14/01/2022

Evolve - Nathalie's Creative Squad


Hello and happy Friday! Today I'm sharing my first Nathalie’s Creative Squad project of 2022! This month the Creative Squad is drawing inspiration from Creative JumpStart topic “Creating Connections”. You can see my original post here (link) at Nathalie's blog.


I’m super honored to say that I’m one of the teachers in the CJS22. When Nathalie held the announcement live, I threw an idea about being inspired by your culture, creating a connection to that. Naturally, your culture is a part of you and probably everything you do is connected to you. You look the world though your eyes, your perspective so your cultural heritage is bound to shine through one way or the other. But for this project I decided to use my culture more clearly, drawing inspiration from the national epic, Kalevala.

The first thing I did was to see the stamp with a new pair of eyes, though. I didn’t want to use it as such, to have the title be “Love”. Instead, I thought what other words I could make using the same letters. I pondered both English and Finnish words and finally settled to “evolve” as I could use that so many ways. When I then had the theme word, it was easy to decide which Kalevala part to use. I chose to go with the creation of the world, the primordial sea and Ilmatar, the air maiden.

In the Kalevala the world is created when a spirit of the air, Ilmatar, descends from the skies to the sea to bathe as she’s bored. She comes pregnant from the wind. She spends quite some time in the ocean and a water bird, a scaup makes a nest on her knee. When Ilmatar then goes into labor, she moves her knee and the eggs fall to the sea. The broken eggs make up the earth, sky and rest of the world. The baby of Ilmatar on the other hand is Väinämöinen. He’s the hero of Kalevala, a skilled sorcerer and one of the main characters of the epic. I find it intriguing that the epic puts the start of the world to the ocean like the scientist nowadays think life started, in the primordial sea. With this on my mind as well, I set out to make a sea.


I used a gel printing plate to make myself a stash of blue papers first. For those I used the stamp as it is, spelling “love”. I also patterned the prints with a packaging from glue sticks. I’ve come across of the piece previously and it stayed in my mind as I then failed to gather it to my stash. But now that I happened to run into it again, I took it home. The pattern is really nice and you can use the part two ways, either leaving dots or rings to the plate. I then tore the printed papers in strips and layered them partly on top of each other making a sea with foam on top of the waves. If you want to see yourself how I made it, please see the video underneath.


As you could see from the video, I patterned the letters by using paint markers. I chose patterns that I connect to Kalevala, like the joined stylized hands, a pattern a little reminiscent of running dog pattern. It’s another connection created!

Thank you for stopping by today! Wishing you a wonderful weekend! 

Ps. Should you want to know more about Creative JumpStart, please visit Nathalie's site (link). The previous link is an affiliate link so if you enroll through it, I get a little sum of the action without extra cost to you! While the Creative JumpStart has started on the January 1st, you still can join!


Materials designed by Nathalie Kalbach:

CJS22 Special Edition stamp

Other:

GelliArts 5x7 gel printing plate
PaperArtsy Fresco Finish acrylic paints Double Denim, Cerulean, Glacier Ice, Green Patina, Venice Blue, Midnight
Fabriano 160 g cardstock
Ranger Archival Ink Black Soot
Posca paint markers 1MR white, silver, 3M light blue, emerald green

Packaging from glue sticks
Brayer
Paint brush
Paper cutter
Scissors
Double sided adhesive sheet
Double sided tape
Foam tape


Materials: Art Foamies, PaperArtsy, Fabriano, Posca, GelliArts, Ranger




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