Skapande

Jag fick ett kuvert på posten häromdagen, jag hade stora bryderier om vem det var som skickat det. Jag kände igen handstilen men kunde inte riktigt placera vems det var. Kuvertet innehöll en liten låda av något slag. När jag väl öppnade kuvertet som var väl igen tejpad tittade denna lilla målarlåda fram. Och då var det inte längre så svårt att förstå vem avsändaren var. Hanna!

Hanna skickade med en uppmaning. Sitt inte inne och uggla, kasta dig ut och måla, skapa etc… Ja, jag har beklagat mig i något mail att jag inte lyckats få något gjort sen min semester började. Jag vet inte om det var den lilla målarlådan eller vad som bidrog. Men jag har länge velat testa decoupage och när vi hade pyssel i parken började Hanna jobba med sin decoupage väska. Så igår gjorde jag slag i saken, fixade decoupage lack och började fundera på något projekt.

För någon månad sedan köpte jag färdiggrundade duk som redan var uppspänd på en bred ram. Så utifrån den började jag mitt klistrande. Jag hade ingen direkt plan mer än att jag ville få in texten, ”Think outside the box”. Jag hade några gamla böcker liggande, eller pärmarna hade redan fått ge vika när jag gjorde anteckningsböckerna. Samt att jag hittade igen en gammal tidning från typ 40-talet eller så. De fick utgöra grunden och fram växten sedan denna tavla. Den heter kort och gott, Think outside the box. Jag gillar själva uttrycket. Att lära sig tänka utanför sina vanliga ramar, att testa och inte fastna i sina vanliga mönster. Hur duktig jag egentligen är på att följa den tanken vet jag inte riktigt. Jag antar att det ofta landar i samma tankebanor och mönster, även om jag jobbar med många olika tekniker. Så jag tror alla kan lära sig något på att tänka utanför sin ”box” .

Tidigt på söndag morgon åker jag och min mor mot Dalarna, målet är för tredje sommaren på rad Sätergläntan där vi i sju dagar ska gå var sin slöjdkurs. Det ska bli så skönt och roligt att få komma dit igen!

I have made a decoupage picture; I named it Think outside the box. I think that is what every person should do sometimes because it’s useful to think in new ways and to break our thinking patterns. Sunday I’m off to Dalarna and Sätergläntan for a woodwork course.

Tomorrow I’m off to work again after being sick this week; I hope my substitute not has created a complete mess in my classroom, but that I have to wait until tomorrow to see.

Do you remember the collage I wrote about, hmm, let see, one month ago! I finally finished it this week. It took some time, but I’m quiet satisfied with the result. I ended up only using paper and images, I have problems with adding colour to my collages, and it has become a barrier I can’t get true. Think I have to train so I don’t feel this barrier. But time, time… so much to do, and I sometimes being so bad at getting things done. This is the biggest collage I have made so far; it is 50*70 cm. And it fits well in my hall over the radiator where I have hanged it. There are a lot of famous women in the collage, do you see which? They are all beautiful and are or were really successful and famous. I could have added more of them, but felt satisfied with does I added. There is one I actually don’t know who she is, it just happened to be an old black and white photo in one of the newspapers I used. I have to find out who that lady were. And the Liza Minelli picture is a piece of a plastic bag from Lindex a Swedish clothes store. There is Ingrid Bergman, Greta Garbo, Madonna and Marilyn Monroe in the collage. Marilyn Monroe also reminds me of that I should have tried to finish the book Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates. I got stuck over a year ago when I tried to read it, and still are. I think it’s so cool that both Garbo and Bergman where from Sweden and became two really great actresses. . (I had problems with the light when I took the picture; it became a lot of shine from the glass.)

Yesterday I managed to finish my second Christmas gift; I will not show any pictures, some one maybe look here and see what I created. But I’m happy about how it became!

I was at a flea market today, I have bought something really, really nice. Something that totally is me, but I’m going to be secret about what it is until I have got it in place. Then I will show you all what it is. Oh, so fun to have secrets sometimes!

Studio Friday: This week’s topic: THIS IS ME!

” How about photographing a collage of the things we work with? An arranged collection of papers and embellishments, or fabrics and trims, or paints and paintbrushes, or whatever it is we do that says “this is me.” I know we did tools and supplies already, but I thought it would be fun to create a little collage of all the things we use - tools and supplies both, and even other things like a favorite cd, dvd, cup of coffee, nail polish etc that say “this is me and this is what I do”. ~ Jill

This is me in many ways. The collage says very much about me, both just by looking at the pictures, but I could talk a lot about what this things means for me. So here we go. There are three pictures with woodwork and that just because it’s my biggest interest. I love woodwork, there are so many things you could do, both hard and easy stuff. And it’s my work to. So it takes a lot of my time, wood.

Then I have my bookcase in the collage, because I love books, I try to read as much as possible! Sometimes I think about the time when I was a child and didn’t read because I found it boring. I’m so glad that it changed when I was 12 years or so.

I love the ocean; I love the woods, or just nature. But I’m not so good at going out in the woods, think that it’s one thing I should do more often. I see so much beauty just buy looking at the seagull in the horizon and that amazing sunset I captured this past summer is just great! Two pictures that sum up nature for me in a good way.

Then it’s my skull gloves, and they are symbolic for two things, I like skulls and I like to knit. And why not combine them!

Last, in the right corner it’s a collage and that is also symbolic, I really like collages, but I’m not so skilful on making them, but find it relieving to make them. You never know before you start work what it will look like in the end. But this collage also means much more for me. It was one of the first I made, and felt satisfied with, and it’s about my grandmother and grandfather. I have written about it exactly one year ago today! How they where the world for me as a child and made me to the person I am today.

And that little girl with the skis in here knee then? That’s me, as a child, its Christmas 1982 and I have got my best gift ever. Skis and ski sticks.

Tonight it was syjunta, craft night, so now when I’m still in the flow after that I feel that I have to blog about my collage that I’m making.

One of my kitchen benches is filled with paper and other stuff because I’m making the biggest collage I ever have done. Don’t know yet if it will end up like I want but its going too be some kind of tribute to some cool women’s like Madonna, Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman and some more lady’s like that.

I think it’s kind of cool to work this big with collages because I have most done smaller ones before so this is a real challenge. For the moment I am working on the background/base. So right now it feels ok. But I haven’t started to use the colours yet, only glue and a lot of different papers…

I will return to this collage when I have finished it! Hopefully I have time to work more tomorrow! Now it’s time to sleep!

I made this collage to participant in the inspire me Thursday challenge about numeral art but I forgotten about it because it’s summer and I’m out a lot but most because my parents that I visit only has a modem, and it drives me crazy when I’m surfing the net. So instead I don’t use the computer… which maybe is a good thing for me, someone who tend to use it to much.

Anyway, this numeral collage is about me having a birthday on Thursday this week, becoming one year older. It’s very pink and a lot of flowers which is a funny thing, because I’m not a big fan of the colour pink and not so good on taking care of my flower either. But it’s a lot of numbers and the clock is representing time, and what is time if not numbers. I feel happy looking at it. Because I think I have made something untypical for me, and that’s a good thing!

And the picture of that little girl is me, for about 23 years ago I think. But now I printed it out on paper and then colour the dress pink as it was back then. And I have written that I’m closer to 30 now then 20. And that I have grown out of that pink dress and that the days that only was playing now is over. I have to work, earn money and pay my bills and that kind of adult boring stuff that we all have to do just to survive in this thing called life!!

When my mother was young she had a pen pal from England and she sent this book to my mother. It has almost fallen to pieces because all the pictures were taped to the book and after almost 40 years the tape has lost its function.

I think it’s a nice thing to do for someone. I guess that it was easier to find pictures of the band in England than it was in Sweden that time. On one of the last pages a envelope is tape and in that, this card of the band is, and on it Paul McCartney‘s autograph. If it’s real I don’t know. She, the pen pal, writes that it is, but who could really tell, not me anyway.

Even if my mother wasn’t any big Beatles fan she has saved the book year after year. Which I think is nice. Someone made this, and used her time, and my mother saves it. That I think is a grateful thing to do. Still after 40 years.

I found some old pictures at my parents which I thought would be nice to make collages of. I don’t use the original photos, just a copy of them. Anyhow, the photos are from my grandmother’s youth. It’s her and her brothers and sisters and some photos of my mother and my uncle as children and my grandfather too.

Anyhow, the collage I have made contains pictures of one of my grandmother’s sisters and her husband, Siri and Karl. The meet and fell in love in Stockholm in the end of the 40’s, at least I think it’s still were the 40’s. And they are still in love and alive after all this years. And they are my favourite relatives; they are so kind, sweet and wise only in the way old people can be. Karl or Kalle as we call him is a great woodworker too. They are two of the now living relatives I will miss so much when they not are around any more apart from my grandmother of course. Yes, know that no one can live for ever, but this are two of them I will miss devoutly.

Like I also do with my mothers parents, which became my so far best collage I think.

In the collage I have tried to use some different techniques, because it’s one thing I think is difficult with making collages. So in this one I have really tried to use a lot more colours than I have in the other once I have made. I have used a photo that I sandpapered and painted on, and I also used colour on a printing of one of the photos I made on ordinary paper. The background is old paper from a magazine and some other printings I made. I feel satisfied that I manage to carry out the thoughts I had of using more technique than I have done so far. Also think that the collage turned out rather good to be my first time really trying to use more than just paper from magazines, other pictures and text. Like with this one about the spring for example, even if I’m pleased with the result.

Maybe it was written in the stars



Everlasting love

Some time ago I watched a program on Kanal 5, Home styling, where they made one big collage on a table and then covered it with a glass plate. That wasn’t so special, but what got stock in my mind was the car pictures they used. Therefore I collected some pictures from my father’s car magazines with the intention to make a collage with cars. Yes, I do like cars, a lot actually. As a child I wanted to compete in rally, and ones I made a pupil’s work about Ronnie Peterson, Sweden’s first driver in formula 1. And when I went true the car magazines I found a calendar with cars from 2003 and thought that I could do the collage in that. But first I had to fix it a bit. Therefore I covered it with my favourite paper. (I will feel sad when I have used it all). Inside of it, on the first and last page I glued a white paper to achieve the feeling that it is a book and not an old calendar. Then the book was ready for me to make collages in it.

Tonight I felt inspired to make one, not the one with cars, instead one with the feeling of spring in. Spring for me is most about light, where I live the nights becomes bright the whole night in the summer. That’s the best thing about summer, light, light, light. After that I like all the colours and the curiosity that wakes to life in the spring.

The old armchair symbolize that spring always brings the same thing. Life! You can’t prevent it. It’s like a feeling of security, the same feeling an old armchair gives when you are sitting in it. I Also think spring is the best time for dreams, thinking is easy and the eyes sees clear.

What’s spring for you? Tell me!

For the first time I take part in a post card swap, after Hanna suggested it. At the moment I can’t show a picture of my card. But the theme of the cards is the Chinese New Year, happen the 29th, when the Year of the Dog starts. It was fun to make the cards after I figured out how I could include a dog…

Hanna have made a collage about her father when it was Fathers Day and after seeing that I started to think about people that is, or has been enormously important to me. After my parents there are two persons who was the world for me when I was a child, my mormor and morfar, grandmother and grandfather. For me they symbolized security, human warmth and happiness. From that I was seven or eight months until I was about ten years old I always was daily with them or at least with my grandmother. My grandfather often spend his time in there cottage during the week. Spending all that time with her made me partly to the person I am today. She always maintained self-control regardless to what was happening and I never heard her raise her voice and I don’t think that I know anyone who is so considerated that she was.

They are now both dead, my grandfather died 1989 after being sick in cancer and my grandmother died last year after she had had Alzheimer for about 14 years.

But there is not one day that I don’t think about them. I really loved them and I wish that they had seen me grow up and finish school and start working and all other things.

So after seeing Hannas collage and being inspired I made my own collage about my childhood heroes,

Dagny och Gösta