Triangles and lying around

A quick mini creative session: 

cutting tiny triangles from different shades of yellow paint colour swatches

and blue-tacking them to the wall...

Then, some lying around on my collection of pillow after all that hard work. 

The yellow ones are from h&m home, the pink one from ikea, the turquoise one from indiska and 

the colourful one is an old pillow cover made by my great-aunt. 

The blanket is from monki, only 6 euros on sale! Scoresies.

Himmeli

Made my first ever ''himmeli'' (from the german word for heaven) out of bright pink straws. 

Then I made a green one... these are very addictive to make! I still need at least a neon yellow one... and a white one... and a teal one... and...

Sunday

Today I visited SeaLife with a few friends from uni, since another of our friends works there, and was able to promise us free entry and a tour of the backstage...! 

Instant Ocean: this cracked me up. There were piles and piles of these salt bags in one room backstage!

The top of the Ocean-pool. It looked so much smaller from up here!

Then I missed a bus at Westend and had to kill 25 minutes before the next one (Sunday schedules), 

so I walked around with my camera, made the time go much faster!

What a lovely Sunday! Still, looking forward to spring...!

Earrings from a bag!

On my birthday last year I decided to treat myself by buying some leather paints. I'm generally not quite sure yet what my relationship with leather is (I don't eat meat), but I think remaking old leather bags, shoes, wallets, belts etc. seems like a very ecological and fun thing to do, so, after hoarding a bunch of leather items from Kierrätyskeskus, I got to work on my first pair of leather earrings!

They're super light, colourful, and don't really look like leather anymore, really...

And they've definitely become one of my favourite pairs to wear.

An old and worn leather bag.

Designing and how well it works/doesn't work. 

The things you'll need:

- bit of old leather 

- leather paint

- protective top coat

- fine paint brushes

- something to cut out and punch a hole in the leather with

- the usual earring paraphernalia (pliers, hooks, links)

Et voilà! Painting old leather is a really nice way of making sure those cows didn't die for nothing...! I've never been too good at painting, but oh I do enjoy it, and will definitely utilise all the paints I've bought to revamp some of my old leather goods. 

Happy crafting!

Necklaces

Due to the fact that I usually opt for earrings instead of a necklace, I haven't bought or made many. Right now I'm craving a neon yellow necklace, so maybe I'll get one done in time for spring... In the mean time, here's a few necklaces I made last year: the first is made out of socks. 

Which sounds somewhat unpleasant, but I can assure you, these socks we're thoroughly washed before I used them for this...! And they'd been sitting in a plastic bag in my cupboard for... about 3 years before I finally figured out what to do with those dear, holey, worn-at-the-heels things. I'd seen a tutorial on making roses out of strips of fabric (will link if find it again), and I figured I'd try making them out of strips of socks. It turned out better than I thought it would, I've still got a bunch of those sock roses in my crafting cupboard, so perhaps I should make a headband or something out of those...

The second (above) necklace is just a very quickly done one: I was in a hurry to get to a christmas party, and the theme was white, so with about 15 minutes to spare I cut up some felt, did a bit of glueing, and that was that, out the door. Haven't worn it since though... hmm.. maybe need to make it more... wearable... somehow... 

Roses are red, roses are blue, these ones I made from an old sock or two.

My poetic aptitude is off the charts.

Museum

The word "museum" is, surprise surprise, of Latin origin. 

Commonly pluralized as "museums", less often as "musea" (gotta start using that one...!). 

Originally from the Greek word Μουσεῖον (Mouseion), denoting a place or temple 

dedicated to the Muses, the patron divinities in the Greek mythology of the arts. 

I love museums.

On my last visit to Deutschland, we went to the Arp Museum near Bonn. 

It's partly in an old railway station but it's been added on to as well. 

Amazing building, nice architecture, cool things. 

Would definitely visit again, maybe in the summer...

 This blobbular turquoise thing was one of my favourite pieces. No idea about the artist though... :/

Even the elevator shaft was a piece of art. My dad laughed at it, but I thought it was pretty damn cool!

They also had a cafe upstairs, really pretty interior and lovely views on to the Seine. Excellent food: I had a deliciously colourful goat cheese salad. So good. And I could honestly live in that room. 

I want to go to a museum now! Maybe Kiasma, EMMA, Designmuseo, or Ateneum...?

A random Monday...

Mondays can be pretty random, right? So let's add to that.

The big brown bottle cost a euro, from Kierrätyskeskus, the blue bottle is a present from my dad, who also paid a euro for it (he was in a restaurant in Barcelona and they served water from these, my dad thought I might like it, so he asked if he could keep it, but it didn't come free, stingy waiters), the beer bottle wrapped in yarn cost about 3 euros, the yarn was all free (Kierrätyskeskus, once again), and the bowl on the right is an old Arabia bowl, cost me about 6 euros (with student discount included) from Kierrätyskeskus, and the pine cones in it are from a big tree on the bank of the Seine near Bonn, Germany. Oh, and the twigs are from Espoo, Finlandia, painted white with some old wall base coat.

I made a few bottles wrapped in yarn, got a bit carried away, but it's very addictive! All you need is a nicely shaped, clean, old bottle, bits of yarn and glue. It took surprisingly long to do, about an hour, probably cos I was watching TV at the same time and had to keep cutting bits of yarn and figuring out how to alternate the colours and trying not to glue my fingers on to the bottle...

I painted these bits of wood turquoise. I have no idea why.

Textures are cool.
Turquoise driftwood from Scheveningen (NL), and red from Haukilahti (FIN), plus a volcanic rock from Iceland.

 Things on my wall pt. 1,576, 374, and things in pots. And a cactus in a teacup. Naturally.

Maailman ihanin pikkusisko lähetti mulle ystävänpäiväkortin Skotlannista! <3

Last week was Valentine's Day, and I received a lovely card from my lovely sister, who studies in Scotland. The stamp that ensured it's eventual arrival had King George V on it, which is awesome.

Need to frame this, I need more frames!

Some more new earrings and a handy way of storing them

Here's some more earrings I made a while back, my plan was to start up an online shop to sell them, but I still haven't gotten around to doing that... Soon, soon...!

I also picked up some cake tin parts from the freebie section in Kierrätyskeskus, super handy and pretty for storing earrings, rings and random bits and bobs.

For christmas I made my mum some earrings, bracelets and a reflector and wrapped them up with one of these cake tin halves, and  now she stores her earrings and bracelets on one as well (though I've made her so many that they don't really all fit...).

Flowers and birds and things, oh my!

I love old school diagrams and picture books of the educational nature. 
While doing some research work for my thesis today (on a SUNDAY, I know, so wrong) I stumbled upon this treasure trove:


A collection of historic and modern biology books - Kurt Stüber's Online Library.


Heaven! 
It's a bit tricky to find things if one doesn't know the latin names and what not, but those are easy to find through wikipedia or something, and it's fun to look through all the folders anyway. 
So this site is definitely worth a look if you, like me, enjoy these lovely diagrams and want to print them all out and design wallpapers based on them and write them poems and gift them with chocolate and fluffy teddybears holding hearts.


There's plants and birds and butterflies and mammals and crustaceans and...

Phwoooar, gooorgeous!

Pictures from: http://www.biolib.de/

A foxy pair of earrings

Let me just start off with: pardon the pun.

So for my 27th birthday last year, I made myself some fox earrings using the aesthetically pleasing print on some Fazer candy wrappers of the old classis candy, Pihlaja (which is old school, all the way from 1895!).

It all started with some candy that I receiver from my sister (I wanted the wrappers, mainly) and this was a long time ago, but then I cut out the foxes from the wrappers and glued and varnished them onto cardboard and went to the shop to buy more so I could cut more fox heads and a long story short, here are some pictures to tell it:

Action photo from my birthday party, nts nts nts (disco sounds).

These earrings are definitely a make-do project, since I really used whatever I had available for them. Well, except buying a bag of the candy... but that doesn't count, right...?

My plan is to, eventually, make these again, but more durable, using stronger glue and strong ribbon instead of cardboard.... etc etc.

Birthdays are awesome.