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)

Art Journaling With Bad Taste

I have many strict rules. Let's just say my mother was strict and I inherited the personality. However, there is a little rebel inside me. Today, I got this stupid idea of cutting letters from magazines and incorporate them to my art journal. I tried to get rid of the thought of ruining all my handmade papers by glueing cheap lettering on them.

If you have read art journaling literature you recognize that I had a conversation with my "Inner Critic". I strongly believe in inner criticism and I am actually pretty fond of my Inner Critic. She always knows what's best for me and the life with her is very simple: toss toss toss away... No second thoughts.

But today I had the day off from work and my Inner Critic was feeling lazy too. So I did it, grabbed the scissors and chose carelessly the words "Talo" (house) and "Valo" (light). It sounded like a small poem and suited to my mood as I was enjoying our new home and all the light that comes through its huge windows.

Needless to say the page did not really satisfy my Inner Critic. But as it was made to a Moleskine journal and it was difficult to tear the page off without breaking up the journal, she decided that the page would be treated as an evidence of bad taste that anybody can have in their weak moments.

Sales Table

I am going to a small crafts event tomorrow and here's the most of my sales table. Fabrics, cards and decorated papers. It has been fun to gather them all together and it will be fun to attend the event, sales or no sales!

Colorful Music

This art journal page is called "This is how I see the music". It is inspired by my favorite artist Tracy Chapman. For me, music is a very visual experience. I see lines, shapes and colors when I listen to it.

Speaking of Tracy Chapman, I made a scrapbooking layout last summer about me listening to her music. This was my very first digi layout, the template is by Cathy Zielske.

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.