My previous crocheted rag rugs (one orange and later one blue) have been made with cotton strips that are a bit harder on the hands. This is heavy to work with, but super fun and smoother. Love how fast it is growing too.

Love the black, magenta pink and polka dot stripes.

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
/Graham Greene

If you enjoy pretty letters (the art of writing beautiful words by hand) in your art journal, this book is for you. It’s something between an inspiration book and a how-to one, collected by Jenny Doh who also made the similar Journal It!, that I recently reviewed. Both consist of samples of art journals and notebooks supplied by creative bloggers. You are introduced to their favorite way to draw letters, a handwritten alphabet and a short tutorial on how to “copy” and use their style in your own journal.

Personally I love the look of hand lettering, and I occasionally enjoy doing it. But most of the time it is not part of my artistic expression to handwrite a quote or a saying. Partly because I forget it when I am doing collage or drawing, and partly because it’s just tedious and too time consuming for me, at least when I often feel unhappy about the result in the end. I like to fill a page quickly and intuitively. Taking a break to find someone else’s quote doesn’t work for me. And forming perfect letters is a sloooow art form. If I remember to write anything it’s by journaling using my own messy handwriting. I’ve been told it looks beautiful though of course I don’t usually see that…

I think the book Creative Lettering is a fun read, mostly because you’ll meet creative bloggers, including favorite artist Aimee Dolich. I greatly admire her artful writings and poetic words. Just today I bought her new and yellow doodled washi tape, from her Artsyville Etsy Shop. Yum!

Her way of writing is to go back into longer text and “thicken up” the thin lines of all her letters until she is happy with how they look. It creates her own unique font that many of us adore.

Other letter artists and bloggers featured in the book are Lori Vilegen, Pam Garrison, Jessica Swift, Lisa Engelbrecht and Martha Lever. For all of them the lettering IS their art, and the way they do it unique and awesome. Take time to visit their blogs if you haven’t already. I’m sure they’ll inspire some art making today.

I have Lisa Engelbrecht’s beautiful pink covered book Modern Calligraphy and Hand Lettering in my bookshelf and recommend you got check it out if hand lettering turns out to be your thing. Lisa is a skilled calligrapher, who uses her handwriting to make art pieces in mixed media, on both paper and fabric. If you want to try calligraphy you need a good pen, like a nice flowing fountain pen, that has a slanted tip. Calligraphy is really fun to play with!

This book is full of hand drawn typography that will give you ideas on how to use pretty quotes and bold lettering on your pages. You can also visit youtube or do a image search on google to get a lot of ideas that you can try out! Hand lettering doesn’t have to be neat either, it can be messy and personal…

How do you like to hand letter a text, and with what?

Further lettering inspiration

* Creative Lettering – more information about the book on amazon
* General tips for getting into hand lettering – step-by-step article by Sean McCabe
* Inspiration on Lettering – a Pinterest board full of examples, copy to learn!
*

When visiting Gotland I hand felted and sculptured a little bird. Then I embellished him like crazy, adding sequins to the chest, curly and coloured wool to the bum and yellow wings for him to fly with:

Making him reminded me of how much I like making softies, or soft sculptures, dolls and whatnot. Maybe other creatures will be born this summer.

Here he is with all his friends, made by my friends:

I took them out on a walk, and then we had picnic in the forest, among all the blue and white Anemones:

I think all the birds did enjoy it.

Don’t they look like a happy bunch of birds, huh?

The last pages of Smart Journal volume 2 are as full of summer and brightness as the previous pages of this journal. It’s about time I start with a new summer journal, though I still have a few pages left in my hand bound journal. There’s still some blank pages for painting, drawing and sketching left in that one.

Again, a small pre-ppainted page (or magazine pages) lends themselves perfectly to journaling. The writing consists of a list, all about summer things finished and done. Lots of lists in this journal. I love lists!

I thought the right pages would be for journaling, and then I let it be as it is. White and pretty.

The last page has a pocket for “extras”, printed instagram images and some notes. Love the green flowery pattern so much!

Powered by Love – indeed. That red label is made by Mary Ann Moss. They’re called Quirky Handpainted Labels. Love using them!

Previous pages of vol 2 can be seen here, here, and here. Oh and the journal cover is here.

What are you journaling in this summer?

Another seven collages finished and all I can say is: I still love project 365 Collages!

Right now I’m creating 4-5 collages in one sitting. I get into a creative flow that makes it hard to stop working. With each new creation I get more ideas that I want to try. I am looking through different boxes and folders for fun papers, and when I’m in the right mood they all seem to fit perfectly together!

Smile With Me

I would love to know which of my collages you like best – and why. Let me know in the comments!

Flip side

The Smell of Citrus

In Rouge

Matters of the Heart

Taste Life Today

Thanks for looking. Have a great Glue it Tuesday my dear ones!

Previously: week 19

A sub page is a extra page attached in some way to fold out of your journal and extend it even further. I haven’t done this much before, but in the square smart journal (with the rather small pages) it was a natural progression. On the spread above the right page has a sub page, a postcard I got from Hope. It’s attached to the page on just one side, with transparent tape, to fold out like this:

In this way you can hide journaling, add in more pages, play with the format of the book and preserve the back and front of a postcard for example. Sub pages are a lot of fun to play around with.

Here is another one, open:

I wanted to keep the gold sun I played with on the right page, but not see it all the time. So I added a page from a magazine and journaled on top of it, as a sub page:

I really like this spread:

But again, a postcard (this one I made) needed a place to stay… I taped the postcard edge to the page’s edge and voila:

Another sub page!

This kind of “extra pages” is really fun to play with, in all directions of your journal. If you bind your book yourself, you can add longer pages in some places and fold them into the book too. Tape is my favorite way to add a sub page, but you could staple, sew of glue it down too.

Does your journal have sub pages?

Everyone loves cut and paste – if they get the chance to try it out. You get to choose images from a magazine, images that you really like. You get to use a scissor. You get to glue them together in a nice composition – and you get to keep them for ever. A friend of mine recently brought over her sister and her sister’s daughter Tindra. We had a great craft time together cutting and pasting in little books.

This is Tindra’s accordion folded book:

And here is the inside:

The most important thing to remember when doing any crafting with a kid, especially for kind moms, is that they are not helped if you craft for them. Helping is being encouraging, saying nice things, asking questions but avoiding judgment. It’s all about showing ideas and letting the child be in charge. Don’t be fooled even if they ask for help, they can do it. All the edges doesn’t have to be cut straight. It doesn’t matter if you get glue on your hands or the images wrinkled. All that matters is the joy of creating something on your own! Craft alongside with them, not for them!

And have fun together. That’s what we did.

The most beautiful sign of spring is the forest spring flowers. In the brown, bare woods tiny white flowers rise their heads in spring. At places, if you’re lucky, they cover the entire ground and makes you think snow has come back… In Gotland this is also true for the Blue Anemone, which is rare around here. I wanted to take a photo of each new flower I saw, but there were way to many to capture them all, although I did try!

When the real snow falls, I will come back to these photos to remember spring…

I like a lot of different styles of art journaling; wild and free, artsy, painted, colourful collage, doodle, total messiness etcetera etcetera. And on top of all those experiments I also have a thing for cuteness…

I don’t know how, but toy shop wrapping paper always appeal to me a lot more than somber grown up stuff. And I can’t help to still love die cut images, cute smiling kittens, children’s book illustrations and baby owls… And you know what I have to say about that?

Let’s indulge!

The small and square format of Smart Journal volume 2 is cute in itself. And it fits perfectly to simply put a cute image on a pretty scrapbooky background. Simple, and sweet.

And with all the lightness of these background papers (the actual pages) they are also perfect for journaling. I love writing on top of them! Sometimes I write about daily life, or silly thoughts – or sometimes a cute image spark something and that inspires me to write.

Kittens and sleeping cats goes straight to my heart. Every time. Every time. If there is not great spot for journaling you can always use a label. I prefer cute ones!

Owls always find their way into my art journal, the green one is a crayon rubbing made from the book cover of an owl journal!

This stamped and embossed cat tag was taped to a gift I once got. It needed to go on a page of its own, and is only embellished when you turn the vellum page to reveal the next page:

Featuring a baby owl illustration, that is simply adorably cute!

Yes, it’s cuteness overload today. But don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Do you indulge in cuteness too – or do your flee it?

Green nail polish and super quick, that is my friend Madde. It’s her swift hands you see on the photos above. I don’t know anybody who crafts with such fury! Today she wrote a post about the pink workshop I held when we were in Gotland last week.. I think the word is spreading all over the globe that I like pink! Because I was asked to do something fun, anything, as long as it would involve the colour pink. Yay!

Since not everyone likes pink as much as I do (I know, crazy huh?) I decided to make something small. Fabric beads! I love making these beads, and it’s easy to learn and fun to try in other colours and materials later. I even made a tutorial on how to make fabric beads once, if you’re interested to try it on your own.

Lately I’ve been having a lot of experiences of being a guide or a teacher. Showing new things to crafty peeps like at this workshop, or introducing crafts to not-so-crafty friends. Seeing how much they enjoy making things is such a huge thrill! I love teaching and inspiring!

I was surprised how fast everyone got caught in the flow of creating and that they wanted to continue to make beads for several hours. We used glitter thread, pearlescent (pink) paint and glitter glue to decorate the pink fabric once it was rolled up.

My own bead teacher is called Janice Mae, and she posts a lot of great and easy to follow video tutorials about paper bead making! Her videos show different kinds of paper beads being made: round, wavy, oblong, how to use them in jewelry making – all in a ton of different materials. Love how easy she makes it look!

Oh, and Madde’s post is called Tygpärlor – check it out.