Autumn

Posted on by under life

September. September is my favourite Sweden month. A few days ago the winds blew away the last of the summer heat and now it’s chilly outside. It’s the beginning of the “want to wear gloves” kind of weather, but there are still sunday afternoons where the sun is warm and you can sit outside in a T-shirt.

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The other day we had an early birthday party for my sister. She’s going to Australia to do a DTS, a discipleship training school, with the same organisation I’ve worked with before. So it was a bit of a going away party as well. And we had brunch, which was the best part.

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Oh, and golden glitter. Those were the best parts, brunch and golden glitter theme.

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xx

Sunday thoughts (5)

Posted on by under sunday thoughts

Sometimes we make God into what we are. But sometimes, possibly more unaware, we make God into what we’re not. He’s my flaws, areas I lack in, often: logic and reason. I see myself as the romantic one in this relationship. The emotional one. I turn to him with thoughts and ideas, problems and decision. Rarely heart. Rarely in my moods and to hang out a second. Idea: if you have something you need to pray about, pray about it. But if the time you’ll take for that is in a few days, there’s nothing stopping you from hanging out with God now. Just to chill. Just to be with him.

The golden box

Posted on by under life

My mum got me a golden, glittery box, like I’m seven and in school all over again. (Except that my mum would never have done that when I was seven? It’s great to reach the age where your parents feel nostalgia spending money on you.) Anyway, the point of the box is that the golden glitter looks exactly like my glittery turtleneck, and it matches the golden stars on my nails. I love it.

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The photo doesn’t do it justice of course, but believe me, it was just a good moment.

Update: there are paper cranes balanced on the box now. I’m gonna use it to for stuff I want to put in my letters.

Art and gifs

Posted on by under Artwork

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(Soft pencil sketch with textured acrylics surrounding it. In a little circle. Because I love having little circles as backgrounds. I think I have decided it’s my style.)

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Also, I like to make gifs on giphy, and I never use any of their unnecessary effects. Except that maybe I’ll start to. They’re kinda fun.

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(This is also on Etsy of course)

Ocean

Posted on by under Artwork

I’ve always struggled with painting landscape. But here are some things that make it easier:

  1. Work in layers. I literally took a blue pen and very roughly sketched out the painting. Then I took acrylics and used them with a lot of water to make an underpainting – at this point you don’t have to be careful, just put down colour where it’s supposed to be. And then I added oils, which is where I could actually start blending things, and get the exact shades, details and depth. The first steps are easy, because there’s no pressure when you know you’re gonna paint over it anyway. And the last step is easy, because you have the guide of the paint you’ve already applied.
  2. Choose a reference photo with a lot of contrast. This might be personal preference, but I can’t deal with painting full meadows with a thousand different colours in them. I might just need to learn the right techniques, but for now it’s easier to paint something with contrast. That means the dark parts are just dark, and there are big blocks of basically just one colour. That makes it a bit easier to grasp for me, and when a picture has clear shapes it’s easier to know where to begin.
  3. I actually only have two points, but it just looks better with a third.

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Etsy

To see the past through a bedroom window

Posted on by under poetry

The top of the trees
young and green
swaying in front of a bright blue background

We can’t walk back along our timline
but we can
oh we can

Have you never wandered the road where you learned how to bike?
Touched the doorframe you used to grab while swinging around fastly
chasing a friend
a cake
a birthday surprise

Your timeline is written in footsteps,
through mud and concrete.

Bruised knees
and bleeding hands
the stretch of grass

Not your memories
but your actual line of time.

It’s tangled
red
all up in the trees
all around the garden

My mum hung these blue curtains,
and I sit on the mattress.

There’s a weight like a rock at the bottom of my heart.

I am not visiting.
The trees, this window:
they’re seemingly permanent.
It seems I can’t get away

but if there’s purpose I dropped along these roads I can’t remember it
I think: I have so much more of that in the future,
why am I still sitting here,
all tangled up in red.

(Etsy)

Posted on by under Artwork

(Continuing from my last post, I’ve been sharing a lot of my art on etsy lately. Mainly pretty small things, because then they don’t have to be that expensive but it can still be an original piece. I want to write some sort of essay about that – on the merits of original art, simply because I believe there is power and beauty in that kind of shared creativity. I don’t know exactly why or how though, so I want to figure it out for myself to tell it better to others. Anyway, here’s a link.)

Etsy

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