Rainy days

Before anything else, I feel I must admit to my inner melancholic love of rainy days. They're not for everyone. They have often been accused of inducing mood swings and the unshakeable urge to stay in bed all day. Which isn't all that bad... But it can get better. Just put on some music, sit by the window with a nice cup of coffee and cosy up with a warm blanket or something and you'll see it's quite great, actually. I love all that jazz, walking through the city when it's raining, splashing about in puddles, running for cover, carrying a bright umbrella, drying off in a nice café or writing or painting or taking photographs or reading, all with the rain in the background, lightly tapping on glass or with lightning bolts opening up the sky... The rain is quite the source of inspiration. It's when I write the best, read the most, listen to the biggest amounts of jazz. I'm a hopeless romantic, I suppose...

When I woke up today, the windows were covered in raindrops. The whole day was nice and moody and foggy. Rain at this time is quite strange, considering it's the middle of winter and I'm in Sweden. But today's rain fits right in with the forest and the wind swooshing through the branches and the green grass peeking from under the snow. And it did indeed inspire me. I took some pictures, four of which I'm going to share with you. I hope all the rain lovers out there will appreciate my rant. I'll come back tomorrow with a project that might help you stay warm on rainy/snowy days. Until then, stay warm, it's winter after all!

     

Business or pleasure?

Here I am on my second day of blogging, currently still abiding by my "Be creative everyday" resolution.
Truth be told, I don't always get to be creative for my own sake, seeing as I have to try and work a bit too. On the other hand, I have the advantage of mixing business with pleasure: doing graphic design and illustrations is a fun, yet sometimes frustrating way to have my cake and eat it too. When your work is something you actually enjoy, it's a pretty good thing. However... Compromising is tough. When your doing work for an actual client, there's a fine line between staying true to your own style and finding a way to work within their vision. Basically, you need to let go of "That colour does not go with that colour" or "I am a follower of De Stijl, I will not use circles". If you want to make money through creativity-on-demand, there's no room for an overinflated ego. Meet people halfway or try and sell your original work. Which is almost what I tried doing today, taking a break from logos and "boring" stuff like that. Today I was a kid again and ran with... well, monsters! The lovely guys and gals over at Threadless constantly hold design challenges for Tees and Iphone cases and bedsheets and hoodies and wall-art and everything nice. The current challing is one I couldn't possibly miss, otherwise the kiddo inside would really blow me a raspberry: using the funny fellas from Monsters, Inc. to create an awesome design. Why not? Boo, Mike and Sulley are awesome, of course they'd make a great T-shirt! So I gave it a try and that was my creative challenge for the day, mixing business with pleasure!

I hope there's somebody out there who'd like to wear this shirt, 'cause I'd sure like to win that prize :) Wish me good luck, my so far non-existent readers! See you tomorrow!

The End./Shhh, the show's about to start!

Buh-bye now, 2012! The end.

Shhh, the show's about to start! Hey there, 2013, how you doin'? 


As one year passes, another one pops up from... well, the (hopefully) never-ending movement of the Universe. And in this big old Universe there are big rocks and big stars and also rocks deemed too small to hang out with the big boys (still sorry, Pluto). And oh yeah, there are people living on big rocks nearby big stars. I guess that's us... and some aliens somewhere. But the little green/grey/purple/whatever people probably won't be reading this, so I'm going to make a U-turn and go back to the ones living on the third rock from the Sun. 

Now, these people sure are strange. Some are the bad kind of strange, the kind who love rockets that blow people up instead of taking them to look for aliens. But others are the good kind of strange, the kind who think and daydream and create and take things apart to make new ones and collect weird items nobody wants and paint with their fingers and write journals and read dusty books and raid thrift stores and roam the world wide web and the whole wide world for even more goody strangeness. That's my kind of people. 

The Lost and Found Box was thought of during an insomniac moment after last night's New Year's get-together. By now, I'm used to these insomnia-driven bursts of "I need to do something new", but I've never experienced the "I need to start a blog" thing. I read lots of blogs, but I never thought I could keep one. Now I've decided I should give it a go.

Therefore, to celebrate the coming of yet another new year (sorry, fans of the 2012 apocalypse, better luck next time), my one resolution is to be creative everyday. Creativity can mean a lot of things, from writing to painting, from telling a joke to baking cupcakes, from taking photographs to recycling some old trinket into something new and so on and so on. Nothing is off-limits. Which is why The Lost and Found Box is meant to become a collection of whatever comes to mind. And I promise my mind is strange (just like the things you'd find in a lost and found box). I don't even know what I'll come up with everyday. But I know I'll enjoy coming up with it.


So, as the curtain drops on 2012, I welcome 2013 on the stage. It's going to be quite a show... World, you'd better prepare yourself for all the weird, 'cause here I come!