Book Themed Bujo Tutorial

Watch this quick tutorial to learn how to make a hole in your bujo and how to plan the rest of the pages (and another mistake;).

Let’s create this book-themed bullet journal. It is very easy to draw, has a lot of simple lines and it uses a very limited colour scheme that you can change to your favourite colours and even more limited supplies (literally a fine liner and 2 watercolour pans:).

Bento

What is bento, you might ask? Well, simply put, that is a nicely decorated meal that you take to school or work (and you get a tutorial on how to make one tomorrow;). It usually consists of all main categories of food: carbohydrates (originally rice but now it can be anything from bread to potato, pasta, whatever), protein (originally usually fish, nowadays also meat, milk products like cheese and yogurt, nuts…), lots of vegetables and fruits.

This mermaid-themed lunch covers all the categories: protein – fish (for the tail), rice (body) and noodles (pasta), veggies – lettuce and cherry tomatoes, fruits (strawberry), and dessert (a piece of chocolate). This was a lunch for a small child;).

Dessert is optional but needless to say, I often included it (we all have a sweet tooth and homemade dessert is usually not that unhealthy;) although I sometimes include something else as well (like a piece of chocolate).

This could pass as a dessert but it’s very healthy – berries and cottage cheese with lemon juice.

This approach worked well for me because I wanted my kids to have a balanced meal – but that is more important while kids are little. The funny thing is – now they do it themselves:).

The stuffed tomatoes that kids made:).

Bento was traditionally just a layer of rice with some meats or fish and veggies aesthetically placed on top that Japanese wives made for their husbands when they went to work.

One of my first bento boxes – a classic with rice balls and nori algae:)

But in recent years it became very popular among moms who make sometimes very elaborate lunches for their kids for school lunches.

Our first bento box that the kiddo designed and I put together and it actually won a competition.

It is not known in our country because kids have lunch at school (and many workplaces have kitchens or restaurants nearby) but I still made it for my kids since they weren’t fond of school lunch and the homemade version was healthier.

Steamed bread shaped in cute shapes can be a nice addition to a bento box.

It was also a way to get my kiddo through a period of adapting to school – she was looking forward to her bento – I made a bento with foods that started on one letter that they were learning that week each week (she usually went home early and only ate lunch at school when she had extracurricular activities afterward). But more on that on Sunday when you’ll get some ideas about different bentos and what to take into account;).

Elephant Pendant Tutorial

Let me show you how to make this little chunky guy:)

Let’s make this chunky little pendant, perfect for summer days! It’s quick and easy to make and very suited for summer evenings:).

Tutorial – DIY postcards

Let’s make a postcard together!

As promised – a tutorial on how to make this postcard. It’s very easy, beginner friendly, and can be quite cute:) Of course, you can make it in any theme you’d like: seashells, ships, sea, and fish would be nice for a vacation card but I chose a flower for our gardening granny;). You can make these with kids because they are so easy to make and only use non-toxic materials:). Nothing fancy but so much fun! Enoy in sprinkling joy over the world;).

Watercolour Postcards

Every year we make postcards when we’re at the seaside. When we were kids we were sending postcards from wherever we traveled – everybody did it: kids, teens, and adults. We all signed each other’s postcards and had great fun reading and writing them. And it was always nice to come home to a mailbox full of postcards or get them waiting on your desk because parents were home earlier or get them in the middle of the school year sometimes since they traveled so long from far away lands. “Have you gotten my card yet?” was the usual conversation starter back in the day…

Let’s use some of the papers we created last week to make some cute postcards!

While I love email and it’s the practicality of immediate response, there is something magical about slow mail. I love the tactile quality of it and the hidden messages – the shaky handwriting when we wrote it on the boat or on the train, the quick signing of some friends, and the shy small signage, squeezed in the corners of others… The faded lines of pens on their last breath, the different colours of signage when everybody wrote cards together… There are so many things hiding in those few words that fit onto a card (or many words – I always ran out of space:D)

Handmade postcards are always appreciated:) With all the shaky lines, all the scrunched pieces,… people can somehow see past that:).

So I invite you to send a card to a friend – they will love it, I can guarantee:) If the cards are not very appealing where you live or where you are on holiday or if you want to change things up – make the cards yourself – I will show you how to do that tomorrow so come back:). It’s easy and it’s free:).

Handmade giftwrap

I’ve been absent this last week but for a good reason – we had family vaccination and celebrated 2 birthdays! We usually celebrate their birthdays at the seaside where a single grocery store carries no paper whatsoever, no notebooks, not even copy paper, let alone wrapping paper. You can only dream of a craft store here – it’s remote so you can buy about 10 basic cooking ingredients here (and they are priced 10x :D) but that’s it :D. So my DIY watercolour collage paper came to the rescue.

Eco-friendly gift wrap made from recycled brown paper and natural materials.

I always wrap their presents at home beforehand – this has the added benefit that the recipients can’t accidentally see what’s inside the gift while I pack and unpack;). I usually use simple brown paper because it takes traveling the best and is the most versatile to decorate later on (and I can draw on it or use it in collage afterward ;). It’s also recycled, recyclable and inexpensive (as well as biodegradable) which is also nice:).

You can add just a small little bird from black paper with some white ornaments and the gift becomes so much more precious – my kiddo always keeps these ornaments.

I wrap the gifts but I don’t decorate them at home. If I was to add anything on top before the travel the little decorations would get smushed and peeled off or the gifts would take up much more space – none of that is acceptable when we travel with 3 kids;). So I wrap the gifts in brown paper, put them in a suitcase and that’s it.

The big bird is painted on some plain paper and decorated with the simplest black pen and the legs are the strings that hold the paper. You don’t need much to make a gift feel special.

But plain brown paper wouldn’t cut it for the gift wrap, right? We have to decorate it a bit – especially for the kiddo;) She loves birds so I decided to go with the bird theme.

Collage is so much fun but it can be intimidating at first. So start slow – with one simple bird on a gift wrap – it is sure to bring a smile to someone’s face:).

If you’ve seen my last video on watercolour exercises I made quite a few collage papers I could use to play around. So I did. I cut out primitive birds from this painted copy paper, from an old book no one needs and added some natural material found on the floor (literally:D), some doodles with a black and white pen, and a string from a big bag of flour that we carried with us and that was it.

This bird was cut from a bookpage and the rest are seaside gatherings. The string was unraveled from the top of a flour bag – look around for the little treasures in your surrounding – there are so many!

The reason I’m writing this is to encourage you to see things differently – little things on the floor can be beautiful ornaments, a plain brown paper can be the best background to play with, and gift wrapping can be fun and very inexpensive – tailored to the recipient and made from solely recycled and natural materials – and it will still look good! You don’t need to sacrifice the beauty and joy of kids’ unwrapping gifts if you don’t want to buy fancy and often unrecyclable papers;) – gift wrap is often plastic coated.

Love is in the hair… quite literally, hihi;). Not my original idea but I really like it and so did she:). You could also make a postcard like this or a teacher’s gift.

The last gift was a scrunchie and I found this gift wrap idea on Pinterest (where else;) – so I just painted a girl on a piece of card from pasta (yes, we eat A LOT of pasta, I always have cards from boxes of pasta – Barilla has nice white or recycled brown inside – very useful bytheway:). And she was so happy! This was all literally made from scraps – we don’t need that much to be happy – not even teenagers;). Everyone says teens just want money but my teens said they would be so disappointed if they got money from me. They are strange creatures and prefer old pasta boxes and scraps of fabric I guess :D. Maybe you have some strange creatures in your life – who knows – try it with a brown paper bag and some natural materials;).

Watercolour Learning Resources

You know I love watercolours and I’ve made a lot of videos using them in my bullet journal and even a little tutorial on
– how to mix watercolours and
– how to paint watercolour post cards
But here are some beginner watercolour tutorials from other people that I liked:
– doodles
– flowers and here
– cats
– penguins
– cute character
– feather
– how to use up the leftover paint
– a simple beginner guide

Watercolour and ink urban sketching following a tutorial by Rosin

Best watercolour channels I have come across:
– Mind of watercolor – he explains watercolour really nicely and has great exercises for watercolours
– James Gurney – he’s just great in any media;)
– Following the white rabbit – she also has great series on urban sketching (also using watercolours)
– Maria Radzynska – she also has a lot series 21 days of summer 3 years in a row (in watercolour)
– Alphonso Dunn – although he’s the master of pen and ink, he is a great teacher and has some watercolour tutorials, too
– Theo Chi – an urban sketcher
– Louise de Masi – she’s a master of nature illustration – animals and flowers in watercolours – just gorgeous!

Watercolour in my bujo, a study of a painting found on Pinterest

Portraits in watercolour:
– Ben Lustenhouwer
– kelogsloops
– Lioba Bruckner
– Chris Hong

Watercolour mermaids in my tiny art journal

I hope this helps and that you have a lovely World’s watercolour month:)

Octopus Bujo Tutorial

Here’s my bullet journal full of octopuses and mistakes;) Check out the video to see how I tried to remedy it…

This is the page where the paint massacre happened;)

Mini Fairy from Polymer Clay Tutorial

As promised yesterday – here it comes – a tutorial on how to make this cute little fairy:). You can use it in a number of ways: as a quick thank you gift for teachers, kind strangers who helped you out or a “just because” gift to your friends, as an addition to your fairy garden, as a decoration on a gift or a card, to add some magic to your doll house,…

Let’s make some fairies for our fairy garden!

They make perfect teacher gifts, additions to nature corner, they add magic to your dollhouse and make your friends happy as a “just because gift”. I hope you like it – if you do, subscribe for more:).

These make great teacher gifts;)

Gnome Day

Yesterday it was gnome day – as any of you, returning readers, probably already know – we’re quite into gnomes here – especially the middle one, she has always been crazy about gnomes.
*Apologies to all the linguists – I will talk abound gnomes and elves because our language doesn’t know the difference that well.

If you want to make a gnome like this, here is the tutorial.

So, naturally, I draw a lot of gnomes… Especially the red ones (her favourite;). This one was from Inktober.

A baby elf from Inktober challenge.

But I turn other creatures into gnomes as well;).

Gnome tooth mouse from another challenge.

Gnomes also fill my bujo a lot – I did a gnome theme for quite some months in a row…

Gnomes on my happy page in bullet journal.

Every month they were in different colour…

Gnomes on my weeklies – a few months in a row…

But we don’t just draw gnomes – we also make them – kids have a rainbow of them but we always make more…

How to make a gnome on an advent calendar.

Here are the first gnomes I ever made – when my middle one was 2 years old – and the love hasn’t died – I think the last gnomes just like these I made her last year (she’s 14 now;). We have made so many nature corners with gnomes…

Gnomes in our very first nature corner – this is how it all started…

What do we do with gnomes? Well, when kids were little they played with them. Now, they make stop motion some times and we put them into nature corner – here’s the whole family: one is made from wool rowing, felt and wire, one from pine cone and the little ones have wooden bases.

Gnomes in our recent nature corner… More shapes, more styles of gnomes…

Gnomes are very related to flower fairies and flower children and these are hollow, like finger puppets – that’s another way you could make and use gnomes.

Flower children can be used as puppets – and are closely related to gnomes.

If you make gnomes, make them some things for their house – like a well for water;).

I filmed a tutorial how to make a well and ladder for gnomes or fairies if you’d like to make.

If you have little kids in your life, make them a gnome sensory box – this was happiness overload!

Gnome sensory box – a big hit with very little effort!

And if you have a gnome lover in your life, make some gnome tags to embelish the gifts…

Gnome gift tags – cute and quick to make.

Speaking of gifts, these were gnomes that we made for the school fair – the kids sell them their and the money goes to school fund for unprivileged kids. They were all sold immediately:).

Gnomes for school charity fair.

Speaking of sewing gnomes – I made our gnome lover a gnome outfit – that she loved so much that I had to patch and elongate so that it still fits her! I thought by now, she wouldn’t want to be seen in this but this child is special like that and she still loves it – go figure!

A gnome-like outfit she still uses to this day!

And this was a toy elf (he has a hat and boots, too) – sewn like a Waldorf doll and quite a big toy – she wished for that for a while before the elves from grandpa Frost had the time to make it…

The second gnome toy she got – this one is much better than the first attempt:).

Speaking of grandpa Frost – he has elves that help him – and we have elves that come alive in December if they are placed on their advent calendar truck…

Kindness elves – our variation of elf on the shelf.

Than they hide and do all kind of stuff – from baking cookies to writing to grandpa Frost their wishes…

Elf writing to grandpa Frost.

I wonder when those traditions fade away… I thought we’d be over by now:D

Elves making envelopes.

And here’s one of the best gnome “activities” we do – although it’s not an activity at all – it’s like a meditation for kids – and because the story of the guided meditation includes a gnome, the kids say “let’s make a gnome”.

Elf that brings peace to kids minds.

Based on all the gnomy stuff I see around I think we’re not the only gnome-loving family so I hope somebody will benefit from any of these ideas:). Have a nice gnome day!

Gnomes on the wreath (not ours).