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

From Art Journaling To Fabric Design

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:

From Art Journaling To Fabric Design

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

This Is How I Doodle

I doodled a little ornament in Photoshop and recorded how I created it. It took 10 minutes from start to finish but the video is shorter. I increased the speed to make it easier to watch.

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.

Home and Warmth

I hate houses with no textiles. It seems to be a trend now. At least I have seen many lately in my favorite tv show Grand Designs.

For me, creating fabric is one of the main goals whatever I create. I like to study texture and structure and it never bores me. Before I grab my pens I can feel pretty uninspired but after thinking about fabrics, I am soon creating in full speed.

As seen in the pictures above, I've lately been into rugs. There are many beautiful rugs designed in Finland in the 40s to 60s that I adore. Like this Leena-Kaisa Halme's rug that I saw in the rug exhibition in Helsinki many years ago.

Textiles make home. When I need to escape from the world I take a romance novel and read few pages and get extra warmth from a homemade quilt. This digi layout is about me reading romances. I think my love for fabrics shows on the page as well.

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!

Painted Pottery

It all started with the two flower pots that I found at the antique flea market. I found them so inspiring! Then it continued with the few drops of wood stain that were left in the jar after some home renovation. I made some patterned papers by combining the stain with the watercolor pencils. Then I had to scan them just to see how they looked like at the computer. And then it all got out of hand ...

I made a digital scrapbooking page about the pots.

But before that I made my own kit.

It is available for you for free. Just remember: just for personal pages, no commercial use, no alterations.

Painted Pottery Digital Scrapbooking Kit (large zip file, over 17 MB)