Products with this print can be bought over at the shop.

I recently bought a qulling paper craft kit, and I am having a lot of fun twirling and gluing the paper strips together. The only thing is that I can not quite figure out what to use them for. I would love to make some beautiful paper necklaces, but I am not sure how to make them strong enough to wear day after day. Some kind of spray? If anyone else have ever done this sort of craft, I would love to see what you have made with it.

Holiday makes everything go slow and I am not sure if I like it or not, because I end up doing a lot of random things at random times (hence the box I painted for no reason, or my face I painted for no reason, or the doodles I doodled for no reason..). In any case – I decided to learn how to make snowflakes. The real deal, with six points! (Not the silly ones with 4 or 8.) I found a video by Vihart and I had to try it myself. Nothing like festive christmas decorations in July.

I got around to finish the big picture a week or so ago, but I got a bit distracted from blogging after everything that happened in Oslo. However – I have to start posting again eventually, so I thought this was a good place to start. Here are some details:

… and this is what I have so far. I am just not used to drawing such big things anymore (each panel is about 50×70 cm, so the finished pictures will be about 1.5 meters long!), I haven’t made pictures this big since before I moved to Tokyo, about two years ago. It is a lot of fun, but I think I have totally underestimated the amount of time that goes into big pictures like this. It will probably take me several days to fill in all the details, I am not even done with all of the outlines yet. I always find the outlines the hardest on big pieces like this, getting the proportions right – a pain in the ass. However, it _is_ a lot of fun, and really good practice! Here is the sketch for it I have posted previously. I will change some of the background elements (too much fish, too little sea-creatures), but the main part of the picture will be the same.

I made some business cards, I think they turned out cute 🙂 Everyone here is giving out business cards left and right, so sometimes I have been in situations where I have felt a bit silly not having one. Now that’s fixed 🙂

I attended a Hello Sandwich workshop, and it was so nice to make something with my hands again, and it was a nice ending to a super-stressful day! I had been running all day, so in the end it was wonderful to sit down and just make something. One thing I miss about my friends in Norway was all the creative evenings, sitting down with a glass of wine or a coffee and just draw and make stuff together, so I hope I can do that again once I am back in Norway for a while.

If you find yourself in Tokyo, you should absolutely sign up for the little Hello Sandwich workshops, she is super-talented and it is always great to make time in a busy schedule to create something.

The internet is funny. There are these fads going around the internet, like right now, these paper stars, and I am starting to wonder if there is this general consciousness that a lot of people share between them. Binka often posts videos and inspirational things I have seen just days or weeks before, Caroline Maria just started posting about these paper stars last week, while I have been having a small glass on my desk folding them for weeks now between homework. Where does this commonness come from? I know sometimes people complain about other people copying them and whatnot, but after years of being overprotective of my work, I have just come to the conclusion that “nothing is original”, “do what you like”, “just do it” because “we all have one common mind” anyway. This is the way it works. We are one big family inspiring others and being inspired ourselves.

I found out a couple of years back that people are making pocket shrines, but I wasn’t quite sure of what it was. I did a quick google search, and I found all of these whimsical, glittery shrines small enough to fit in your pocket, so I made quite a few of them myself as well. As with most other things I make, I thought they were more fun to make and not so fun to keep around after I was done.