Keeping it small and slow

I've been busy and tired at work, but the mini art journaling challenge keeps me inspired. It's a good stress release to dive into little art projects. Small is the key word for me right now. If I had to make big pages and large paintings I'd be overwhelmed and even more stressed out. Small is good and calming.


I have also started a long planned scrapbook project with my old photos. I mean the really old ones. There are pictures of my grandparents parents and their siblings and friends etc. A lot of mysterious group portraits from which I can't really identify anyone. It's propably going to be a very simple album with few photos and some basic information, since I have so little material. But I love doing it anyway, slowly but surely.

More mini art journaling

Here are my art journal tags for the last two weeks. I really like these kind of challenges, where someone gives you a question to ponder on. And of course it's a blessing to have these lovely persons who have time and energy to organize different challenges and that way keep the rest of us inspired and crafty.

Ice skating

Today we went ice skating to the lake Saimaa. Weather has been just right lately, so the ice was thick enough and there was only a thin layer of snow on it. The conditions were perfect for skating and it was wonderful! So much space to go to whatever direction. And it's a big lake, we really could have skated hundreds of kilometers. But we didn't have such extreme goals, just wanted to enjoy the moment, skate a little and then have a nice cup of hot cocoa.

Art journaling prompts

Keeping an art journal has been on my to-do list for a long time. For some reason, there hasn't been much progress. My Moleskine journal I bought just for this particular purpose, is almost empty and has been sitting abandoned on the shelf. I realised that I need more discipline with journaling, inspiring prompts and sharing my work with others. That's what gets me going.

I purchased L.K. Ludwig's wonderful book "True vision, Authentic art journaling", and immidiately started working with my Moleskine. It's important to start with something, anything. No matter how the pages turn out. I just have to get the process started, an then go from there.

Another great source of inspiration is a journaling challenge that I luckily came accross: "52Q, a year of mini art journaling". There's a Flickr group for the challenge and you can also read more about it from the hostess Emily Falconbridge's blog. The question for the first week was: what do I wish for this year to bring? Here is my take on the subject:


I'll be using small tags (front and back), one for every week. I'm planning to use a binding ring to attach the pages together.

Natural science

This interesting box was a find from flea market. It was temptingly called a "biologist's collection" and I just couldn't resist it. I'm not even sure about the other items, but the sea horse is definitely beautiful. There's also somekind of hay, a small twig of lingonberry and a piece of lichen or maybe alga. You see, I'm not the biologist, I'm just an aesthete.

Polaroid Fun

My friend used to have a Polaroid camera many years ago. I remember the excitement of waiting for the image to develop onto the paper. But because the Polaroid film was quite expensive, we couldn't take tons of pictures back then. Times have truly changed, now there's a free software you can use to turn a regular photo into a Polaroid-like picture. How cool is that! The application is called Poladroid and it can be found here.

2009

Oh boy, it's January already. We had a nice and cosy couple of days at the cabin just sitting by the fireplace, skiing and going to sauna. But we also had a gorgeous fireworks, and my fingers got nearly frozen trying to take pictures.

Winter is so beautiful. Wish I could capture the views more accurately, but the light is so scarce. I'd need a better camera.



I still have a few days left before going back to work. Gotta take it easy and relax.