Happy Surprise!

Great news! I've won a prize in a challenge, for the first time ever. Yay!

I was drawn to win this cool prize of Art GRIP® Aquarelles in Faber-Castell's monthly challenge I posted for last week.

I can hardly wait to try these lovely looking watercolour pencils!





Feeling like a winner, I thought it a good day to make someone else happy, and made this little package for a fellow member of ATCs for All.

She wished for a green-coloured embellishment kit, and here it is!

I even decorated a coordinated green-coloured envelope, which was fun.

Birds and the Trees

Here's a spread from my new art journal, inspired by things I am thankful for!

In my country this bird, bullfinch, is associated with winter. I just saw a group of them this beautiful morning walking to the kindergarten with my kid. I do enjoy the change of seasons a lot!

Between working with acrylics and collage a lot, I like to think of new ways to use my watercolour pencils and the Pitt artist pens, for a change. So it felt more than suitable to create a piece inspired by the Faber-Castell Design Memory Craft challenge. This interesting monthly challenge is something that I just found about yesterday and was immediatly tempted to play along in!

Fishermen in Black and Blue

It looks like I'm really attracted to limited palette challenges right now! Here, the thing was to use only different shades of black and blue.

I'm also trying a new, yet smaller card size here. This 1" x 2.75" format is called a moo, and it's a great way to use all your treasured paper scraps!

The fishermen images are from an old touristic photo book of Greek islands Mykonos and Delos. The book was, again, a free find at our local recycling center. I'm really happy with how the vintage pictures look together with the background of blue paper scraps!

With this set of cards, I'm participating in the weekly challenge at Collage Obsession, the theme being Men. In Finland we celebrate Fathers' Day tomorrow, and while I was creating these cards, I was also remembering the fishing trips together with my father or grandfathers when I was little.

Bird and Vintage Cage in Brown

This is a card I made for trade. It is a so called Arch ATC card, which means its dimensions are those of a standard ATC (2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches) but the top is round shaped. Also, I wanted to give a try on a monochromatic card, using just shades of one colour. This week's challenge at Collage Obsession was Brown, so that's what I chose.

The collage image of a brown bird, song thrush, was a good starting point. I don't have a die cut machine of my own, but had a few previously cut cages to choose from. The brown of the cage was a bit dull at first, but as I added stamping, I was happy with the result. Brown was a bit of a challenging colour to do monochromatic, and I felt it needed a hint of other colours. Green pigment ink in the background and the poppies to add some reddish brown did the job well, I think!

Song Thrush (Turdus Philomelos) Laulurastas

Mediterranean Island

I recently found this outdated road atlas at the free stuff department of our Recycling Center. I’d been eager to try it as ATC background and I’m quite happy with the outcome! The island is made from scraps of magazines and painted cardboard.

On the background I added some gesso mixed with acrylic & watercolour paints, with splashing seawater in mind. Borders are made with paper scraps in Mediterranean-inspired colours, terracotta, turquoise, blue and white. The leaves stamped on top are, in my mind, either from an olive tree or a lemon tree.

With this, I am participating in the Islands challenge at the Collage Obsession blog.