Hi there! No Hama beads today! Instead I'm sharing today a quick and easy tag project, which I made for Paper Garden. I used their printables in this project.
I started the tag by adhering some a bigger printable on top of a piece of cardboard to make a background. I then adhered the picture of the lady to a cardstock to make it sturdier. I used printables I have received from Paper Garden, which are from previous monthly kits. But as there’s now a wide selection of different printables available in the shop, you can get something similar. Besides the printables there’s not that many different elements in there. Just some postage stamps, a doily, a sticker and some lace, buttons and pearls.
Like always, I recorded a video of my process so you can see how I made the tag. For example you’ll see how the background was paler and cleaner at first but I then added watercolors in there in later stage. The beauty of mixed media is that you can just keep adding layers until you like the look!
Thank you for stopping by today! Wishing you a wonderful weekend!
What kind of sound this machine would make? What do you think? Silent flutter or creaking gears? Maybe Hama bead gears would keep a softer tone than actual metal ones!
This is my second piece for the Hama bead article at Craft Stamper that never came as the magazine ceased publication and closed. It's such a shame as I really liked the magazine and found it inspiring!
For the card I used four techniques out of the five and for this piece I used all the five. You can see the techniques better in the first post showing the five little tags.
Thank you for stopping by again today! Tomorrow I promise to share something completely different!
Materials: Prima Marketing, Studio Light, Ranger, Nabbi
Hello again! Yesterday I shared some tags I had made for an article piece in Craft Stamper showing five different techniques using Hama beads. I then promised to share two actual projects with them as well - and here's the first one. A little card using the beads!
If you look closely and compare this with the tags, you see that I used four of the five techniques in this. I also added a butterfly colored with warm tones. The butterfly is a Art by Marlene stamp from Studio Light.
Thank you for your visit today! See you again tomorrow!
Materials: 7 Dots Studio, Prima Marketing, Studio Light, Ranger
Hi there and fun Tuesday! Today I have five little tags to share with you. They were made for an article for Craft Stamper that was never published. It would have been a Masterclass article with a theme and five techniques using that theme. I'm sharing the technique tags today and continue with the two projects for the article.
As you can see from the title, the topic of the article would have been Hama beads. Or iron-on beads of any brand. I thought about five technique for them for mixed media use. I especially like how they turned into wonky grommets or piece of metal sheet. Even though I have the step pictures to techniques, I'm not showing them here as I might some time turn something into a workshop or another article! But if you are clever, you probably pick up the idea of these.
Thank you so much for stopping today! Have a great day!
Materials: Prima Marketing, Sinelli, 7 Dots Studio
Hi there and happy new week! Today I have a Facebook live recording to share. And no, that's not the version I kept yesterday. If you want to see that one (a small walk-about in Helsinki), you need to join the Seth Apter Creative Community (link) as it's only available through there.
This live recording is actually older as it's from the beginning of the month. It's a little altered box using WOW! Embossing Powder. You can see the announcement post here (link). In the announcement post you can also see the materials and the photos of the sample project.
As you can see from the recording, I used embossing powders different ways - with stamps, with stencils, with moulds and on top of different surfaces - cardstock, cardboard, metal, tissue paper...
Thank you for stopping by today! Wishing you a wonderful week!
Materials: WOW! Embossing Powder, Prima Marketing, Sinelli
Heippati! It's Fri-yay of the third week of the month and that means third and final post for the new series of posts for the Seth Apter Creative Team. You can find Seth Apter's site here (link) and more about the Creative team here (link). I've included a list of products to the end of the post with links to Seth's own store.
This time I had two sources of inspiration or jumping off points to my projects - senses and Finland. In the course of the three posts I'm creating a piece inspired by a visual, an aural and an olfactory source. And as I'm hoping to keep a Facebook live this coming Sunday where I take you to a small tour around Helsinki, the other source for the pages is pieces connected to Finland. Hoping because of the weather - if it's raining cats and dogs, I'll postpone. If everything goes swell, the live will be on Sunday February 21st at 9 am EST / 3 pm CET on Seth Apter Creative Community (link). Please, follow my Instagram for updates!
This post is the odd one of the three in a couple of ways. First of all about the sense I'm using. As you have probably used quite a lot of visual inspiration before and maybe aural as well, but I'm pretty sure that something olfactory isn't among the most used. But in fact, that's a powerful sense. People remember scents and smells better than photographs, for instance, and scents have the power to provoke memories if you suffer from dementia. Also, declining sense of smell is an early tell to dementia.
I'm sure you all have had a situation where you have had a memory pop into your head because of a smell. And I'm also equally sure that you associate certain scents with certain places or people. As my goal was to use Finnish sources I chose a scent that first came to my mind when thinking about a scent to Finland. It was coniferous forest and spruce. Like I say in the video, maybe I should have gone with juniper as Finnish people are referred as "katajainen kansa" - folk of the juniper quality / out of juniper, meaning the resilience and sisu that we are connected to. Maybe one of the reasons for spruce was the Christmas tree we still had in the living room when I recorded the videos in the beginning of January.
About 75 per cent of Finland's total land area is forest. The forests are present even in the big cities, well, our big cities, which aren't that big. But even here in the capital area you can get to an actual forest in just about 20 minutes bus ride from the city center. Keskuspuisto - the Central Park is a big forest area in the heart of Helsinki. Even though it's name in English refers to a groomed park, most of the parts I connect with Keskuspuisto are natural spruce and pine forest. There's some wider routes running through the area but also a myriad of smaller paths you can roam around. Sipoonkorpi National Park (18 km2) is just about 30 minutes drive away from the city center and bigger Nuuksio National Park (53 km2) on the other hand is less than an hour away. More about Keskuspuisto here in myHelsinki (link) and more about Finnish forests here in Visit Finland (link) and here in Metsähallitus (link). I thought one of the differences would be lack of links as well, but I ended up adding some.
Another way this page differs from the previous two is the paper doll. As you have noticed, and I've said in the videos, I used a Tim Holtz paper doll as my focal point for each one. I carefully chose a doll to represent that theme. Where in the previous two the character has been a little girl, in this page I wanted "a lumberjack". The character echos, like I say in the video, my grandfather who was a carpenter. Also one of his sons, my father, is a carpenter by trade, so cutting trees and chopping them to planks is something I've seen since childhood. I can still remember when my husband and I were helping to move some logs from the tractor trailer and where him and me were useless to move one bigger one, my grandfather, then around 90 and with rheumatism, lifted the other end of the log with tricks and strength, so we could then got the lumber moved. I consider us really lucky as we have some wooden ladles and spatulas he has made still in use.
Enough about the differences! One of the things that all of the three projects have in common as well is the stamp set. In a series like this, I like that there's something that binds the individual projects together. On top of the previously mentioned doll, tape and such I used PaperArtsy's Eclectica3 18 cling rubber stamp set in all of the makes. In the first one most of the markings are hidden underneath the paint layers, in the second one they are mixed among the blooms and in this one they are the most visible. That's got to do with the color combo that the scent brought to my head - green and black. It's something I might haven't otherwise used! I also chose the stamp patterns and stencils inspired by the scent.
The journaling in the page is loosely translated: "Her temporary husband - As a human being he was really fine character, peaceful and amicable. Weeks go by and summer turns slowly into autumn. The moment of truth is at hand." As you might have noted, there's different fonts in the text as I had a couple of different books I cut the phrases from. The title - "her (or his, as again, Finnish doesn't have a gender) temporary husband" - caught my eye on a theater history book. It was a play from the 1930s, translated by Eero Boman, which is a funny coincidence. Boman was my great grandfather's surname before he changed it!
Thank you so much for stopping by today! I hope you have enjoyed the series and picked up some inspiration! Please let me know if you have any questions! Stay safe and have a great weekend! Hopefully see you on Sunday!
Moikka! It's Thursday of the third week of the month and that means second post for the new series of posts for the Seth Apter Creative Team. You can find Seth Apter's site here (link) and more about the Creative team here (link). I've included a list of products to the end of the post with links to Seth's own store.
This time I had two sources of inspiration or jumping off points to my projects - senses and Finland. In the course of the three posts I'm creating a piece inspired by a visual, an aural and an olfactory source. And as I'm hoping to keep a Facebook live this coming Sunday where I take you to a small tour around Helsinki, the other source for the pages is pieces connected to Finland. Hoping because of the weather - if it's raining cats and dogs, I'll postpone. But I'll keep you posted!
Yesterday I started with sight and Helene Schjerfbeck (link) and today I continue to hearing and Sibelius. As I mentioned yesterday, one reason for using the senses as well, was that I was taking a trip down the memory lane and found out these older blog posts about inspiration. I wrote a whole series back in 2014 about different sources and ways to use them. Here's a link to the one about music (link).
I could have chosen from a variety of different Finnish composers and various styles. Even though we in Finland have the most heavy metal bands per capita (about 53 per 100 000 residents), I went with classic and one of the biggest. One Finnish saying goes "sisu, sauna ja Sibelius" and I don't even have to translate that. Jean Sibelius has said to form the Finnish national identity and there's people who'd swap his "Finlandia" with "Mamme" by Pacius as the national anthem. I love "Finlandia" and it always makes me tear up, but it felt a bit too obvious and pompous for the musical piece to use as inpisration. "Valse Triste" is another favorite of mine, but I know too much of the back story to it, let's say. So I had a few options. I was immediately inspired by "Andante Festivo", but before deciding the song, I did some quick reading about the piece from Wikipedia (link). What I learned is that the maestro conducted a re-scored version of the original string quartet composition on air as a greeting to New York World Exhibition. Helsinki - New York connection! So it had to be this one! If you want to read more about Jean Sibelius, here's the Wikipedia link (link).
There's some controversy how the piece should be played. When Sibelius conducted the piece it was slower than most interpretations. I went with Sinfonia Lahti version as that Finnish symphony orchestra has specialized in Sibelius. I listened to a version from 2003, conducted by Osmo Vänskä, from Spotify. If you don't have Spotify, you can then check this 2010 version also by Sinfonia Lahti, but conducted by Jukka-Pekka Saraste from YouTube (link). The both versions are faster than the slower tempo Sibelius used himself.
Maybe you'll see a pattern emerging, finding those common elements I have in each page even though they are so different? I said yesterday that one is the process of first creating a sheet with mixed media that depicts the theme and repeat it in my video today. I also mention the washi tapes - the one I use in all three pages is from a Finnish company called Paper Garden, who design their own washi tapes after found old Finnish letters, wallpaper samples, receipts and other ephemera. I used one called "Aava" (link).
One more element that repeats in all of the three is the scribbles. In these first two I actually use the same paint marker to do them, too. I always use actual words when doing those markings so they look like words but as I alter my handwriting so much, you really can't make out the phrases and sentences. They bring more of a textural element to the page as well as something very personal.
What I forgot to mention in the video is that I thought about adding a stroke of black Izink pigment ink in the mix of the pastels when doing the watercolor -styled thing. That black would have represented the fact that "Andante Festivo" was played at Sibelius' funeral. But in the end, the little splashes of grey and black, which also added to the contrast, bring that idea forward in another way.
Last but not least, let me again provide the translation to the Finnish journaling. I felt that these three pages I just couldn't go with any other language than Finnish! Well, Swedish or Sami would have been fine, too, as they both are also official languages, but unfortunately I didn't have any old books in either. Swedish is our family's main language as three fourths of the family are Swedish speaking Finns - that is my husband and our daughters.
The journaling on the page is loosely translated: "To be or not to be? Circus princess - her favorite pastime is to gaze upon the passing scenery while the train puffs forward and to think, plan, dream."
Thank you for stopping by today! Please be back tomorrow for the final post of the series! It's again a bit different take on the theme - and maybe not so many links! Stay safe everyone!
Hello again! It's the third week of the month and that means another set of posts for the Seth Apter Creative Team. As before, I'm starting today on Wednesday and continuing through Thursday to Friday. You can find Seth Apter's site here (link) and more about the Creative team here (link). I've included a list of products to the end of the post with links to Seth's own store.
This time I had two sources of inspiration or jumping off points to my projects - senses and Finland. In the course of the three posts I'm creating a piece inspired by a visual, an aural and an olfactory source. And as I'm hoping to keep a Facebook live this coming Sunday where I take you to a small tour around Helsinki, the other source for the pages is pieces connected to Finland. Hoping because of the weather - if it's raining cats and dogs, I'll postpone. But I'll keep you posted!
In this first post I go with maybe the easiest sense - sight. I chose one of my favorite Finnish painters as my source of inspiration, Helene Schjerfbeck. If you want to learn more about her, here's a link to her Wikipedia post (link). If you on the other hand want more inspiration from her, here's a couple of links to older blog posts about an online workshop with Artful Academy, where I used her art as my inspiration source as well and tried to capture her style. First a portrait version (link) and a still-life version (link).
I mention in the video that I'll share links to the paintings so you can see my source. First, here's a link to WikiArt where you can see some of Helene Schjerfbeck's works (link) to see her overall style. I used mainly four works as my inspiration - links in the following go to different articles or Finnish National Gallery. Let me open up my inspiration a little.
"Female Profile", 1884 (link) is an early piece by Schjerfbeck. She was born 1862 and started at Finnish Art Society School of Drawing at 1873, at the age of 11. The 1884 painting is closer to the French-influenced realism than her later works, but I'm drawn to those textural brush strokes in the background. I tried to capture some of that texture in my paint work as well. Oh, by the way, you need to scroll down the Finnish page to see the piece - the link takes you to a bulletin about the two paintings by Schjerfeck in the collection of Ostrobothnian Museum travelling to London for exhibition.
The style in "Self-Portrait", 1912 (link) is totally different. To me, this is true Schjerfbeck. Plain areas of color, stylized, minimalistic and yet so strong in emotion and expression. The cool grey and yellow ochre colors in the background inspired me to pick the blue and golden beige as my colors. There's also something wonderfully soft or hazy in her use of color, which I tried to mimic with my paint layer with Texture Powder. I also were inspired by those charcoal or pencil like lines around the face.
And then two works that have the same name which show her artistic style development perfectly, "Dancing Shoes" from 1882 (link) where she's still finding her style and which is more realistic than the "Dancing Shoes" from 1938 (link). Yes, there's also difference in the technique as the other is a painting and other a litograph, but the latter mimics her painting style as well. I prefer the later version, I just love her stylized, minimalistic paintings. They are so spot on depicting the character and full of expression and emotion. As the girl in both has similar clothing - white dress, white shoes and black stockings - I could have used either one as my inspiration for coloring the paper doll in my finished page.
One reason for using the senses as well was that I was taking a trip down the memory lane and found out these older blog posts about inspiration. I wrote a whole series back in 2014 about different sources and ways to use them. Here's a link to the one about paintings (link).
As you could see from the video, I started by making a mixed media sheet and then cut a piece out of it to form the background of my page. I thought it would be fun to have some similarities in all three projects even though I use totally different mediums and techniques - one of those similarities is the process of first creating a sheet and then moving a piece of it in my art journal.
I promised in the video to have a translation of the Finnish journaling in my blog post. The journaling in the page is loosely translated: "It was pleasant for her to think that she could be traveling anywhere and be anyone. An adventure to the unknown had always fascinated her. But one must strive forward. From this day, there will not be any secrets between us." I translated the text to be about a woman, as I thought about the little girl in the page, but the Finnish language doesn't have a gender so it could be from a man, too. It can be the little girl's thoughts or then maybe thoughts of her father, a promise to not hide anything from her.
Thank you so much for stopping by today! I hope you have found this post interesting! Please be back tomorrow for another sense and another source! Enjoy your day!
Sparkly Tuesday! Today I'm sharing another card I made using the latest release by WOW! Embossing Powders. I made this jewel card using "Ancient Jewels" Trio. These powders are fun as on top of dark surfaces or in heavy layers they are almost golden, but on top of light surfaces you can pick up the colors.
I used the powders both on top of kraft cardstock (the big piece) and on top of white cardstock (the jewels). The jewel on top is made with "Royal Emerald" and the one below with "Decadent Ruby". The big area is "Egyptian Turquoise". The dimensional pattern is made stamping to the hot, molten powder.
Thank you for your visit today!
Materials: WOW! Embossing Powder, Prima Marketing, Sizzix
