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Vanja Utne is a Norwegian illustrator and artist that I love. She makes wonderful art, and her illustrations are so charming and just looking at them makes me smile. She’s also the creator of one of my favourite comics on the web.
Go visit her site and check out her wonderful stuff at CheesePirate.com:
So, this Christmas she sent out some Frostfell cardswith her own illustrations on it, and she sent one to me! It was totally one of the highlights during the holidays, and certainly one of the nicest cards I’ve gotten. I wanted to send her a card back, but also, I couldn’t help but make these Cheese Pirate earrings. Handmade, custom made and limited edition *wink*, these are the only ones, and only for Vanja!
This character is Lunch, the rodent bard:
I love this little rattie so he got some dangly hearts to hang out with him. And this is the cheese pirate, with some shiny loot (because he’s a pirate. So he needs some treasure. But I didn’t add any cheese):
I’m looking forward to seeing more art from Vanja, and I hear rumours of the possible publishing of a book soon. I’ll pre-order mine!
Thank you for stopping by. Stay safe!
Day 8! One I’ve been looking forward too. The prompt for day 8 could not have been more perfect: Make an old book into something new.
I’ve been wanting to alter a book for a long time, but I haven’t gotten around to it. I grew up loving books with all my heart, cherishing them, taking good care of them… to alter and change a book has felt a bit big and scary, you know, like I’m crossing a line. But no more! This beautiful old thing, that is sadly falling apart anyway, will get a new life as an album documenting this year (The title is “The Conquest of the World”, which of course I feel is very fitting):
I’ve been researching for a while on how to do this thing, so today’s prompt really… prompted me get started! One resource I’ve been looking at is Noel Hyman’s vids at Paperclipping . Noel (and her husband Izzie) makes really high quality vids, and Noel has a lot of good ideas and is very pedagogical. I highly recommend having a look! I feel much more confident now, having seen a few examples. Other than that I try to find examples on Youtube from mixed media artists.
So, today I made the cover. I was very happy to finally get a chance to use a beautiful paper by Kaisercraft, Hidden, from the Secret Bird Society collection. It’s been sitting in my stash for a while, one of those “it’s so pretty I can’t bear to use it”. Also, I got to open a brand new pack of Tim Holtz’s Ornate Plates that’s been sitting on my shelf since before Christmas. Yay!
This is the front cover:
And this is the back:
The book plate is filled with little cogs and pebbles and beads, and I’ll fill it in with some glaze to encase it all, but I wanted to take these photos first, since it takes ages for it to dry properly. The word in the book plate is “Create”, which is my One Little Word for 2012. I’m so excited about this book, and hope to fill it with lot’s of stories, memories and photos from this year. Onwards and Upwards!
Hope you liked the photos! Thank you for stopping by. Keep creating!
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Tricks have been making all these neat and almost edible bracelets lately, they really remind me of the candy bracelets you could get as a kid (and you’d walk around all day with them around your wrist and eat the little sugar beads once in a while, at the end of the day you’d bee all high on candy and have sticky wrists).
We decided to take a few shots of Tricks in her bracelets, which is easier said than done during winter season. We didn’t have a lot of extra lighting, so we had to use the flash, which meant that the shadows got terribly sharp, but in the end a cheap lamp from Ikea got to play the part of a softener. Thank you Jed for that idea:
In the end a lot of the shots came out un-sharp, but we got a few good ones, so this is the end result. Here’s Tricks!
It was a lot of fun, I’m really getting more and more into photography, and am starting to love my digital camera. It helps having people around with the same interest!
Love!
So, after the long and cold winter we had, me and Tricks took a week off and went to Crete, third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. We didn’t really know exactly where we were going until one day before departure, and even then we knew very little of the town we were going to: Hersonissos. The whole trip took us a little by surprise; neither of us had ever just gone on a sun trip before. Though relaxing by the pool at the resort was pleasant, we of course got a bit antsy after a while, and went exploring.
The town itself, considered to be one of the most highly developed tourist resorts of Crete, has a harbour mainly filled with restaurants and bars, and seems ideal for people who prefer to party a lot, I suppose (i.e. not me and Tricks, who just wanted to take it easy). There are also a couple of streets with tourist shops, selling all sorts of cheap trinkets, but for some reason there were a lot of shops selling silver- and gold jewellery, at unreasonably high prices. Maybe not a town we would have chosen. But if you look for it, you’ll always find something interesting, wherever you go.
We took the bus down there almost every day; after all, you can only lie on your butt by the pool for so long. We found a quiet restaurant run by a sweet Greek family, and we went there for iced coffee every time we went to the harbour. They always had free tables in the shade, overlooking the sea, always pleasantly cool and windy.
Passing all the tourist shops on the main street we one day saw a sign telling us we could “make our own necklaces with our names on them!”. Typical trinket store, we thought, but we stopped and tried to shade our eyes from the sun and see what was in there, this tiny shop that was no more than a hole in the wall. It was a bit dark in there, but we took a brave step in, prepared to be bombarded by sales people, trying to show you everything and explain what good prices they had.
It was a bead shop. In there sat a quiet lady, making a necklace. The walls were covered in displayed hand-made jewellery, inventive and different and beautiful. Along the walls were tables with beads and pearls and gems, in glass, metal, clay (hand painted clay pearls!), stuff we would not ever find at home. It was like finding a treasure in a cove somewhere.
We came back three days in a row. Everyday staying there for the better part of an hour, bent over the tables, studying everything, looking for more things to pick out. And every day the lady very patiently counted every bead we’d picked out (this took some time). She shyly asked if we had the bits to put it all together, and smiled. On the last day she gave us each a Mati, a glass charm, to protect us from The Evil Eye. Tricks got her address on a little hand written note, hopefully we can keep in touch.
 Mati, a traditional Greek "Evil Eye", to protect you from envy and evil by capturing it. So we came home from our vacation with treasures. And they will last a long time, when we sit and craft and drink tea next winter.
Whenever Tricks find a gift for someone she always takes time to wrap it in the most beautiful way, making it so much more than the gift inside the box, the gift wrapping itself makes it all the more special. So when she had her birthday last year I wanted to do the same for her.
For this set of gifts I chose a wrapping paper with colours that would match her dress and the colour scheme for the party itself:
 Of course the pressies needed a matching bag  Punch out details from the wrapping paper and stick on the gift with some glue dots I had a lot of fun with the following ones. Of course I found a lot of fun scrapbook supplies, which means that I could either do one big gift of them all or wrap them all separately. I chose a combination of both. Cherry blossoms was something that occurred in a couple of her projects, using a lot of those sort of stamps, so I decided to make her a blossoming tree, hanging all the gifts from the branches:
 Some green silk paper, japanese rice paper and glass pearls to match the cherry blossom tree  Cherry blossom tree with pressies It was a great evening with a lot of happy friends and family, and I hope Tricks will remember for a long time and that that it makes her smile!
Oh, of course, I forgot to post the picture of the card I made Natalie for her birthday! I got this beautiful Graphic 45 paper from Sara, and decided it would be perfect for the card I was going to make.
It was a lot of fun to make, I used metal wire and beads and feathers and sequins and chipboard. So, this was the result:
 The picture isn't sharp enough but there is a small bead dangling from the wire up on the right side, which I quite like
My friend Natalie had a birthday a few weeks back. I hadn’t seen her in a while and I was kind of busy with work so I couldn’t go to her party. But I wanted to send her something, so I stared thinking of making her a pair of earrings. Natalie is such a great woman with a background in martial arts and Egyptian dancing. She’s been studying to become a teacher for several years, and is now working as one. She is strong and colourful and feminine. So she is the inspiration for these earrings:
 Earrings for the b-day girl!  And a close-up
Well, when Tricks gives you something she does it with a flare, even just a bottle of red will get her personal attention. Like this one, simple and beautiful. Cheers!
 Who'd say no to this?
Tricks has started making these beautiful brooches with beautiful pictures in them from Graphic 45-papers. I have a feeling she’s only just getting started! She made me this one:
 How awesome is this?! She just inspires me :) And does it in style! I had to try it too of course and made a couple of them myself with pictures from Neil Gaimans’ The Sandman, and also one with a picture of Modesy Blaise, which is for my mum. I’ll try to snap some pictures of them and post them soon!
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