I’m happy you’re here to help me welcome my very first Weekend Guest. I couldn’t be more delighted to have the very talented Riikka Kovasin as a guest on my blog today. She’s the queen of backgrounds if you ask me. The textures and colors on her projects are simply stunning, one of the reasons I asked her here on the blog today. Riikka brought a beautiful layout and a process video with her. Here she is!
Hello and warm, sunny summer! I’m really honored and delighted that Els asked me to guest here on her blog! Thank you for the trust!
My name is Riikka Kovasin. I’m a mixed media style scrapbooker from Finland. I’m married to the love of my life and we have two sweet daughters. We live in the capital, Helsinki near the city center.
I’ve been doing all sorts of crafts my whole life, but really got into papercrafts after I found scrapbooking. I started doing pages back in 2009 when my older daughter was about 6 months old. Since then my style has evolved to more mixed media direction and nowadays I usually grab gesso or other paint media when I start creating. I adore getting my hands into paints and mists! To me the process of creating is equally important than the finished page.
SCRAPBOOKING IN FINLAND | When I started scrapbooking about five years ago there was a very lively scrapbooking scene in the country already and I think it’s only gotten livelier! We are not a very big country so back in the day all scrapbookers knew each other, but nowadays the crowd has gone bigger and bigger so it’s hard to keep track – which is fantastic! It’s lovely to meet new crafters in crops and events! I would say that scrapbooking is alive and well here in Finland!
We Finns are a bit timid and usually keep to ourselves in a way but in the past years Finnish scrappers have really been pushing to get out there! I guess we have grown bolder in taking part to worldwide challenges and using another language than Finnish. There’s so many talents here and so many styles present in the scene! If you want to know more about Finnish paper crafting, a new magazine about paper crafts was started last year – here’s the blog: Paperillalehti. Maybe I should warn you that it’s in Finnish!
WHERE I FIND INSPIRATION | Everywhere! Inspiration is never far away, I think. It can be from a new product, a beautiful patterned paper, a story I want to tell, a technique I want to try or the photo I’m choosing for the layout. I also find music highly inspiring and usually have something playing while I create. Here’s a post I did some time ago about inspiration.
WHERE I CREATE | I don’t have a room of my own for crafting, but have my supplies in our living room. I usually make the pages on top of an Expedit shelf I have as my storage. If I’m making a video, I switch to our living room dining table as it has enough space for the layout and the camera hovering on top of the craft mat.
SCRAPBOOKING ON VACATION | I really enjoy doing pages and wouldn’t be able to leave them for a long while. But I don’t take scrapbooking supplies with me on vacation. Not as such at least. If I’m going for a trip, I usually prepare a minialbum before the travel and then fill it with ephemera during the vacation. So I have the mini, a pen and maybe some glue with me. What I really also love are the box style minis for this purpose! (Here’s a link to my blog post about one.) I can just buy a few posts cards while travelling, write the journaling on the go and add all the tickets and leaflets inside – so when I come home, the travel album is already finished!
For this post I created a scrapbooking layout with a start to finish video. It shows my process and the usual way I construct my pages. Like in this one, I usually create a mixed media background using different medias layering them on top of each other and then add the paper layers and photo on top. If you’d like to see more videos of the similar kind, please subscribe my YouTube channel or visit my blog!
The story behind the layout is a game my girls got a while back. The goal is to put together Princess cupcakes using a special recipe cards. They just adore the game! The first toy they get from the self and the last to be put back in there is this game! Every once in a while the whole family plays the game, but usually they want to play it together – changing the rules a bit so they can get the cupcakes done more rapidly.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my post and found inspiration from it! If you have any questions, please leave a comment or send me a mail!
Thank you so much for having me, Els! Have a lovely summer you all!
MATERIALS: Background: 7 Dots Studio; Gesso: Talens; Mists: Glimmer Mist; Stamps: 3rd Eye; Ink: Archival Ink; Patterned Papers: 7Gypsies, My Mind’s Eye, Studio Tekturek, 7 Dots Studio, Prima Marketing; Alpha: American Crafts, Basic Grey; Sticker: Evalicious; Chipboards: 3rd Eye, Flair Button: 3rd Eye; Pen: Sakura; Felt Pens: Copic; Half Pearls: Prima Marketing, Freckled Fawn; Other: pencil, sewing thread, paper clip, glitter, fabric rose.
Thank you very much, Riikka, for your amazing project and video!!! It’s an honor to have you here! If you enjoyed this post, please then head on over to Riikka’s blog to leave her some love (especially since she celebrated her birthday earlier this week;)). I hope you enjoyed this first Weekend Guest post.
Els.
paperiliitin
Thank you Els so much for having me guesting!
Lizzy Hill
Wonderful! Loved reading about Rikka’s bg & also, the video was FABULOUS….the glue/glitter tip is one I’ll try to remember:):)!!! Glad you got Rikka on here, Els!!!
annieclaxton
Fabulous video, I was rivetted from start to finish, always love Riikka’s work :o)