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Inspired by | Kyoto

| Marsha.

inspired1It’s the 10th today! And that means Riikka and I have been creating something with a particular theme or thing in mind again and it’s time to reveal the results in a new Inspired by post!

For this month we chose to be inspired by a far away city in a far away land: Kyoto, Japan. We were both lucky to visit it individually. Riikka stayed in the city a couple of years ago, I was there more recently.

My visit Kyoto was very brief. I guess I was there for a mere 6 or 7 hours on a mostly grey Saturday last November. Needless to say: I only scraped the surface of what Kyoto has to offer:

Marsha Valk | Inspired By: Kyoto

I have so many more photos of that day… I’m planning to create a photo book with all the photos I took that week in Japan.

Scrapbooking this trip seems too overwhelming right now. And one scrapbook page about this day in Kyoto definitely will not do. So for this Inspired by, although I certainly could have, I deliberately chose not to scrapbook.

But what was I going to do then? Well, I first thought about the things that stood out to me thinking back. And this is what I came up with:

Marsha Valk | Inspired By: Kyoto

It’s all comes down to colours, smells, tastes, sounds, patterns and textures…

I was there the end of November, so there were beautiful fiery red maple trees everywhere. The sun came out in the afternoon, but before that it was kind of grey and gloomy. It made the red of the maple leaves, but also the red of the temple buildings and especially the colourful looks of the maiko/geiko in Gion look almost neon coloured to me.

I love incense, so I distinctly remember the smell of incense. I remember the chopstick and ceramic souvenir shops. Bamboo… A kimono shop… The (zen) garden at Ginkaku-ji… More maple leaves… I also remember it being really crowded with people, especially at Kiyomizu-dera.

OK, so I still hadn’t decided what I would do. But then I was trying out some of Finnabair’s mixed media products for Prima Marketing and the Art Extravagance White Sand Texture Paste reminded me of a zen garden!

I decided to add Liquitex soft body (neon) colours, a couple of stencils that reminded me of maiko attire, my sumi-e brushes, black ink, silver Tulip Pearl 3D Fabric Paint and a couple of different paint markers into the mix:

Marsha Valk | Inspired By: Kyoto

And here’s the triptych:

Marsha Valk | Inspired By: Kyoto

Conclusion: I really seem to like this fairly small rectangle format, so that’s why I used it again.

I’m not really sure if I like the white paper maple leaves… In hindsight I think I should have created them out of paper clay. I might still go back and do that.

I loved using the texture paste! It provided me with a bit of a challenge for the following layers, but it was fun!

And last but not least: I really hope I can go back to Kyoto some day. There is still so much to explore!

Now that you’ve seen my Kyoto, it’s time to visit Riikka’s. I’ve heard some of her Kyoto adventures already, I also know she has scrapbooked it in the past, so I’m really curious to see what she has come up with! You can see it for yourself here!

Inspired by: Stroll through the hood

| Marsha.

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Hi there! I’m back again with a whole new Inspired by!

Riikka and I were both in Paris this weekend for Version Scrap 2014 and some sightseeing. I promise I will tell you more about that soon! In the meantime you can check out my Instagram feed for a visual update on what we saw and did.

We came back brimming with ideas, of course, but because this Inspired by was scheduled so close after the trip, we prepared something else ahead of time. Don’t worry: there will be an Inspired by connecting to the trip in the future! This month however, we chose to be inspired by Nathalie Kalbach’s awesome blog series ‘Stroll through the Hood’.

You must know by now that I can draw inspiration from almost everything. I also see photo opportunities everywhere. I don’t always take the actual photo because it’s not always convenient to stop (while riding a bike for instance…). So for some time now, if I get the chance, I try to walk where I need to go. Sure, it takes more time, but one of the pay offs is that it enables me to stop and take advantage of a photo opportunity when I see one!

Because I take my iPhone everywhere, I didn’t really need to stroll through the hood for this challenge. I already had more than enough photos of my neighbourhood! Most of them aren’t of buildings or people though… It seems that I’m especially attracted to the colours, textures and patterns of the hood:

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Riikka and I had agreed on using 12 photos for this challenge (I cheated a tiny bit there) and I think the brief was to write about what you like about your neighbourhood… So that’s what I did:

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It will be fun to revisit this idea sometime, because I’m sure that in a couple of years (or even months!) some of it will have changed!

As said, the journalling is about what I like about the place: that I can always find something to attract my attention, that everything is within walking distance and I also like that there is a forest nearby, even though we don’t go there very often. It’s not perfect, but it’s a pretty good place to live and we don’t have plans to leave any time soon.

And now it’s time to visit Riikka’s hood… I can’t wait to see!

Inspired by: Rijksmuseum

| Marsha.

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A little over a year ago Riikka and I were What’s App-ing each other about Paris*, watching films and seeking inspiration… It led us to doing a challenge and because the process and outcome turned out so inspiring and fun, this first challenge continued into a series of challenges we call Inspired by.

I can’t believe it’s already been a year! And I can’t even begin to tell you what Inspired by means to me… Just have a look at all the projects I would never have created without it:

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And that’s not all… I saw films I wouldn’t have seen if I wasn’t challenged, I connected dots that only I could connect, I worked on stuff out of my comfort zone, I dealt with personal turmoil in the process, I was reminded of stuff I had forgotten about, I used supplies I had forgotten about, I also experimented with new supplies… I learned more about Finland and Finnish culture… For heaven’s sake: it even led me to sew something from a pattern!!!

* I just happen to read this in the first Inspired by-post. I had totally forgotten about that! The weirdest, funny thing is that Paris seems to be a reoccurring theme for me in this series… Seriously: Riikka and I already know next month’s subject and I’m 99,9% sure Paris plays a role there too! Sooooo… maybe the Universe is trying to tell me something?!! I don’t know…

What I do know, is that the perfect opportunity to celebrate our one year Inspired by-anniversary revealed itself when Riikka came over from Helsinki to attend Nathalie’s and Birgit’s Art Fusion. We got to spent a day in Amsterdam prior to the event and we paid a visit to the Rijksmuseum together with Elina and Minna.

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(Photos by Riikka)

For this month’s Inspired by we agreed that we would each choose one ‘favourite’ work of art from the Rijksmuseum that day and let that inspire us to create ‘something’.

I chose this mesmerizing 18th century pastel on vellum (!) portrait by Jean-Étienne Liotard:

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It really stood out to me and I love just about everything about it… The softness and the lightness, the colours, the materials, the motives, the Turkish attire, the look of the fabric, the braided hair… the folded bit in the top part of the art piece… Do you see those teeny tiny Chinese figures on the vase of pink carnations?!

It was wonderful to find out that Riikka had photographed it as well! Fortunately for you, you don’t have to settle for our crappy phone pictures: You can get a far better idea of the true beauty of this portrait at the Rijksmuseum website and if you want, you can also see some additional works of art that caught my eye during this visit to the museum here.

And here’s what I came up with:

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I had a strong urge to start all over again once the page was almost finished (and I might have actually done it if I had remembered that I was staring at an image of PASTEL ON VELLUM the whole time!!!). But instead I figured I could always do another take on it some other time, just like I did last time!

Now… I desperately want to see which museum piece my partner in crime has chosen for this Inspired by and more importantly what she’s created with that work of art in mind!

Click here to see it for yourself: Riikka’s Inspired by: Rijksmuseum

Inspired by: Wedding music

| Marsha.

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Welcome to another episode of Inspired by! If you haven’t seen this before: Riikka and I challenge each other on a monthly basis to be Inspired by… something. That something can be anything, really… and we love to surprise ourselves and each other with the results!

Last time we were inspired by music and as music is a broad topic to draw inspiration from, we came up with another musical challenge: wedding music. To be more specific: the music that was played at our own weddings, because I’m sure my wedding music isn’t Riikka’s wedding music and well, it probably isn’t yours either!

I actually have a couple of songs that I associate with my wedding. I’ve written about two of them before: 150808: Het jawoord and I’ve sort of scrapped one of them. But there are even more songs… and almost 5 years later it’s high time that the stories behind these songs are scrapped:

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We danced our opening (or first) dance to Fascination by Alphabeat. Do you remember that song?

Loose translation of the journaling: Harold and I both agreed that a super romantic song would make us feel awkward and stared at. We wanted to party and Fascination is such a happy, upbeat song: we thought it would be perfect for our opening dance.

I took the album cover of This is Alphabeat as a starting point. It’s just as happy and colourful as the music and if you scroll down to one of the posts I did earlier this month, you can see that it also goes very well with some of our wedding photos!

I adhered a print of the cover art to a sheet of cardstock and then covered it with a light coat of gesso and went on from there. I consciously chose the orange neon paint, because orange was one of our wedding colours and I added the black splatters to make it cohesive with the other wedding layout (and to balance the dark photos, of course). But for the most part I just wanted to make the page as fun as the song!

I’m very curious about Riikka’s wedding music… I’ve seen a sneak peak of the result and it involved lilac and gold! Go visit her at Paperiliitin!

Also: we would love to hear from you what music you associate with your wedding (or weddings in general). And if we’ve inspired you to make something after reading this post, attach a link to your art in the comments below!