Jessica Backup

So I’ve gone and made a studio vlog!! My first ever one. And I filmed it in September and haven’t finished it, so please enjoy this throwback to autumn. It features some collage, embroidery and redecorating of the wall above my desk!! HAVE FUN. Hugs, Jessica

Long time no see! Okay, I was going to start this by saying it had been a while, thinking it was like six months or so since I wrote one of these posts. Well I just checked and last time I did this was in 2018 . EXCUSE ME. What happened to time? Illness and misery, probably, but let’s not talk about that right now! I want to catch you up on what I’ve been making lately. And don’t worry, I’m not going to sum up over a year of creative work, I’m just going to start somewhere. That’s what you gotta do here in life, just start somewhere. I think one of the reasons I didn’t do this in 2019 was that it was a year characterized by creative uncertainty for me. Somewhere along the line I grew tired of what I had been creating, and started craving change. The only thing was that I only knew I wanted to leave what I had been creating – I had no idea where I wanted to go.

So, 2011 was an intense year in my life. I graduated “high school” (it’s always impossible to translate the words for different parts of school so WHATEVER), went on a big trip that we had planned for years and started my first year at university. Nothing after that really went as planned, but that year was filled with so much hope for the future, and so many exciting experiences. One of the best parts of 2011 however was a project I was doing with two of my best friends. We had started a sort of creative group consisting of the three of us, and tried to meet up every now and then for some creative hangouts. We called ourselves “Ljómi”, which was supposed to be “glitter” in Icelandic, but I just discovered it actually means like “glow” and “brilliance”, so… yeah, that went well haha. Still a cute name though! Ljómi was established in 2010, but really flourished in 2011. We started a wonderful project where we eac...

So, apparently I started my whole journey with embroidery on painted fabric in January 2018, and I only just finished my first hoop. Heh. I haven’t really been working on it actively, but rather working very slowly whenever I felt like it and whenever I had embroidery meetups with one of my best friends. But I’ve quite enjoyed this very slow way of working, I wrote a post on Instagram just the other day about how social media can make you feel like your creativity has to be fast paced. But I think sometimes it has to be slow. I’d say that the embroidery hoop I finished the other day is one of my favourite things I’ve ever created, and it feels worth every single hour I put into it. I thought I’d walk you along the process a little bit.

Things have been a bit of a struggle lately. I’ve been feeling really insecure about my art, and the changes it’s going under. My art has had a kind of cohesive style for the last 2-3 years. It’s been dark and moody and has looked a lot like space, to pretty much sum it up. This style has given me a lot of things. It gave me my first sales in my shop, it gave me pretty much all of my followers on Instagram and Twitter, and in a way it has given me a lot of friends through the people who I have found through those followers.

It’s been a while! I’ve actually wanted to get back into blogging for a while now, but have had some SERIOUS website trouble (basically everything was down for I think 2 weeks? It was great). But anyway, it’s working now, and I want to talk a little bit about something I’ve been obsessed with lately – collage! I follow a bunch of collage artists on Instagram and have a board filled with collage on Pinterest. I just love it! I’ve also really adored my friend Kelly’s recent adventures with collage , and was really inspired. AND I wanted to create something non-digital. If you know me you know that digital is my main thing, but I’ve recently realised how much I need non-digital things too. I’ve kind of pressured myself to pick one of them in order to focus and specialise, but mixing it up is what keeps me happy, and I learn so many things to transfer from one to the other when I experiment with both! So this is why I started experiment...

You know like two posts ago, where I was like “I’M LEAVING THE DIGITAL FOR A WHILE”. Well, that “while” wasn’t very long. While I still really want to be creating physically more, I found myself going back to digital creations like within a week of writing that post.

I’ve loved Youtube for many many years now, but it’s only kind of recently that I’ve discovered the community of artsy youtubers, and I’m so in love. I love the studio vlogs, watching people paint and create and just hearing about their lives as creatives! So I thought I’d list a few of my favourites that I’ve found so far. These are channels that make me SUPER excited when I see them in my subscription box, and if you have any other recommendations feel free to comment down below, I would love to find more! Leigh Ellexson Leigh is just so incredibly good at what she does, and I love everything she creates. She makes studio vlogs, reviews materials and gives us insight into her process. It’s just all in all a wonderful experience to watch her videos, and they always make me want to paint. Also she has a very good doggo and a cute birb that feature in her videos and I love them both. SUBSCRIBE NOW!! Here’s a link to Leigh’s channel. 

I’ve had a pretty tough time lately, health has been bad and I have literally had no energy. Like, to the point where I’ve spent several days a week just in bed doing nothing. It has really been quite bad for my mental health too, as I’ve basically not been able to do anything I like! But I’m not just writing this to tell you about how miserable I’ve been, I’m writing this to tell you that I’m better now! I’ve gotten some energy back (for whatever reason) and have been able to do some more creative stuff. I also had a pretty big realisation that I was spending a lot of time creating what I thought was expected of me rather than what I wanted to create, which isn’t my goal at all. So I’m changing things up, and spending more time making physical things – painting, embroidery and collage. 

This post is sponsored by Creativ Company.  Few things are as limiting as perfectionism. Many times, perfectionism can stop you from getting what you want and to where you want, and especially within the creative field. Striving for perfection is rarely a very productive thing, and I think almost devastating when it comes to art (especially since there is no such thing as perfect art). I thought I had freed myself from perfectionism, but when I started experimenting with a technique completely new to me – painting abstractly with acrylics – I really struggled. I’m not through it yet, but I thought I’d share a few tips that I think have helped and that have been important to me during this process.  If you want to try painting abstractly with acrylics you can purchase your materials on Creativ Company’s website .  I really had to stop and remind myself that “done is better than perfect” so many times. Acrylics are tricky in that way, as it...

It’s really hard being a happy creative . For the past few months, it’s been nearly impossible for me. During the first six months of this year I’ve been experimenting quite a lot when it comes to creating. I have made some things I’m really proud of, and I’ve learned a lot, but the pressure I’ve been putting on myself to constantly create something completely new has been really bad for my mental health. At the start of the summer, I was in a pretty bad state, but I didn’t even realise it. I thought I was just doing what I was “supposed” to do, that I was being a successful creative who kept pushing my limits and thinking of new things. I started to lose interest in creating, but kept pushing, I experimented with acrylic paint and pushed myself until I was exhausted, sitting in front of the canvas crying with the brush still in my hand. I still want to learn the things I was on my way to learn during that time, but I need to t...

The other night I woke up at 02.00 and just couldn’t fall back asleep because my brain was just BURSTING with ideas. I’m not going to share all of them with you here, because I kind of feel like I need to work a little bit more on them before I expose them to the world. But anyway, one idea was so simple and fantastic that I had to take action as soon as I woke up again later that morning. That idea had come to mind thanks to the magnificent peonies in our garden. I just love the swirling movements of the petals, and I realised that applying some heavy editing on closeup pictures of that could yield some fantastic results. I actually had to use my old camera as I don’t have anything that really works as a macro lens for the new one, but it worked anyway! Here is an example of the finished work, followed by the unedited version.  I think they’re both pretty in their own ways, but I wanted to make the abstract feel of it stronger and make it feel like it might be ...

One of my all time favourite thing is finding new artists, as well as writing about them, and I’m planning on incorporating that more here. So today we’re going to talk a little bit about a visual artist that I absolutely adore. Aeforia, or Alexy Préfontaine, creates digital artwork characterised by wonderful colour palettes and fantastic compositions. There’s just something so atmospheric over all of Alexy’s work, and I’m constantly blown away by what he shares. Let’s take a look! Check out Aeforia’s work on his Instagram , Ello , website and Behance .

Hello again! Time for another recap of my recent creative adventures!  A few weeks ago our little hepatica plant was in full bloom, so I went out and took some pictures of it! And then I made it pink, because I can’t resist some pink. I really like these images! I actually used a large light purple paper that I put up behind them to get a more soft and calm background. I had two days where I was just obsessed with these abstract digital shapes, and while I actually really liked them then I quickly became insecure about them, but you know what? I love this! I’m gonna make some more. I made this one, which is called “Alys”, and I love the colours so much! There’s just something special about a peachy orange which turns into pink which turns into magenta.  Made this while I was still doing the whole negative space thing ( which I talked about in this blog post ). I’m not really doing that anymore, it was a fun challenge, I liked the results and le...