Scrap Journaling

Ok, I confess, am more and more into art journaling when speaking of paper crafting. I do still love scrapbooking, the whole non-commercial and commercial ascpect of it. But spending a day buying scrapbooking stuff and scrapbooking in a crop at the annual scrapbooking event in Helsinki, made me get back to basics. I realized that the best shop I can ever find is the one I am able to keep for myself.

I imagined walking into an art journaling shop where I have hundreds of little circled packed in cellophane bags. Would I like to pick the spring colored ones or the mix with the handmade buttons? Or perhaps I would like to browse background papers, all neatly arranged and made by ... me! This shop would be me-me-me, I-I-I, and perhaps something made by a friend, an artist that I love, but all handmade, and in components, ready to be scrapped ... I mean art journaled or put into a collage!

I woke up early in the morning, eager to start the manufacturing process. I began creating circles, flowers, leaves and backgrounds. And found some handmade buttons as well. I did not have the time to make something from textiles and yarns, I was too excited to get to the buying mode. Well, this shop had great service and everything was free, it was easy pick up all the pieces needed.

Then I could not hold myself anymore. More is more! Well, this is what you get when you get overboard with shopping!

What if your scrapbbook and art journal would be almost the same thing ...

Tell me what you think? Did you get the idea?

Playing With Faces

As mentioned in the January blog post, I am attending Traci Bautista's FASHIONISTA! art course and here's the exercise where we draw the fashionable face with markers.

I try not to take the course very seriously but just enjoy and play with pens and paints. This reminds me of my childhood. When I was a child I used to draw hundreds of faces and give them names and families. It was a bit like playing with paper dolls. I could entertain myself for hours. Well, I still can spend hours and hours drawing this and that, so no change there!

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.

The Beginning of Fashion February

I am slowly recovering moving to a new house and starting creative work by attending Traci Bautista's FASHIONista! workshop. It is about making drawings inspired by fashion. I am celebrating the coming month by naming it Fashion February! You will see my interpretations of fashionistas, join to make a few of your own! I started by watching America's Next Top Model and Dolce & Gabbana's advertising and here's the first one!

Happy Holidays!

I always dream about preparing for Christmas well ahead and usually never will. This year of all the years I have done more Christmas preparations than many times before. Even if I am about to move to a new home within a week and I am living with a small chaos at the moment!

Here's the cover of a mini album I have made as a present. I think mini scrapbooking albums make great presents. I picked some memorable photos for my sisters, like this gingerbread house which we made together when I was a small child.

Hopefully new memorable photos will be taken this Christmas for future scrapbook pages! Happy holidays!

Playing With Decos

Here's a couple of recent pages I have made for decos. Decos are handmade booklets that circle from one person to another and everyone decorates one page. When all the pages have been decorated the deco is sent to the person it is made for. Think about tens, even hundreds of decos with different themes waiting for you to decorate a page and send it forward. How crazy is that?!

Pretty crazy, with very little purpose, but I still love that hobby! Would I never make a collage of vintage boat trip or strange nature phenomenon? Without decos, probably not. Decos stretch imagination and help finding personal style. It is also interesting to see what other signers have created with the theme. Deco swappers appreciate the solitude spent with decos but at the same time they appreciate the network among similar people.

When I make decos I enter the imaginary world where anything is possible. Can't think a better way to relax!

Winners!

Using random number generator I have randomly picked the recipients for the card surprise package. They are:

1) Martina

2) Holly Eva

3) Monika

Martina, Holly Eva and Monika, please contact me by sending your mailing address to peonyandparakeet(at)kolumbus.fi!

Thank you all for commenting! I really enjoyed reading your comments!