VP_LeenanLeimat

One of my creative heroes is Leena, my partner’s cousin. Not only is she one of the kindest persons I know, she has her own style of everything pink and cute (or kawaii, as they say in Japanese). It makes finding presents for her rather easy and fun! One Christmas we got her this über cute, pink bling-bling ornament for the tree. Sadly I can’t remember what kind of a figure it was but it was pink with lots of sparkle. To keep things in balance and to prevent her pink Christmas tree (surprised, you shouldn’t be) from becoming overly pink, we gave her partner a glass squirrel. A very cute too but brown. But don’t be fooled by all her pinky, fluffy stuff. She’ll kick your butt in action games on Wii.

Leena makes these awesome, creative and happy cards for every occasion she can think of. It’s so much fun to wait for her card to arrive when it gets close to my or my partner’s birthday to see what she has come up with this time. Her cards always bright up my day! Thanks Leena!

But what I admire in her even more is her courage to be true to herself and her style. It’s a rare thing in this world.

I did the page last summer on the Saturday of our traditional summer family reunion at her dad’s place at the seaside. Lots of sun every years and lots of loitering on the beach. The others were playing a board game called Carcassonne but I had had my fair share of the game for that day. A great game, don’t get me wrong, but I decided to go through Leena’s amazing stash of arts and crafts stuff. There I found these stamps. I really liked the ones with cartoon-style Japanese motifs – especially the lanterns – so I printed some images on the right-hand page. On the left I freehanded one stamp of a series of birds that were really pretty and poetic. The spread felt a little empty or too still so I added the ‘stains’ to spark it up. Really enjoyed doing this and leafing through Leena’s stamps. There were so many beautiful ones I would have liked to include!