Little sister's birthday gift

My little sister has birthday today. She is 10 now! She got her first digital camera from parents, so i decided to knit a softcase for her camera.

She's also into knitting, sewing and all kinds of DIY, so in addition to the softcase i gave her a book with 35 sewing projects for kids. I really liked the projects in the book, you can sew dolls and other soft toys as well as pillows, totes and other easy stuff. My sister got really excited about the book, she told she wants to try sewing everything from there.

The most time consuming poster

This is the most time consuming poster i've ever done. It took me ages to first draw all the letters on patterned paper (keeping the patterns vary as much as possible), then cut out all the letters, then arrange them on an A4 and finally glue each one to the A4. I got so tired cutting the artist names, that i decided to just write all the other info with a marker.

The poster was for yesterday's show. The show was great, all the artists were awesome and we had our first Banana Pill collaboration with a great artist Olli Aarni.

I can't wait to post the artworks for the new tapes! I tried some new things, and they look good! But we are releasing them in a batch of four, and only three are almost ready, so it will still take a while.

Crochet round frame

My plan for this summer was to find as many good DIY tutorials as possible and try them out. This way i would learn new techniques as well as get some inspiration for designing my own things.

I didn't get too far with my plan. I've tried one more knitted toy from my book and gave it to my sister (i didn't take a photo unfortunately). But i did find a lot of tutorials and patterns mostly through Pinterest and blogs. I even made a folder for them:

One nice tutorial i've also tried was the tutorial on making little crochet flower frames. I found it through Pinterest and it seemed nice and easy. I happened to have some old metal bracelets that i don't use anymore.

The tutorial was really easy to follow (remember, i'm still a beginner crocheter) so i got a nice flower.

I printed a vintage bicycle image i found on *The Graphics Fairy* blog. I glued the image to a piece of carton and then secured the frame on the carton in several places using needle and simple thread.

Now it's hanging on my fridge among all the fun stuff.

Hopefully august won't be as busy as two previous summer months and i will manage to try more tutorials. I will definitely show you what i got.

Summer gifts

Again i took a long break from blogging and there are two reasons for that: we had guests and four new releases are coming out very soon on Jozik records and they all need artworks.

My mom was one of our guests. And she is the kind of guest that never comes without gifts. Apart from lots of marmalade, this time she brought me new watercolor paints!

It is really embarrassing, but before these i used the ones that are for kids. They are much cheaper and whenever i wanted to buy real ones i could not afford them.

I couldn't wait to try them out. And i am really happy, the colors are so much brighter and it feels much nicer to paint with real paints.

One of the next releases will have a watercolor painting done with these new paints!

Mom also brought a funny sticky craft material that is actually made for kids, but she thought i might want to play with it too :)

I've actually started decorating something with it, but the process is not so easy. The material is made for kids, so it never dries in case kids accidentally swallow it. So i am trying to figure out a way to decorate with it. I'll show you the result when i have it.

High school art

When i was in high school i was taking some visual art classes. I was hoping i would learn to draw and paint well. Actually, i never learnt to draw or paint, but i've learnt lots of other techniques and my imagination improved a lot after those classes.

After i graduated i never went back to get my art works. Some of them were quite boring, but there were couple of special ones that took a lot of my time and passion. Unfortunately, i didn't even save any photographs of those works. So from time to time i remember how i made them and i regret that i didn't get them back from school.

Today i accidentally found a photograph of one of my works on my computer. It is one of the works i was really happy with, so it was a nice surprise to find it. I have no idea how i still have this picture, but this is the only proof of me taking those art classes (well apart from a grade in my high school certificate).

This was really conceptual for me at that time. I've been thinking of signs, and how people recognize certain objects even though they look different from what they resemble. For example, toy bunnies don't look at all like real bunnies, but somehow we recognize them as bunnies. Those ideas led me to making this road sign. Big bunny on the sign is a collage of all kinds of bunny images, that come from comics, cartoons, photographs of toys as well as real bunnies.

It looks a bit silly now, but it's a very nice memory for me. I wasn't interested in visual things much before high school, so those classes helped me a lot in doing what i do nowadays.

New notebooks

Some time ago i have found a nice tutorial through Pinterest on how to make notebooks. I was so happy to have found it, i've never realized it could be that easy. The way i did my notebooks before was easy as well, but this is quite a different technique and the notebooks that come out are a different kind.

So the first thing i did after finding this tutorial, was trying it out on old receipts. So i made a nice shopping list notebook to hang on my fridge.

Then i tried making another notebook with some used printer paper. I used a ladybug stamp with ink of "lavender" color on every page to make the notebook prettier. I've started using the notebook already, it's so nice and small.

I really enjoyed making those. It is a very good and easy technique for the kind of notebooks where you write on the first page and rip it off afterwards to write on the next one.

But today Mitya asked me for a notebook that is small as well, but he wouldn't need to rip the pages off so they need to be holding well. So i decided to use my hole puncher and a ribbon. I've made two notebooks, the greyish one is Mitya's now. I used an image from a used magazine for the cover. For the other one i decided to add the ladybug stamp on every page as well.

When i was putting an extra notebook to the box where i keep my crafty stuff that is not used and not yet given to anyone, i've noticed a couple of notebooks i've made long time ago but haven't shared in my blog for some reason. Here they are. Made of old receipts. The covers are scans of my watercolor madness.

Olli Aarni / summerTales split

For this release i've decided to make fabric envelopes similar to the ones i did for our 4-way split. Actually i used exactly the same dimensions, the only difference was that these bags do not close. The fabric i chose was not as slippery as the one i used for the 4-ways split, so i saved some time by not attaching press studs to them. And this pretty fabric used to be old soviet curtains that were hanging in Mitya's kitchen in Petrozavodsk when he was a little kid.

For the insert i've scanned the fabric and printed the pattern adding all the info on the other side.

Since both splits came out at the same time, we kept the design matching by having white cassettes for both releases as well as making same kind of labels on the cassettes, just changing the text color.

Check the description and sounds on Jozik records.

Varropas / Rainbow Valley split

This release was all about knitting. I got an idea for this kind of packaging when knitting one of my soft cases. I picked up two nice colors of the same yarn that is thick enough for the knitting not to take too much time and started making these tape envelopes. I have made a bit more than half of them by now, they are taking really long time. But i enjoy knitting and i can do it while watching a movie or when i'm in a train or a bus. I does not require much concentration.

White cassettes have been our favorite recently. For the cassette labels i wanted to be minimalist this time, so i've printed the artist names on the left-overs from CD-label paper and cut them out.

For the insert i used color print paper. I've made the inserts looking a bit like a booklet with two pages. So there's a cover page, artist information inside and label information on the back cover. The "booklets" came out so tiny, they look very cute. There are two colors for the inserts as well, purple for blue envelopes and blue for purple ones.

Check the description and sounds on Jozik records.

Kheta Hotem "Meri vaahtolaine"

I've learnt to crochet while designing an artwork for this release. I've always been a knitting person and never knew how to crochet. Last Christmas my sister gave me a basics of knitting and crocheting book and she also showed me the basic crochet stitches (she is a crochet person in our family). So i've decided to try and cochet something for this packaging. And i came up with this basic round shape to cover the CD-R.

We received a nice photograph from one of Kheta Hotem's members and we decided to use it because it goes well together with all other round shapes used in the design.

For the CD-R print we bought white CD-R's. I've made a carton stensil and painted over it with different markers.

Check the description and sounds on Jozik records.

Long time no blogging

I'm sorry for being away from my blog for so long. There were so many things to do during the second half of May and some of them still continue. First of all, i had exams and lots of assignments to complete for my school. After the exams were over, we still had a one-week intensive course to complete before holiday would start. And it was a really nice photography course, but it was full of home works and assignments. After the course i still had to do a photo-series final assignment, and i decided that it would be about biking, because it is finally warm in Helsinki and i got a new bicycle, so i spend lots of time biking.

On top of all those school things, we have put out three new releases on Jozik records. And all the packaging was supposed to be knitted, crocheted and sewn, so they took all my free time. We've put up the releases on the website when only part of the packaging/recording was complete and orders started coming, so i had to pack a lot of parcels while still finishing some knitting, sewing and cutting out. Then my summer work started and first days there were busy too.

Now it's getting better and i'm back to my blog! The record covers are coming very soon!