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!
jenna
Oct 29, 2013 @ 20:14:06
Very interesting page, especially how you incorporated elements of kawaii without making the entire spread be *just* kawaii. I love the coordinating lanterns on the right and large bird on the left.
Kaisa Mäki-Petäjä
Oct 29, 2013 @ 23:03:23
Thanks! 🙂 The truth is, I just messed around. I stamped the little kawaii-stuff on the left first, then drew the bird, and then chose the stamps on the right. I didn’t think ahead much until I got all the pictures done. After I had coloured the bird I realised that the page seemed empty in the wrong way, lifeless. After reading your comment I think it was because at that point it was just kawaii. So I added the splatter of watercolours. Adding little dirt on the kawaii worked nicely. 🙂
BTW, I checked out your webpage and I must say, I like what I saw there!
jenna
Oct 30, 2013 @ 15:51:39
Thank you!!
Stamper Bumper
Nov 03, 2013 @ 17:17:10
Yay! =^_^= I feel honored! *hugzees* Thank you for mentioning me on your blog! 🙂 ❤ Very pretty page! You rock at drawing! 🙂
Kaisa Mäki-Petäjä
Nov 03, 2013 @ 19:03:51
You’re welcome! 😀