Some Updates

Hello lovely people!

First of all, I want to apologize to my blogging friends for not commenting on their blog posts enough (if at all). My Internet activities came down to my Etsy shop and a bit of Facebook. That is all I can do right now. It’s because I have no patience for long reads, or any reading except books, because I am ill. I have Cervical Cancer. I found about that around Christmas and since then my life has turned up side down. There have been days of despair and sobbing, but most of the time I have been and I am ok. Right now I am waiting for the treatment to start, Chemo and Radiation therapy, which should be in about a week. Yay. 😦

But, I have to do what I have to do and life goes on. I, thankfully, have a ton of things to do and a ton of things to make, I have been busy with my shop, and most importantly, I have my wonderful supporting husband and our two dogs to make me smile every day.

So that is why I wanted to apologize to you my friends, I am thinking of you, I hope you won’t forget me, I just need to go through all this the best way I can and know how, and hopefully I will be able to welcome Spring Cancer free and with a smile on my face.

But enough about that crap. Here is what I’ve been doing lately.

My studio is jam packed with all kinds of materials and supplies! I have been hording things for years, and even though I work and create and make all kinds of things, I still buy yarn and fabrics and paint, I still get things from people, things they don’t want and I DO want, I still recycle (even more), and I simply don’t have enough space for all those fabulous materials. That is why I decided to offer some of my treasures to other people so that they can use them and make fabulous creations with them. 🙂 Here are the kits that are in my shop (and I have many more prepared ).

The Black and White kit:

You have the link above in the name of the kit, so I won’t explain the contents here, I will just say that I construct all my kits with great care, I try to make them big and filled with different things that buyers can use in several projects.

I also have a Blue and Green Kit in the shop:

Again, a ton of things to play with!

There is also a Valentines Kit:

Then this great Masculine Kit:

You can’t see very well in these photos, but there are so many vintage pieces in these kits, some great papers, old or vintage embellishments, book pages, fabrics, yarn, I mean, I love them! I already decided that if they don’t sell for some reason, I will use them as they are and make some fabulous journals and small bags, tags, oh so many things!

Ok. I got a bit distracted. 🙂

There are also some smaller supplies/kits:

My Handmade Paper:

Then another type of Handmade Paper:

A small Blue/Green Embellishment kit:

Small Red Embellishment Kit:

And this lovely Pink and White Small Kit:

This one was recently sold:

As well as this kit:

But there is so much more! I have more kits to add to my shop, but let me show you this gorgeous, (mostly) White Kit that I will hopefully add to the shop in a day or two:

What I especially love to do is to use my handmade unfinished tags and book page bags to pack all these small pieces and yarns into. That way a buyer can use them in a project also, and I get a chance to recycle and help this planet a bit.

Anyway, I have been in and out of the hospital for the past twenty days or so, and I have a week before the treatment starts, so I am trying to work as much as I can and to stock up my shop. I will (hopefully) be home for the weekends in the next couple of months, and my husband will also help me with shipping the packages to buyers, so the shop will work normally. I do need that type of work/fun/amusement/thought distraction now. 🙂

I wish you all great day/night!

 

My Glue Book

Hi lovely people!

Are you in a Christmas spirit? I’m not. I don’t know why. Maybe because there are so many things happening lately. I’ve been having some health issues and many other things on my plate, but it’s not all bad. I’ve also been creating and playing in my studio and that always makes me happy. So here I am with some of the pages from my collage journal or glue book. They are not finished, I will be adding more stuff to them, but here is how they look now. 🙂

It’s a lot of fun cutting images from magazines and gluing them into this big journal. It’s actually an altered book and it is perfect for this. I started by gluing background images first on many pages. That way I created a start for me to add things when and how I like. It’s a very meditative process. I don’t do it regularly, but when I feel like I need to relax, I just take my box of magazine images and cut and paste. I think I’ll do that again one of these days. I sure need some relaxation. 🙂

I hope you like these pages and maybe you will take an old book or some notebook and play with junk mail, magazines and scrap paper.

Have fun! And have a great day/evening! 🙂

Heart Junk Journal

Hello lovely people!

Here is a new journal I made!

It is made almost entirely out of recycled materials. I just looove when I’m able to turn “junk” into something beautiful and useful.

I took a piece of soft plastic sheet that was sitting in my studio for ages, layered it with some soft (again) plastic packaging material and cotton fabric, stitched them and made the cover. Then I added an applique piece to the front cover which was made with cotton fabric and silk, and I think it looks just right for this journal. Of course, the closure was also made with a recycled piece, a  band that came from my mother’s shirt, brand new, just unwanted, 🙂  and I added my handmade fabric beads to the ends to make it more pretty. There are also my handmade beads on the spine, as well as on the inside of the journal.

There are stitched book pages in there, my handmade papers, plain white pages, etc.

Oohhh it makes me so happy! I really love this journal. So colorful and cute!

The above photo shows an envelope that I made out of a book page, stitched and painted and clipped to the page. There is so much room in this journal for writing and adding things!

I went crazy with details and embellishments!

 

And that is it! I hope you like it, and I hope it will give you some ideas on how to recycle more. 🙂 You can find this lovely fun journal in my Etsy store.

Thank you for visiting!

A New Journal

Hello lovely people!

I do have a new journal to show you, but first let me show you some of my paper bowls. I promised in my last post that I would. 🙂

 

I do have more of them, but they are not finished. These were the first that I painted and varnished, and they turned out great, but then I switched to another project so the rest was left to wait for me to play with them some other time.

But I did finish this journal.

I really love this journal. It is so wonderfully textured and industrial and rusty and just gorgeous! It has all kinds of papers inside, including my handmade paper, of course, and tags, pockets, booklets and tuck spots. You can find it in my Etsy store. 🙂

Have a great day/night everyone!

And the Winner Is…

Hello friends!

First I would like to thank you all for your lovely comments about my work, both here and on my FB profile. You guys are the best!

But I don’t want to keep you waiting, so to announce the winner of my giveaway:

all of the names went into this lovely little bowl that I made and I will explain that to you also (later) 🙂

then my husband randomly chose one

and it was

Congratulations Julka! 🙂 Please email me your address and I will send the journal to you. Yay!

So, about the bowl. You know how I love to recycle. Actually, with the years passing, more and more of my work is inspired (at least partially) by recycling. Our planet is suffering. We are polluting it and destroying it and I feel horrible knowing that I am part of that. Well, some things are almost impossible to avoid, like using AC or buying products that contribute to pollution because there is no product in the grocery store that in some way does not contribute to pollution. But I try to do as much as I can to minimize that. And one of the ways is to recycle as much as possible.

We all get junk mail, receipts of all kinds, bills etc. And I have already shown you my handmade papers (which I love). 🙂 So as with making paper from newspapers and junk mail, you start with tearing them into small bits and soaking them in water for at least several hours but preferably over night.

After that, you put them in the food processor and blend them.

Then take a sieve or colander and if the holes are a bit big, add some thin fabric or a cloth or what ever you have on hand, and strain the mixture.

You don’t want it to be too dry but also it shouldn’t be too wet. I know it sounds like crap when I say it like that, but there is no way for me to explain it better. The thing is, you will know if it’s dry enough because if it is too wet than you won’t be able to stick it to the bowl. And if it’s too dry, you will have hard time shaping it over your mold.

Here is mine nicely stuck to the bowl, which serves as a mold for my paper bowl.

As you can probably see, I covered the bowl with plastic wrap before putting my paper over it.  Oh! I almost forgot to mention! You should add a little bit of glue to the paper paste after draining the water. For example, I would add about a tea spoon of glue to every cup of paper paste. But you could add more or less, I don’t have a recipe for that. In fact, it would probably be good to check out on Youtube how people do that, more professionally, but I was just playing and having fun.

Anyway, that’s how I did it, and I pressed it pretty well that paste.

After it is a bit dry, but not completely, which you will also be able to see because if it’s not dry enough it won’t be able to come off that bowl in one piece, you can take it off and put it somewhere to dry completely.

Unfortunately, I don’t have photos of my bowls right now, but I will photograph them and show them to you in the next post. Hopefully this was enough explanation on how to make them, or at least to try and just have fun making a mess. 🙂 But you can make some really beautiful bowls this way, and after adding paint and varnish to them, they make lovely decorative pieces and also great gifts. Especially if you fill them with sweets! 🙂

Have a great day / night everyone!

Good News and a Giveaway

Hello lovely people!

I have some great news to share with you – my Etsy shop is finally working again! I am slowly adding more things to it, but there are some lovely journals there already. You can take a look and tell me what you think. 🙂

So to celebrate that, I would like to give this lovely little journal to one of you!

It is a small journal, about 4,5 x 5,5 “, but it is quite fat and it has hard cover, very textural and lovely, and a lot of pages inside, as well as pockets and tuck spots. There is also a clay piece on the cover as a decoration and a focal point.

Do you like it? If you do, just leave me a comment and I will be back very soon (probably in about 5 days) to draw a winner. Also, if you wish you could leave a comment on my FB profile and that way you’re also in a game(although that will still count as one entry). 🙂

Good luck!

Treasures

Hello lovely people!

I just wanted to share with you a new and wonderful collection of treasures. It is so great to have friends who are willing to let you rummage through their old stuff and take all kinds of bits and pieces. 🙂 My dear friend took me to her late aunt’s house and told me to take whatever small thing I like! Imagine that! After screaming and going all “Ooohhh and aaahhhh” and almost peeing in my pants, I started collecting. Luckily we only had about half an hour to be there, because I would need a suitcase at least to put all the stuff in! 🙂

Here is what I found:

The box above is kind of a piggy bank I guess. It’s leather and metal but has no key. Hmmm… How will I open it? 🙂

All those keys and metal tags, light bulbs, rusty old things, also some not that old but perfect for altering and all just perfect for incorporating into my work! I was so happy when I found them and I still am! I also found this texture tool which is to die for! 🙂

I also couldn’t resist taking home this dusty old box filled with papers and receipts from 1920’s till 1930’s!

The paper is very delicate, damaged and brittle, but it’s history! It’s time preserved! It’s someone’s piece of life captured, and now that I came to the rescue 🙂 it’s going to be saved and loved.

I can only imagine how old this rosemary is. 🙂

I have to clean them all and prepare for another life in my books and journals. I feel as it will be a way to preserve them and most importantly to honor someone’s life. Even though I have never met that person, we have a connection now.

I’m Still Here

Hello lovely people! It’s been a long time since I wrote my last post, but I am here now, with something new to show you. 🙂

I’ve been knitting socks (but didn’t photograph them unfortunately), playing with paper and paint, making beads etc. All kinds of stuff. But mostly making journals.

These are all recycled papers and packaging material, painted, stamped and stenciled, and prepared for the journal making. Even though you can see only blue pages in these photos, I’ve made all kinds of colorful pages. I decided to go a bit “wild” and use colors I don’t usually use, just for fun. And this journal came to be – “The Circus”. 🙂

It’s made entirely out of recycled/reused materials and I love it!

But this one is not going to be mine. I have too many journals already. 🙂

This journal, as you can see, has all kinds of papers inside, and with so much texture and pages that are different sizes, with lots of pockets and tags, it will be fun fun fun to write in!

So instead of making a Christmas themed journal, I decided to make a Spring/Summer one. Well, we all need a bit of color and warmth every now and then, right? 🙂 Next time I’ll show you another journal, and maybe more of the stuff I’ve made (if I remember to take photos, lol!)

Have a great day!

 

Journal Therapy

Hello lovely people! It’s been a busy month. Hubby went to Germany (business stuff again) and he will be away for two years! I am trying to keep a happy face but it’s not easy. I miss him. He will come home for Christmas, but until then Meda and I will be home alone. I also discovered a small growth on Meda’s shoulder, and since he had a cancerous growth removed from almost the same spot several years ago, I am terrified! The only thing I can do is wait and see if that thing is growing, and to hope that it’s not cancer again but maybe just some fatty tissue or something like that.

Luckily, I have my journals to help me stay sane (or at least close to that). My diary is filled (after one year),

and now I started writing in my junk journal.

It’s fun to write in, with all those different colors and textures and different page sizes.

I also played with some of my homemade stamps.

And started working in a new journal, the biggest one so far, A4 size. It’s actually an altered book in which I glue things down. It all started with wonderful magazine pages that I didn’t want to cut. I wanted the whole picture to be seen so this journal is perfect for that.

Some of the pages will stay the way they are now and some will have things added to them. It’s so great to have a nice base to work on later.

I also used some of the papers that I used to clean the brushes on, and made quick and fun pages.

I have too many journals, I know. But there is no law against that, right? 🙂

A Shawl, a Journal and a New Bike

This shawl was made using all kinds of different fibers, and with some pattern manipulation.

It didn’t turn out exactly as I wanted it to, but I like it anyway.

I wanted the “skipped” parts of the pattern to be more visible. I guess I should’ve done those in a contrasting color. Oh well, maybe next time.

More pages from my Art Journal:

We’ve had a nice weather over the weekend so it was a perfect opportunity for me to ride my new bike! 🙂

After a long ride one must rehydrate. 🙂

I also like the woven table. 🙂

Have a great day everyone!