Jessica Backup

So many of you seem to have struggled a little bit with this theme, either because it just felt hard, or because you just had too many ideas, haha. But you’ve created SO MANY PRETTY THINGS. Let’s have a look! Christin made shadow figures with her hands and wrote a really beautiful text about the process!  Mikaela was inspired by me (:D) and made double exposures!  Anki made these crochet rocks that she placed around the world.  Louielei made A FREAKING BOOK??!?!?! Alicia made a Harry Potter inspired wall hanging. I might steal this one. Denise made a Slytherin scarf and tiny hats for her guinea pigs Severus and Bellatrix haha. <3  Anni made signs to different magical places for her garden.  Hanna took this stunning picture of some fairytale-like woods.  Rebecca made a cosplay prop! Tone drew a beautiful fox illustration! Sandra Nicole worked on her portfolio with the name “Saga”, and needs input about how to proceed!  Ronette  made a bookmark of...

   Obsessed. Completely obsessed, that’s what I am. Making them all day. Thinking about making them when I’m not. Naming them like ladies. Because they feel powerful. The last one is even inspired by a specific lady . Elena (my middle name OOPS), Freja, Idun and Alicia. We’ll see what’ll happen next. These are my ladies so far.

For the theme Saga for Monthly Makers ( see my creation + send in yours here ) I started by using these pictures of a perfect rose in our garden and experimenting, and it turned out like this! I actually had a hard time picking which one to actually go for, but felt like the other ones were a little bit more dreamy and fairytale-y. Also did you know what my best pun is!!! This: What do you call a place where fairies eat pasta? FAIRYTALY.  BOOM. *mic drop* bye (Also yesterday me and Mikaela brought our water bottles and power banks to Stockholm City and played Pokémon GO for five hours. I’m obsessed. Get live updates about my adventures over on twitterrrrrrr .)  

It’s the 20th, and it’s time for me to share with you my creation for this months Monthly Makers theme! The theme is – as you probably know by now – Saga, and to participate you just comment with a link to your creation on this post!  Oh how I’ve loved this theme. It’s SO perfect for me, almost too perfect, because as I started thinking about different ideas, I also started getting stressed out about the fact that what I actually created had to be spectacular.  As a host, and with a theme that fit me like a glove, I felt the pressure. But then I thought about it for a while, felt stressed out for a while and then I was just like “hell no!” and I started just playing around with pictures. And it worked! Here’s what I created: They’re these fairytale images of woods, and I’ve created them in a new way to me. I’ve used brushes and hue/saturation and stuff and none of that double exposure stuff that I usually do....

Okay so I forgot that it was Monday one time. BIG DEAL. Let’s just get on with it. As you might have seen on my Instagram, I’m all about pixel sorting these past few days. It’s this crazy technique where you sort the rows or columns of pixels and uh OKAY I DON’T KNOW HOW IT WORKS but looks like melting rain and I absolutely love it. And one of my favourite artists is  Giacomo Carmagnola , here with M00N . Okay so since I recommended a song last week I thought I’d do the same this week. This is my most listened to song this year so far – Hurt Me by Låpsley. I don’t know what it is but I can’t listen to it enough. I just love her voice. Found magitorch/slug draws/whatever I should call him through Hitrecord and I absolutely adore his illustrations. So dreamy and dark and moody. Find his Society6 here and his facebook page here. This picture of a baby cow on a field of flowers. By lioness on tumblr! And that’s all for this time b...

Speaking of Saga – the theme for the creative challenge Monthly Makers (read about how to be a part of it here ) – I want to share with you one of my favourite artists. A photographic artist, to be more specific, who creates mysterious and magical images that are so out of this world and spectacular that I can’t believe it. It’s like they’re taken straight out of the most beautiful fairytale. This is Beata Rydén . IT’S SO AMAZING. ALL OF IT. See more on her website , Flickr and Instagram ! Oh and like her facebook page ! Here’s what it says about her on her website, and I think it sums it all up in a great way: With the art of photography she aims to explore our inner worlds and psychological struggles. One topic that she tends to come back to is integrity and personal borders. Beata uses imagination as a powerful tool in her work. I hope everything is going well with your creations for this month, and if not, I hope this post gave you som...

Okay so like a million of you (two) said you’d like my scanned flowers as desktop or phone wallpapers, and since I’m an almighty god who will always answer your prayers, I’m gonna give it to you! I’ve also made my first pattern ever from the pictures, so I thought I’d include that too.  Alright here are four of them to use for your computer! Just right click the image and save as and it’s yours! And here are four pictures you can use for your phones! Just save them to your phone in any way you can/want/wish. As for the pattern, it was hard to make it nice looking but I kept on working on it until I was happy, because I had a ~*vision*~!!! Here’s the “base” of the pattern, which is lots of layers of flowers! And here’s how it turns out when it’s repeated 3×3! So you can download the base in the same way as the others and use it for your desktop wallpaper as well! Might need some tweaking with the size of the...

A few months back, the wonderful Safah Ahmed sent me an e-mail. She sent me an e-mail and asked me if I wanted to be a part of this thing she was creating. It was a thing called ink stained lungs . It is, as Safah so eloquently puts it, “a zine collective filled with poetry, photography and lettering, interviews and inspiration, all created in the name of celebrating the beauty of visual and written art forms”. And it’s finished! It’s out! There are four of my pictures in it, and an interview (!) with me about creativity, creating and inspiration. Links to all the contributors can be found here , and also a link to a pdf of the zine. You can also read it here . As put by Safah: This is for the poets, the artists, with ink stained lungs and paper hearts. Our gift to you.

Alright, with the theme for Monthly Makers being “Saga” (check out the presentation here ) I thought I would teach you all one of my special techniques to make pictures dreamier – and more fairytale-like. It’s REALLY easy, and just requires some kind of editing software where you can use layers, change opacity and use a gradient tool. It works best on pictures that are shot facing towards a light source, but can work when you had the light source from the side as well. The secret to this is actually looking at the picture a little bit and see where it would make sense for there to be more light . So I started with this picture of a horse! If you look at the shadows and the faint halo on the horses mane you can figure out that the light is coming from the side/slightly behind the horse. Also, if you took the picture recently (this one is like 6 years old haha) you can just think about where the sun was. Keep that in mind when doing this.   Step 1: Make ...