Pages by: Riikka Kovasin

It’s the first of the month… Which means Riikka and I have another challenge to share! This time we thought it would be fun to look at each others work for inspiration.

Riikka’s style is so different than mine. Sure, I can be inky and painty from time to time, but even then I usually manage to keep clear lines. I certainly do not create as many wonderful layers.

I love the look of Riikka’s pages and I really enjoy watching the videos she records of her creative process. She seems to work so quickly. And I can be such a muser, just endlessly pushing pieces of paper around…

I went through Riikka’s Flickr gallery and thought about which lay-out I wanted to scraplift. There are so many fabulous lay-outs there, but in the end I decided on one that I love and that would also challenge me to do something I don’t usually do.

This is the one I chose:

Reason: It has an unusual colour combo for me, no journaling (just a title) and it has a grungy but also romantic feel to it. And there are plenty of layers there too.

I took a neutral background paper, some orangey/brownish inks and I went to work. And… I hated the result. No matter what I did, it just didn’t feel right to me.

I went to look for another neutral background paper so I could start over and when I found one with turquoise dots, I knew I had to let go of the original colours. They’re just not my colours and that’s probably why my first attempts didn’t feel right. I chose to go with pink instead and then more turquoise and… this is what I ended up with:

The colours changed, but the inky layers stayed. I exchanged the flowers for a butterfly and a feather, the black stamped images (or rub-ons?) for washi tape and I tried to fight it, but I guess I’m incapable of leaving the words out… So I used the tag to journal on.

I also decided not to turn my photos into black and white ones, because the story is about ‘Shopping for a new couch’ and I wanted to be able to see the colours of the couches we chose from.

Now… I don’t know about you, but I’m dying to see which of my lay-outs Riikka decided to scraplift! You can take look at what she has created here on her wonderful blog!