagrada Familia last summer. Then I picked one of the prints I have got with Somerset Studio magazine. I worked several layers using stamps, acrylics, patterned papers etc. I also attached two self made polymer clay buttons. I love using my horrible polymer clay buttons as they are not symmetric, nor pretty but blend so well in everything I make.

For me, my life has been "I am here at last" for the last years. I have been able to do so much what I really love: be creative, achieve the things I value the most. I am very grateful for that.

Felted Hair

Collage "Felted Hair"

Here's my entry for The Three Muses Challenge. This collage is approximately A4 size and made by cutting papers and adding acrylic paint. The idea of felted hair came from the last weekend's felting course.