It's all about backgrounds these days.

Spray varnish.

At last I tried the varnish and it leaves a very nice result. It makes the colours stand out much clearer and I really like that. My spread/paper/painting won't be ruind if I spill some waterdrops/liquids on it. The varnish won't become yellowish as times goes by. All good reasons to go on using the varnish but, it's a bit shiny which I don't like that much.
Have you ever thought of what kind of colours you eat?
The space left I won't use for anything but as a reminder for later use.



Next spread I made on Sunday. It's still me testing backgrounds. I was reading a poem to Sandra and she liked it so much that she learnt it right away. It's a poem for children about parsley.



I had to write it down of course and on the right side I used an image from a book since Sandra is so much in love with dogs. This spread will definetly remind me of this weekend when Sandra started her journal.
My writing says a little about this weekend and how we spent it.

Wish you all the best.

Me and my sewingmachine and a bit more.

Today was sewingday.

Today I spent my day sewing some mug mats. I'm really in for doing things as simple as possible and these were easy to make.
Since most of my daily used mugs are blue I chose to make blueish mats. The first ones I made I wanted to be as simple as possible but still have a little decor on them.

This is how I did it. I started to decide the size of the circles and cut them out in felt (felt with glue on one side) then I ironed the feltcircles onto the fabric and cut it even. I used a very close zig-zag seam to bind it all together.

I have this fancy machine that can embroider so I chose to make a circle of flowers/stars. When studying the result I felt somthing was missing so I added a handsewn row of red stitches. Simple and easy.

Here you can see them and below a close up.






I have had this fabric for a long time and today it came to use. I wanted to make some squared ones too and this design suited well for my plan.
I made them the same way as the first ones but when the zig-zag was done I sewed a stright seam using long stitches right inside the zig-zag. Then I found my hook and crocheted a little edge. I didn't want something lacey so it's single crochet only.
( US double crochet)





I like the way they turned out both of them even they are quite different.

Wish you all the best.

Journalspread made while helping Sandra.

I had this very good idea.

Friday I was going to make my best spread ever but while helping Sandra it slipped away. It was impossible to recall my plans. UHA..... should I be a little scared? Seems that I don't manage more than one thing at the time.

Well, this is how it ended up and it does tell my storey. At least for me who knows it.
Sandra got to take her book back home this evening and we had prepeared a spread for her to finish when alone. I look forward to see it next time.



Tomorrow it's monday and I think that is going to be my sewingday from now on. I just have to use some of my stuff and I'll start to make some mug mats. I got the idea from another blogger called TVdesigns. Go have a look at her cute work.

Wish you all the best.

Sandra is journaling.

Sandra weekend.

She got the ball and loved it. I gave her the choice to bring it back home and she decided on that. Suited perfectly for a photo with her black Hello Kitty jacket.



And then the fun started. She was sooo concentrated that she even didn't notice me snapping this photo.
She decided to use some images of Hello Kitty and we did copy them on some of the papers that were teared out of her book. She coloured them and then cut them out.



Then gluing.
I suggested to her to make a list as her first entry, a list of her wishes for the summer, and she did.
I helped her paint the background after she had chosen the colours, the rest is mailnly her own ideas. Ofcourse she looks at my doings and gets inspired by that but it's a good way to learn and practice. Once I told her that whatever she want to do is allowed she relaxed a bit and really enjoyed herself.



This is really her ta-dah moment. How very proud she was, and she had all reasons to be too. Showing me and my husband over and over again. What a joy to see her so happy. And then she started longing for home, (wanted soooo much to show her mom) but that feeling was gone a bit later.



She really wants to have all the drawing/painting stuff that I have and tomorrow we are going down town to look for some. It's such a joy for me to follow her and observe her understanding of things. Development is exiting and I'm learning from her too.

My journal went hot.

Old stuff.

I played with some old stuff some days ago. I came across this photo showing Marilyn Monroe and couldn't let it go. I was too young to know about her when she died but as Elton John says...her legend ever will...

I liked doing a hot red page. I found some quotes and that's about it. Marilyn Monroe was a beautiful girl and she had it all......except,I believe, what it took. And that's a problem a lot of people are having today too. One of our celebs once said: There's nothing in it to be a celeb, the only differens there is is that everyone know who you are and that's it.
Personally I think that no human beeing can find its strenght amongst the crowds. One have to search inside oneself and find it there.
I myself have to live my life, I myself have to create my strenght, I myself have to create my happiness, nobody but me can do these things for me and I can share with those around me so that they can find their strenght too.





So, what do one do at the next page? Not easy to come up with something to balance it all.
I have a lot of fashion magazines from waaaaaaay back. I found this image in one of the magazines and I think it balance well. This girl looks quite determind and she certainly know where to go.

Have a nice weekend everyone. I'm going to make an art journal to Sandra together with her.

I found what I was looking for.

I was very pleased with this result.

At last I found the time to try what I had wanted for a while now. And I'm very pleased with my result.

This is how I did.
First a layer of gesso then acrylics, yellow and white, some places only yellow other only white and the rest a mix of both. It was important to me to be able to spot the difference in the colours. I left it to dry for an hour or so and then painted over with watercolours. I used different shades of blue. The result came out just like I wanted it to and it's lovely to touch too.
I have one issue remaining though and that is to coat it in some way or other. As it is now I can easily remove the watercolours. I have some spray coating that I will try.
It's so exiting to try different ways of doing things and while I was clearing out my studio I had my eyes open to anything that I could possibly use. So I'm afraid my testings are going to continue.
I thought I would keep the page as it is for later studies, BUT...

At the right page I tried another tecnique. I stamped the circles and then I used a plastic bag all crushed up and " dotted" it on the page. I didn't smear it over the page just barely touched it. This result wasn't as good as I hoped for so I'll try it over again in a slightly different way.



A quite different thing.

When I'm visiting your blogs I see that you are drawing faces and drawing them good too. How I envy that.
It's easy enough to draw tiny people and their faces because when they are so small one don't need all the details. During my education we had drawing as part of our study. But we never drew faces. You know fashion drawings seldom show faces. We had our attention pointed to clothes and the details on the clothes and we had to draw a lot of different poses too ofcourse.
We became masters of drawing anythng into a hight of 24 cm. (9.6 inches) That was what were expected in our exam. No rulers no measurement at all but still our drawings should measure 24 cm. Well, it became a habit so all of us could transform any drawing given whether it were small or large into a hight of 24 cm.

I've made myself a promise.

I've promised myself to draw a face a week the rest of the year. A-4 is the size and I'm going to draw the face and neck only. Old faces are facinating because they are much more lined so I started with an old face.
Have a look at my first drawing. Do you spot anything that could remind a tiny bit of a person you might have seen? Please, don't judge me too hard, it's my first remember.
And, I had to glue it onto my testing page.




Wish you all the best.

More testing in my art journal.

A lot of testing going on.

I'm really enjoying to do all these tests. The first one was a try to use the 3 primary colours only. My red is not wich is counted as the primary but I tried inspite of that. Have you tried to make/mix your own colours from these 3 ? The black is the most exiting. It's so soft and beautiful and mixed with white the grey shades are nice too.



The next page was testing backgrounds. It's exiting to try new things and this background is promising. I'll show you and write about a better one later on.



On this spread I tried some other new (to me) things. I'm very pleased how the background came out here and this method gave some new ideas to try later on. I do try out texting too mostly on top of magazines. I can't decide what I like the best. It does ofcourse look nice and clean when using stencil letters but at the same time a bit dead....or not as much alive as handwriting. I don't know at the moment so I'm going to continue my testing.
That's all for today, my studio still need some work so I have to get it done.

Nice day to you all.

Hello Kitty...finished.

Half way through cleaning my studio.

I couldnt help finishing Sandras ball last night. And I was in such a hurry that I forgot to snap photos of the pieces before gluing together.

Today is another cleaning day. The next half of my studio ( actually it's two rooms)is going to be a nice and tidy place again.
And, I have to start sewing again to use some of my fabrics. It's overloaded up there.




Photo above shows Kitty together with gramdma and grandpa.
Below she is with her mom and dad.



This ball came out very nice shaped. You can see the almost perfect circle and at the same time a very clear square. Really facinating.
The corner "flowers" acts just like I had hoped for and the nice thing is that there are a lot of "right sides" as well.
Next I'm trying to make a star. Perhaps I'll have filled the house with stars next Christmas. :-)
Enjoy your day everyone.

Sandras ball.

Sneak peak.

Just a small post this time because it's time for cleaning my studio. This is a sneak peak of the new ball that I'm making. These four first pieces will be the upper half of Sandras ball.
How lucky am I to have Sandra to "blame" it on, hehe.
Sandra is obsessed by Hello Kitty so I thought that would be a good opportunety to try making a child ball.
Sandra has some colouring books here at my place all about Hello Kitty. I've used them to look at when drawing the images. It has been very timeconsuming to make this one. A lot of not visible work, but I really enjoy doing it and can't wait till coming weekend when Sandra is back here. I'll give her the choice to keep the ball here or to bring it home to her own room there.



This ball is equal the size as my first one but the wings are cut back so I'm quite exited to see how it works this time.
When working on this one I got a whole new idea that I have to try. It's stored in my to do pile.
But today is cleaning day ( isj...not enjoyable) and my studio really needs it.

Have a nice day everyone.

Owls in my journal

I was trying to draw an owl and thought I would keep it in my journal together with different images of owls. There's really nothing special to that page other than the owls and their fun apperance. The one that I drew I was colouring/painting when in the phone so it's not a masterpiece but well enough to keep I think.
The pale pink dotted paper that I used was nothing I recomend others to use in their journal. It's kind of waxed and the paint/markers won't stick to it. My pink pen worked but needed a loooooooooong time to dry up. So no more of that paper for me.



In the other page I was trying to make another kind of background, and it looks exiting. I shall try it over again later on. It will suit me better with the brush strokes horisontally so I have a couple of spreads left before I can do that.
Right now I'm so into making balls that it'll have to wait a bit. I tink I've become a ball addict.

Have a nice weekend everyone.

Another ball.

I've finished my second one.

On this one I chose to use just one colour as a background and I think that was smarter. The ball is looking more like a ball this time and it's because the "wings" are cut back. To get this shape one have to use rounded triangles.( A triangle with rounded sides) As shown in the photo below.



Use whatever you like.

As I showed you you can use any form of decoration on the ball. Could have been nice to use kanzachi flowers all around. One could easily cut out the midcircle and insert photos or other things. The possibilities are endless.



All decorated.

Here they are all ready for gluing together. When I first saw them like this I thought they could be nice to use as small coasters for glasses or other things. One could ofcoures have chosen just one set of colours to enrich the table decoration, and a couple of balls hanging over the table. ( now I'm laughing) I easily get carried away.



The size of this ball is Ø 13 cm (5.25 inches) each circle and that's somewhat smaller than the first one. I really like the size of this one and I could even downsize it a bit more.

They are easy to make just be exact from the beginning. One need to have the circles/triangles just the same size. If not, the gluing together process will become a nightmare.



I enjoy when the triangles are ready to work on. To be able to choose the right design so that it looks well. That's the real fun. Working it out and then do the job and see if it comes out accordngly to your intentions.

Come on folks give it a try, I promise you will enjoy it.
Don't hesitate to ask me any questiones and I would ofcourse loooove to see your balls.

Wish you all the best.

My exiting to make "ball"

You should try this once.

I had imagined that the ball would look a bit more rounded, but this was my learning ball. I'm hooked. I'm starting a new one immediately after writing this post. The decorating part is so fun to do. Almost like meditating. This ball will have its place right inside my front door, to welcome visitors.




It's made of 8 circles Ø 20 cm ( 8 inches)
I had some old papers that I used and then glued on strips of book papers. It's neccesary that the circles are a bit sturdy.



As you see I've used the lotus flower as pattern. That was why I connected the ball to meditating. (lotus is often used as a symbol in meditation)



This ball can be used in several projects. One could make a ball to a newborn and use date, time and year as part of the symbols. It could be used as table decoration and lots of other things.



The photo above is taken me lying on the floor.



Here you see it hanging in a little distance and here you can see that it's not that ballshaped. The next one will be though. I have it all figured out.

Wish you all the best.

Celebrating all day.

Today has been a busy day. To and from all day. Started our day by watching the childrens parade. After that we drove to watch Sandra in their parade and stopped to celebrate a couple of hours together with Sandra and her mom. We had some other to visit too so the day were filled up. Now we are relaxing in front of the telly.( exept me writing this short post)



One of the coming days I'll show you something I've been working on lately. I call it my "welcoming-relaxing-lotus-meditation ball"
Wish you all the best.

Joyful journaling.

I had so much fun playing with the mermaids.

This was me playing. I had the spread painted and didn't know exactly what to do with it. I was just trying to sketch a marmaid and then got the idea to make this spread a marine one. My earlier painted waterfall came into use and fits well i think.

It was quite a task to glue down the different images. ("let me see, over this under that and so on") I could have planned it better in beforehand but my aim is to make the road as I go. The first photo shows the spread as it looked when I first thought it done, just penwork left to do.



When I saw it in a distance I felt something was missing so I made a few more images. The seahorses had to join in even if they are a little oversized.
I saw some seahorses in person in Australia and they really facinated me.



This was a day with my pencil and watercolours. Pure joy and I had a lovley time doing this spread.
Wish you all the best.

How to use two faces in my artjournal?

I fell in love with these two faces immediately when I first saw them. It was late evening and I painted my pages, glued the faces down and went to bed with a huge expectation for the next morning.

Next morning I couldn't wait to get started but what happened? I didn't know what to do to this spread. What was it I wanted to tell? I was chewing for hours untill it came out as it did.
I really don't know if this is what it was ment to be, but it is what I came up with.




It's an interesting thought that we plant our seeds in our children/grand children and then when time goes by we move on and the children keeps the seeds and perhaps even polish them every now and then. It might end as my spread express or.....

Have a nice weekend everyone.

Another journalpage.

Use your voice.

I was really looking forward to make this page. I've had the picture for days and just saved it for a bit.
The choire is painted of a well known painter who lived a hundred years ago.(or so)
I don't know his name but he was one of the wellknown "Skagen malerne"

I got the idea for this page imediately when I saw this photo. It express the voices ofcourse but also in a wider range. Can you spot the differens between them? I had a lot of fun making this, and couldn't resist the small image down right. Are you using your voice this much when cleaning?? She's one of a kind I believe.



Different.

This page is my best so far I think. ( from my point of view) It express what I value the most: peace, quietness and awareness. To create some kind of balance I chose to use a sketch of some noisy stuff. Hope you see what I'm trying to express.
I really feel that it all blends so nice together.



Today I've had "a wet day" I've been making mermaids and sea creatures. I'm quite satisfied with that one too but I still have a little to finish before I can show it off.
If you have any suggestions on how I could improve my things I would be more than interested to hear your point of view.

Wish you all the best.

Some journal pages.

I have been journaling again.

I have been playing with my art journal some days now. It's fun to see how it changes. Mostly because of the way I do it. Right now I'm making some effort to collage but I'm struggeling to leave the raw edges into my journal. ( Can still hear my teachers saying: No no no it have to be neat) Well, I'll fight them back!

In this first page I was going to use some of my decorated paper and I have this old calendar with beutiful images on. The calendar paper is sooo nice too. Very "dry" or not shiny paper.

As you see in top of my page I've used my former decorated paper and it wasn't that bad at all. I was very exited to see if I could use some of them and I could. When finished I noticed that I should have coloured the background a bit more before writing so I'll write myself a note about that.
Mostly I use crayons to add a bit more colour towards the edges and then I use a rag to smear it out. That gives the page a bit more depht I think.

And then there is this issue about the spelling. I do not master the english language well enough to avoid misspellings. Stubborn as I am I don't use a dictionary except when I have no idea of a word. The result was that I spelled vegetable with a w. But I'm a pretty good fixer so it IS possible to fix a mistake afterwords. Did you notice my mistake before I mentioned it?




The next page showed me something unexpected. When I was decorating the papers earlier on I was not especially thrilled about the brownish one. But to my big surprise that was the easiest one to use. Most likely because it was the most neutral of them. The rest are very strong coloured.
At the bottom of this page I've used another one, and this little bit now reminds me of frogeggs. Well, frogeggs belongs to spring too so I used it anyway.
Bla, bla, bla to my old teachers!



At the beginning I did not really understand what this (art journaling) was all about but now I love it. It's a joyful way to create and at the same time all ones pages are gathered in a book and not as one and one sheet lying around. For me it's also interesting to look at my progress and this first journal is going to be my learning journal.

Wish you all the best.

It's about time to prepare the Bunad.

May 17th is coming up.

It's Bunad-preparations this time of year with May 17th right around the corner.
I like to let the Bunad hang out for a couple of days before use, and after as well. The shirt have to be ironed and looked over. The shawl and petticoat need a little ironing too and the silver need to be cleaned.

My Bunad is different from the most common Bunad.

I have a socalled "everyday"Bunad. A lot cheaper and almost not in use any more. It's made of cotton ( not as warm as the regulare ones that are made of wool) and I am free to do a little more variations. Not that many rules for mine. I like my Bunad and am proud wearing it. There is a lot of history connected to my silver accessoires.

My silver



First there is my neck-button. I bought that one in an antique marked and I'm not quite sure if it is a mans button. It don't bother me though so I'm proudly wearing it.
The next one is my main brooch (normally this should be a filigree broch) and I inherited this from my grandmother. She got it from her father when she was 14 yo. The broch is a framed silver-coin (2 NKR) wich was made to celebrate Norways independence in 1905. The frame is very nice and the symbols represent clockwise from top: The fishermen, the industry, the farmers and the shippingindustry.
My grandmother used this broch almost every day so all of the family recognize it as hers. I am proud to be the owner now and it's a treasure to me.

Next I wear a broch that belonged to my great grandmother. My aunt (sister of my mom) gave it to me a few years ago. Unfortunately I did newer know great granny but she was an exiting lady. I'm digging in the history.

On the Bunad itself there are 10 small heart eyes to tread the crossings across the chest. These are from my moms Bunad (wich she made herself aged 13) and are made of tin. On the "belt" (can't find the english word for it) there is 2 bigger hearts wich are hook and eye. These were made of tin too but the hook broke apart so I had to buy new ones and in silver. Tin is not in use any more and therefor out of stock. The spear in the end of the silk-string is made of tin too.



My cuff links was my fathers first. He got them aged 14. When he died I was the lucky one to get them. So as you understand I am wearing my family history each time I wear my Bunad, and people are commenting it all the time.



My Bunad

I sewed my Bunad in 2007 and have used it at several occations after that. People always come asking about my Bunad because it don't look like all the other ones. And I'm proud. I don't believe that all the women back in old days was wearing dresses that looked the same, all over. That's why I appreciate my own that much.





The last photo shows my handknitted shawl and petticoat. The petticoat is worn under the Bunad ofcourse. But when sitting it's peeking out and always leads to discussions. It's very practical to have the possibility to wear the petticoat because the weather can be really cold this time of year. My shawl is warming too and I use it if I feel a bit cold.




Well that was the storey of my Bunad, hope you have enjoied it.

A creative weekend for Sandra and I

We have been painting a lot this weekend.

Sandra always get inspired to paint when she look at my work. This weekend was no execption. She wanted to paint at old book-papers with gesso and all just as she saw I had done. Well, nothing stopped us and I prepared the pages.

Saving money.

Sandra has been very eager to save her money so that she could buy her own glitterpens and this weekend she brought them with her. Now she has decide to save for a white pen. I have promised her that we are going to make her her own art journal next time she is coming. It's important to let her try, and she has always been so fond of drawing and colouring. I think perhaps we'll make her two so that she can keep one here and one to bring home. That way she can make her own history from her weekends at our place.
If I show her several possibilities it will be easier for her to continue on her own.
This first photo shows her just starting the pen work.



In this photo you can see how proud she is. I think she did well and had all reasons to be proud.



Here is a closeup of her pages. Not difficult to spot her glitterpens but nice work I think.



This was her last page. She just fell in love with that cute little dog and we had to include it to her page. She learnt that things can be glued into the pages and I think she saw some new possibilities at once.
I am rather curious what this work can lead to. She is a clever girl and who knows, perhaps this can end as a lifelong joy for her.




The rest are some spreads I made. My pile is growing and it's soon about time to try some collage work. Perhaps coming week is the right time.





What have you been up to this weekend??

Some small cuties.

This is what I've been doing lately.

I came across a blog wich is called Peony and Parakeet. Probably the Peony-word that attracted me. This designer,from Finland, has a lot of good ideas and she makes some absolutely stunning folk bags. I really recomend you to have a look. She shares some good ideas on how to fill a sheet of paper with paint and doodling too and ofcourse many other things.
She has designed her own fabrics from knittingpatterns she has made herself. It all looks so great. No doubt she is skilled.
I got really inspired and saw very quick that small bags could be a good thing to make to minimize my stash piles a bit. I have "almost" decided to not buy anything new before I have used a lot from what I have.
I'm absolutely not going to make folk bags like her, but more like party-bags or stash-bags or whatever you want-bags.


Have a look here.



This was my first try, not perfect but good as a learner.

My second attempt.



With this one I thought of making a bag without all the colours I so often use. All the way from the beginning I felt this was a dull one. But when I at last added some colour to it, it wasn't that dull after all.


THE PARTY BAG!!

This is my favourite so far. This is the only one where I've knitted the body and that makes it a little flexible. I really like this one. New ideas and possibilities are flowing all the time at this point.
The size of this one are very good too. I'll have to decide on a more even size since all of them now are different. I use a DVD as a startpoint for the bottom of the bags and despite of that they are different sizes.
Don't know whether you can see it but the tiny lace is made of one-strand wool yarn. The laces are handsewn onto the bags so it's possible to remove them if they are not wanted. In this bag I needed some black and made this lace. I could ofcourse have made something else than a lace and got some ideas for that right now.



The last one.

Now, this is my last one so far and in this I've chosen all the matching colours. What I've learnt is that I should follow my feelings rather than my brains. This one IS dull even if it's coloured. The first one has colours a bit out of range but even so it's more like me.



These bags are all a bit romantic but I'll try to make some with another expression. Just can't wait to get started.

What do you think, anyone who could think of owning one?

Wish you all a nice and creative weekend.