Being sick has its perks..!

Usually I spend my days doing my thesis, but since I've been sick now for a couple of days, I have some time on my hands, so I've gotten quite carried away with this leather painting thing...

But I think this wallet is the last one for now: 

Revontulet

Had this red bag (also free, from kierrätyskeskus) that needed some tlc:

There's nothing really wrong with it, except that the shoulder strap is almost worn through in one part, but the colour red, as much as I love all colours, has never been the colour for me, at least clothes/accesories wise, so I figured I might as well spruce it up somehow and maybe I'll end up actually using it some day!

So I used this sketch by my sister as an inspiration and got to it:

   

I toyed around with the idea of making it more square, 

and thought I'd build up the fox out of small rectangles:

So I sketched out this fox shape, cut it out...

...and scratched it on to the leather with a thin metal pen tip:

I then painted it a stipply white...

...and pondered how I would paint the rectangles, 

ditched the idea cos it would take too long and the rectangles I painted with the yellow paint 

(which is the only colour I initially planned to use) 

just didn't stick out enough for it to work. 

So, I did some more stippling, with the yellow, 

and then got carried away and included pink and turquoise as well

In hindsight, I shall name the other inspiration for this bag as revontulet, or northern lights in Finnish. Revontulet literally means fire of the fox and there's a Finnish tale about how they are created, 

and the stippling and all the colours are kind of aurora borealis meets fox, yes..?

Now I just need to figure out what to use for the strap... 

some kind of thin but durable white rope, perhaps... 

Old bag fever

I've been down with a fever this weekend, yesterday I was more or less content with just lying on the couch or in bed, sleeping, watching tv, and feeling terribly sorry for myself.

This morning I felt a bit better, and as I'm not too good at sitting still I decided to finally do something about this grey leather bag I picked up in kierrätyskeskus for zero euros.

 So I got out my leather paints, and though I originally planned to 

paint this with some white and yellow, 

the white paint is a bit clumpy and the yellow doesn't cover well enough, 

so I opted for this minty turquoise instead!

Probably should've planned this out a bit better, but in my feverish state I really didn't feel like it..!

 Here's the part under the flap. I think they might be leaves of some kind.

 I've been painting it on and off for the last 5 hours, so it has gotten dark outside (hence the change in the perceived colour change in the bag for the last 2 photos).

I present to you, geometrics, painted with a wobbly fever-ridden hand:

I think I'll still do some more work on it tomorrow, or whenever I have time, 

but enough for tonight anyways (or it could turn in to one of those this-seemed-like-a-really-good-idea-last-night or this-looked-much-prettier-in-semi-darkness projects). 

Which happen sometimes. 

But hopefully not with this one!


(Update, the next day: finished the grey bag this morning, and it really is quite a greenish grey, now that I looked at it properly, so I'm glad I went with the turquoise paint!
Here's the finished bag:

I redefined some of the lines and made the blocked turquoise parts more vivid).

Tassel earrings

* Some tassely tassel earrings I made a while back... *

Curtains and skipping ropes

I visited the UFF on Freda (street in Helsinki) a few weeks back, they had a everything-5-euros day and I found this retro pink and orange curtain that I just couldn't leave behind... 

and I'm not quite sure what I plan to do with.. 

It's serving as a table cloth for my coffee table for now. 

Maybe I'll line it with some waterproof fabric and use it as a picnic blanket in the summer, who knows..

The colours are a lot more vibrant in real life! 

More vibrant colours: 

I found this neon kids skipping rope in the free section at Kierrätyskeskus 

and I plan on making a necklace out of it. 

Just need to buy some good colour string to sew/tie it up with!

Here's some squiggles depicting my plans for making the necklace!

 Not gonna plan it out though,
just twist and secure with thread/string/rope, or maybe even wire, as I go..!

Spring!

Pretty flowers make everything better! 

Even this almost-spring-but-not-quite-hahaa-suckers message the  weather is sending us.

Walkie walkie walkies

A sunny walk from Hanasaari to Matinkylä.

Posing, posing with the tree. Terkkuja Suskalle, this goes out to you!

 There it is, waiting for us to visit it again...!

 Gaaaaahhhh!!!1

I caved..

I promised some friends that I wouldn't go to kierrätyskeskus for at least a month, 

since I have enough stuff lying around, waiting for me to do something to them. 

But... as I went for a long walk on the sea ice last week, my way home took me past the forbidden land. And needless to say, I entered...

A quick visit to the free shit section and I left with a few treasures: a school book on flowers and an atlas, both from the 50's. Check these babies out!

Here's the book on plants:

 This one goes out to my sister: PO-TA-TOES (taters)

This caption made me lol: komea mänty = handsome pine

It is indeed very handsome.

There was a piece of paper tucked in at the back... oooh, what can it be...

 A super awesome, mint-condition poster on edible and poisonous mushrooms!! 

Can't wait to frame this. Maybe I'll give it to my mummy, she likes mushrooms. That sounded weird.

A couple of pages were in colour! 

I imagine well-behaved children looking at these photos and imagining all the wonderful 

things that live in our oceans and wanting to become a zoologist or something ocean-related.

An interesting diagram about American corn...

I do love diagrams.

And here's some photos of my lovely 'new' atlas:

 They really liked putting all the place names on these maps... my goodness.

Fancy pancy font.

Kuhmo!

Mmm, old books...