A potpourri of thankfulness

It’s quite overwhelming to be a blog keeper sometimes. Today many of my readers have told me in many different ways that they appreciate and get inspired by my actions online. It shows me that blogs are powerful and reach far and wide. They are digital and maybe too many, but a few touch our soul and our hearts. I’m thankful that I have this chance to write and share here. What would I do with myself otherwise?

Andrea of Superhero Journals recently wrote something that resonated with me. I could’ve written it myself if I had the knowledge to compose English sentences as beautiful as she does. She wrote:

“…I’ve always believed in storytelling. This is where we cultivate connection, compassion, empathy. This is where we can liberate ourselves from what holds us back, whether it is our shame, our fears, or our history. It is a space in which we can heal, forgive ourselves, and dream bigger. It is where we find hope. […]

…my commitment to you has always been about inspiration and liberation. I have always wanted to be a gift to the world; nothing makes me happier than that. It is in this spirit that I write each post. It is with an ear out for this that I share my stories.”

Thank You for being so darn kind and generous to me, it means so much! When you visit, read & comment I fuel up with energy to do more! Today I got a bit overwhelmed by your responses of the wedding photos – I was the one who got teary when I read them!

I thought I’d do a potpourri post today. Hang with me as I with this post want to send love to all and everyone who read this blog.

First I got this beautiful postcard in the mail this morning from Susan who wrote; “the obvious joy you have for your art is inspiring.” Thank you Susan!

Then Simone of Crafty Daisy told me that she’d given me a Brilliante award:

Hanna from Sweden maintains a wonderful blog full of creative ideas and interesting observations. Most recently she?s been hard at work helping her friend organize her wedding complete with cake, favors, decorations, and wedding photography.

Though I had to answer that I didn’t do that much at the wedding except running around enjoying myself taking photos! :-)

Here are the photos I’ve “favorited” at flickr during July:

Georges inspirations and colors! Yeah, I’ve been clicking around a lot, huh? I put together a collage of the favorites and made it onto a Desktop background that you can download and use as your own desktop. It’s huge but if you set your desktop image to “adjust to screen” then it will fit I think!

Click here to view it large, then you know what to do right? Click on the image with your left mouse button and chose “Use as background”. :-)

This is my inspiration board right now:

It needs some change. I’m going to take all this down tonight and re-style it. When a inspiration board is filled with to much it’s not possible to see it clearly I think. It goes stellar and boring. I don’t see it anymore and I don’t add new things. I need to clear it from time to time and take everything down to build up layers again and again and again. I love layers, like these layers in my Art Journal that I was working on yesterday:

I took this photo before I wrote the text on the lines and the white space I painted in. It’s an altered book that I’m working in right now, the coffee table size books that I love. The pages are thick and sturdy, and this is a fold out spread already in the book! I was using these absolutely yummy patterned papers I bought from Kelly who was garanteeing that I’d love these papers and wrote These are bags chock full of various handmade, decorative and very artsy papers-NO garbage!. Grab-bags like these are the best, and this is the best one I’ve ever seen! Just look at all these yummy papers:

I have a newfound love for Chinese prints! I have never owned papers as beautiful as these gold adorned flower prints on thin paper:

I didn’t know papers like these existed and though there are only small pieces of them in the pack there is enough for me to want to use them right away. So I did. I brought out these and a big pile of scrapbooking papers that Sophie (aka Miss KoolAid) so kindly has sent me and played! Mom and I did a fun Paper Project and I will share what we did (and a tutorial I think) very soon (next week?)! I just can’t put all the photos I took at the table in this post today or we’ll sink! ;-)

I’ve been in Stockholm shopping this week too, and this is all “new yummy stuff”:

Books: Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Eat, pray, love and David Allen’s book Getting Things Done in Swedish soft covers! Big fat stamps, papers, Perlescent Liquid Acrylic (pink), two colors of clay, a white Gelly roll pen and a black favorite to write with (a Pilot G-tec-C4 size 0,4 mm bought at Kreatima) and yes, the coolest tooth paste tube ever – bought at Museeum of Modern art (Moderna museet) and designed by Karin Mannerst?l!

The Pilot G-TEC! I took this photo earlier this summer because I thought I’d tell you about this pen that I love so much. I like it because it writes very black and very thin lines and is so smooth to write with! It’s my friend Anna that told me about it in school, and at first I thought I couldn’t write with such a thin pen, but now I do it all the time in my diary. I had two that recently broke though they both had ink left so I just had to hunt for a new one.

Thanks again everyone!