Storm: An Art Journal Page

Hello there!

We're getting near the end of January, and though I've had less art time than I would like lately, I'm enjoying the Documented Life Project 2016: the UnPlanner online workshop and community. This is the first time I've signed up for a full year's online course, so let's see how well I can keep up!

I know already that I won't have time to join all the challenges, but the most important thing for me is to create and journal regularly, even if it's in my own pace.



The UnPlanner prompt for the second week of January was: Start with a quote and paint over all but one word.



"The greater the storm, the brighter the rainbow." I got the quote and the idea for this page from the January challenge at Viva Las VegaStamps!

I'm not saying that the quote goes for people in the face of truly great adversity: war, exile and poverty, to name but a few. It can be insensitive to just cheer someone to be optimistic in a situation where concrete help is all they need.

But the way I saw it, describing a certain kind of personality, I quite like the quote. My eldest and I are both sort of quick tempered and can have very strong reactions in our times of distress, but equally in our times of happiness and gratitude. So that's the way I interpreted the storm and the rainbow this time.



The inspiration board (above) was accompanied by this list of words: resolutions, one little words, pacts and more.../and also/... words like femininity, women, exploration, rainbow, neutral and nature, storm, maps, vintage, writing, script, yellows, tans, black and white, stripes, bold, rainbows, storms and more!

I chose to highlight women (girls), exploration, storm, script, stripes (the "One Way" arrows represent these), and for the colours, a combination of neutrals and some black and white.



I built my journal page on a previously Gelli printed paper, and machine stiched it onto a kraft cardstock cut to the size of my binder page. All but the script stamp are from Viva Las VegaStamps!

I stenciled the clouds with black acrylic paint through a DIY stencil I made with my Fiskars Squeeze Punch. Once the paint had dried, I put the stencil back in place stamped the script with white ink.

As for the anchor stamp, I was just experimenting patterns with it, thinking of a naval theme in connection to the storm, when I saw that from a distance the little anchors looked like birds flying away. So I stamped them around the girl as if she was releasing them from her hand.



The view where I photographed my page is from Kaapelitehdas in Helsinki, an old cable factory turned to a huge center of arts and culture. I'm lucky to take two weekly courses there this spring. This gorgeous view is from the art class where I study experimental techniques in acrylic painting, and the other course is painting with toddlers. I'm sure you'll hear more about these in my later posts!

The view doesn't show very clearly on a cloudy/snowy day like this, but right next to the building there's the sea, now covered with ice. And behind that, the city continues on an island. You can see the bridge on the bottom right corner.



I am also joining the Artistic Stamper Challenge, where it's an Anything Goes theme this month, and Words & Paintery challenge, with this prompt:



Speaking of art classes, if you're able to take some, that is one great way to improve one's life, both today and tomorrow!

Thank you for your visit and I hope to see you again on Monday, with my interpretation of the Scrap Africa February Sketch Challenge #68!

Pocket Art Pages for Scrap Africa Mood Board Challenge No. 67

Hello! With the start of the New Year, the challenge at Scrap Africa is this cheerful mood board combined with the following questions:

What does 2016 hold for you? What are your hopes and desires?



This time, I haven't thought up a word that would represent the whole coming year for me, but what is new is that I'm experimenting a new format for documenting my thoughts, memories and art learning throughout the year. I'm joining the Documented Life Project (DLP) 2016, the UnPlanner online class. You can read more about it here!

The course fee for the whole year is just $12, so even I dared to make the decision to join it, even though I haven't managed to finish a long online course before. I find it generally hard to find the time to watch the videos, whereas I can read books and blogs in bed. Well, now that the phones are smart enough for watching even videos in bed, I might be more successful!



Here's the Scrap Africa Mood Board No. 67, which inspired me with its colours, the doodles, the birds, the vintage crackled paint, the whimsical houses, the gold striped tape and the lighthearted feeling in general. A bit of spring while it's still middle of winter here in the Nordic countries. You're welcome to join until the end of January!



This is the first spread with the monthly calendar view and the monthly divider.





The second spread consists of an art journal page and a photo pocket page.

You can get a feel of the Nordic winter in these photos that were taken in Stockholm, a mid-morning in the first week of January!



The art journal page with the word Freedom in Finnish language was inspired by the Freedom themed Mixed Media Place challenge, and Studio 75 challenge, with the theme of Vintage.



The card with the photos is a Pocket Art Card (PAC) for my DLP 2016 UnPlanner; the prompt was to incorporate the number 16 to represent the new year. Can you see where that is? Yes, there are 16 of the faux cross stitches.

The card was super quick to make. All I did was took a pre-made print/collage background and selected which part of it would make a nice composition. In doing this, it helps if you have a template with a hole the size of the card, so you can see where to cut the best part of the background. I just drew the stitches and voilà, the card was ready! I'm using the 3x4 card size instead of the normal ATC size to suit the pockets of my binder.



My take on vintage may not be so obvious, but for me colours are an important part of the vintage look, and also the crackled paint and distressed paper. I was thinking of what the shades and textures would be like in an aged collage, or old sketches or technical drawings in a museum or an archive.







Thank you for your visit and welcome again!

Cold Weather Birds − Clean and Simple Style Cards

Over the Christmas holidays, I made these super simple cards inspired by the 7Dots Studio December Challenge: Cold Weather. I'm sending these with some delayed New Year's greetings to those friends and relatives I failed to remember at Christmastime.



I used papers, numbers and die cuts from the Cold Country and Destination Unknown collections, a few wooden birds and stars that I got in a post-Christmas sale and a purple sequin ribbon that I've had for a very long time. Plus some stamping inks in white, mint and metallic teal. That's it!



I'm also entering my cards in the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge, with the theme of Something New. These cards are for New Year's wishes so my theme relates to something new that way, as well as the fact that I used white stamping ink for the first time!











I hope you've had a great start for your creative year and thank you warmly for visiting my blog!