Being a Valentine’s card from a boy gamer to a girl gamer, that is rather a strong message. I know my heart is a’fluttering today.

(He [...]]]> You know when you’re a scrapbooker and a crafter and you always make loads of pretty things to give to other people? It’s the best thing, ever. It makes your heart beat. But sometimes it’s even a liiittle bit better when someone makes something handmade for YOU. Like when your sweetheart spends the better part of an afternoon making something like this for you on Valentine’s day:

Being a Valentine’s card from a boy gamer to a girl gamer, that is rather a strong message. I know my heart is a’fluttering today.

(He cut this by hand. Seriously! Who needs a Cricut?)

Hope you had a great feb 14th! Love and respect. And chocolate.

Sometimes you just need something small and fiddly to craft while you can’t move about much, while you lie on the couch feeling fatigued and sorry for yourself. Say, if you are feeling really under the weather. Just in time for Valentine’s. So: These tiny little paper roses are perfect. So easy to make you can do it even if you have a fever, promise!

There are plenty of tutorials for these out there, but I followed this one by Ann Martin over at All Things Paper. Excellent! Be sure to check out [...]]]>

Sometimes you just need something small and fiddly to craft while you can’t move about much, while you lie on the couch feeling fatigued and sorry for yourself. Say, if you are feeling really under the weather. Just in time for Valentine’s. So: These tiny little paper roses are perfect. So easy to make you can do it even if you have a fever, promise!

There are plenty of tutorials for these out there, but I followed this one by Ann Martin over at All Things Paper. Excellent! Be sure to check out her other projects and tutorials as well.

There is a special place in my heart for recycling, and so I decided to make these paper flowers out of newspaper. There’s this local paper that someone sticks in our letterbox once week no matter what notes we put up. It’s fairly annoying: It takes about 2 minutes to flip through, and then it goes directly in the recycling bin! Such waste of paper. So, I thought I’d give it another round before it got tossed out.

I cut long strips from an entire spread, and was lucky enough that one of the pages had a huge picture in it with a big blue sky. So, folding the strips in half I got the blue colour on both sides of the strip, which lead to the blue effect in the middle of the roses.

Quick, easy and so very pretty! Love making my own embellishments!

Stay safe everyone. Thanks for visiting!

Ok, so here’s a silly thing: I like sketches, but I’ve hardly ever done a layout based one. It’s a bit like when I’m cooking; I LOVE inspiring recipes but I hardly ever use them when cooking.  I just wing it. But I felt like trying it out some more, and found this sketch challenge on a new Swedish sketch blog, lillblommanskissar.se. Fun! Perfect timing, too! The rules were quite lenient, I could twist and turn the sketch and add or withdraw element, as long as it shows that the layout is based on the sketch.

As I dug through my box of printed photos (I have a stash of photos I love, just waiting for the right moment) this photo of my friends Sara and Cecilia jumped out at me. It was a wonderful summer, many years ago, when the three of us spent a week together at Sara’s summer cabin. It was the three of us, hanging out in the sun, going to the beach, cooking good food, drinking some wine, having a little summer vacation together. You know that feeling when summer is so intense and perfect that you can just close your eyes and smell it and feel it on your skin? That was what it was like. This is my friends on the steps to the main house, having ice cream:

On the same steps we also had some perfectly chilled Russian champagne and smoked shrimps. It leads up to a small nook of the house that is called a “Punch Veranda” in Swedish, which could be translated as a Punch Porch, or a Toddy Porch (ha, I love that!). Anyways, it was a very happy time, and I just live the photo with it’s sharp sunshine, the old steps, the bare feet, the roses growing wild.

I wanted the layout to feel fun and carefree, like that week, so I played around with some paper tape, colour wash and some watercolour splatter.

Here are some details:

Thank you for coming by and reading my blog *s*. Hope you had a great weekend. Tomorrow is MONDAY! Onwards and upwards, my friends!

My mum is such a sweetheart, and I love her so much. So, of course, if I can custom a gift for her that is unique and shows her how much I care, I will try my darndest! And as a crafter, giving a gift to ones mother is of course the optimal thing to do. Nobody loves your handmade gifts as much as your mum *wink*

I wanted to make my mum a PMC (precious metal clay) silver [...]]]> I should have posted these pics at Christmas, but here they are, a bit late!

My mum is such a sweetheart, and I love her so much. So, of course, if I can custom a gift for her that is unique and shows her how much I care, I will try my darndest! And as a crafter, giving a gift to ones mother is of course the optimal thing to do. Nobody loves your handmade gifts as much as your mum *wink*

I wanted to make my mum a PMC (precious metal clay) silver pendant for Christmas, and I thought about the deign for quite some time. I’ve just started out making things in this material, and just started out making my own designs, so, of course, I wanted to get it just right. I wanted it to mean something.

This is how it turned out in the end:

The front is quote simple, making the hearts more visible. The rectangular shape finishes off is in a scroll-like manner. However, if you turn it around, it looks like this:

The backside has an intricate, swirl pattern that is stamped by hand. I just loved the idea of it as a little secret, a hidden detail just for my mum to wear.  There is also my signature, of course, and the PMC 999 stamp.

It’s always a bit nervous giving someone a handmade gift. The handmade look is not for everyone, naturally, and what I think is beautiful is not in everyone’s taste. But my mum seemed very happy, and I a got a big hug, and I think she got a bit teary-eyed (so did I), so I think she liked it. Which makes my heart very happy.

I hope you liked it too! If you want to see some of the other items I’ve made, make sure to check out my Etsy shop. Thank you for stopping by!

My living room table, January 2008

I remember that I used to take loads of photos like this, just documenting my work surface at the time (it changed rather often, I lived my crafting life in bags) and how it changed through the process. Documenting the time [...]]]> I love when I find old photos on my hard drive that maybe didn’t make much sense at the time they were taken, but have details that suddenly make sense to me NOW. As I looked through the photos of an old layout yesterday, I found this one:

My living room table, January 2008

I remember that I used to take loads of photos like this, just documenting my work surface at the time (it changed rather often, I lived my crafting life in bags) and how it changed through the process. Documenting the time I spent crafting and creating. The funny thing is how it turns into a sort of time capsule. In this photo I notice:

• My first cutting mat, all flat and nice back then, now all wonky from too much embossing
• My first set of water-proof black pens, still in use and working perfectly (that was a good buy!)
• My glue pens, which I thought was the shizzle back then, but now… not so much (thank you, hindsight…)
• Some of my very first scraps of paper, linen white with gold flecks in it, bless my little cotton socks! (I still have some left. Some things lasts you forever)
• My old and old-school mobile phone, a tiny black Sony Ericsson. The battery lasted for days! Mostly because I kept it as an alarm clock, on mute, forgotten under my pillow.
• My old living room table, oak finish, handmade in India, which I’ve had since I was 19.

When this photo was taken I had two small shopping bags with material and tools for paper crafting, which I stored in my closet. I usually did my crafting by my living room table. I remember exactly how my living room was furnished; the small couch, the bookcases filled with books behind me, the large window to my right, the TV by the wall opposite from me. Stuff EVERYWHERE, that had to be cleaned up and put away when I was done. I find it funny that just looking at this photo, I remember how it felt starting out, trying to figure out what materials and techniques to use, trying to understand it all.

Scrapbooking is a hobby used to preserve memories, and much time is spent on creating pages highlighting various events in your life. But what about the hobby itself, the time spent doing something you love? While I wouldn’t put this photo on a 12×12 layout with loads of pretty embellishments, I would very much use it in a project documenting my everyday life (like Project Life, or Week in the Life), because arts and crafts are such a big part of it. It not always about the end result like a finished layout), but also the process and the journey. It’s a part of your story that maybe never gets told. If you feel you never get anything done, these will be the images to look back on, just as much as those of the big events in your life. It’s your work in progress.

Like I said, I used to take photos of my work surface during crafting. I think I forgot about it, at some point, trying to learn how to take better photos of the end results. I think I’ll try to remember to take more photos like this from now on. Don’t forget to document the process of your hobby, be it scrapbooking, wood working, sewing, cooking… As you evolve, these photos will be a time line of your process. Small time capsules of something you love to do.

I’ve been trying to organise the photos on my hard drive lately, and the other day I came across some photos of the first scrapbook layout I ever made. Well, the first layout in the sense that I had just heard about the concept of scrapbooking here in Sweden. This was back in the end of 2007, or early 2008.

I had no idea where to start, what photos or products to use, what events to scrapbook, what journaling was, how to embellish a page, not much at all, really. I knew I liked swirly [...]]]>

I’ve been trying to organise the photos on my hard drive lately, and the other day I came across some photos of the first scrapbook layout I ever made. Well, the first layout in the sense that I had just heard about the concept of scrapbooking here in Sweden. This was back in the end of 2007, or early 2008.

I had no idea where to start, what photos or products to use, what events to scrapbook, what journaling was, how to embellish a page, not much at all, really. I knew I liked swirly patterns, and that was about it. Me and a friend just decided to try it out, and we found a scrapbook store in Stockholm, got some paper, and off we went.

When I look at it now, I cringe a little, of course I do! At the same time, I’m glad I did it and that I kept the layout. It’s a small gem of a memory from a happy time in my life!

The photo is from my university campus. I went there for four years, and during those four years I walked that path almost every day, hurrying to get to a class, or meet a friend, or go study in the library. I admit that in the end I was pretty fed up, but now, many years later, what wouldn’t I give to be able to go back to school? To get to spend that much of my time studying and learning? It’s hard work but so rewarding.

I didn’t do a lot of layouts after that, but mainly got into paper crafting, card making and photography. I’m much more into it now though; it’s all coming together, my love for photography and memory keeping.

The Lemming Track - My first scrapbook layout form January 2008

Close-up of handwritten journaling

Title, handwritten with black Sakura Glaze pen

Sixxten the Cat makes a guest appearance. Always being nosy!