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Thursday, October 16, 2014

New ALBUM

This is a new album entitled in french " 27 PROJETS pas comme les autres" (27 projects other than usual). I have a friend, who just turned 27 years, and shortly after actually my own anniversary back in September I've been thinking about making a list of N projects corresponding to that age of N years (thirty-five in my case), and listing those projects to be accomplished in a new coming year. Or maybe documenting the N projects we've been making/living/dreaming of/reading/messing up or working on during the past year.

I didn't have time to tackle it for myself, but the idea got stuck in my head. So that's how it got into life - now my friend is hopefully going to document the twenty-seven fun projects/ideas/whatsoever about her life and her family's life in this brand new album.

It's getting better, the album making process. It's less painful because I'm making less mistakes, and I've learned  by doing them lots of useful tricks and techniques how to make it look more what I expect it to look like. Weird colors, lots of violets and that splash of vivid orange - no comments, it just happened.

And yes, the pages are matched to the cover, with same patterns, colors, sometimes a bit softer, so that they don't pop up too much, because they only need to be inviting and inspiring but not outrival the coming content.

As usual those past weeks, I don't have a tutorial for now. I will come next time with a bit more explanatory post sharing some detailed thoughts about the making-of and showing new upcoming albums. Stay tuned!





Monday, October 6, 2014

Gift boxes - from old books, wood scraps, linen and paper

Another project from summer, a pretty new and challenging one.

There have been two old books, an old piece of wood (cheap plywood from a charity shop), a scrap of natural linen and paper scraps. They turned into those two boxes, which I've made for a friend, another friend leaving Finland. I wasn't in charge of filling, the big box contained pictures, quotes, keepsakes, and I didn't attend the farewell party, so I didn't come to see the end result. Other small box was filled with tea bags with handwritten quotes on them.

I have to get to make a couple more so that I can systematize the process and get to describe it better. For the time being it's just sharing with you some pics from behind-the-scene. It was fun and challenging, and actually I'm not quite sure I keep going this way, because all the fine adjustment which box making implies is probably not my cup of tea. Not that much, though designing the cover was the most appealing part for me AND that project was very different from all the sewing and paper stationery making from previous months, so YES, I loved it.

The "hardware" (book cover, wood) for the project have been thrifted. That's also the first time I've drawn the Moomins other than just for my little girl's colorings. First I've been thinking of using some existing book drawings, but I haven't found any of them that would match the idea. So I've made them myself, with ink on nice heavy paper, cut and watercolored them partially. They are bringing pretty much light onto the surface and are simply fun to look at.

That's it, I guess now I'm shifting towards one, at most two posts per week which I don't think is enough. I've debated about coming more often but that would mean I'd have to fill the gaps with some more randomness and watering down the purpose. I've been thinking about outsourcing more random "around-here"'s on Instagram or Twitter (nope, I'm not an Instagrammer yet, and my Twitter account is pretty silent), and just keep this blog more project-centered with "behind-the-scene" focused on work, less on life randomness.

This blog had lot of random content in previous years, some photographs, lot of random stuff around, but I don't like to look back at them right at the moment. I prefer this blog offers a nice and neat track of DIY projects, tutorials and peeks into behind-the scenes. On the other hand sometimes it feels good to share something more out-of-box. I just have to find the proper way to do it.

That means right now it is going to be less updated, but I hope to catch up soon.