mÄndag 13 januari 2020

ART JOURNALING - AND VITAMIN D!

Hello out there!
Hope you have had a nice autumn, Christmas and a happy new year. May 2020 be a great one!
Despite the snowflakes above, there has been no snow at all in the part of Sweden where I live. Only saw snow once, in November when we were up at the cottage in the woodlands.


Nov 30th -19




Like everybody else I would love to have snow on Christmas Eve (which is the main Xmas day in this country), and Christmas Day. That would be enough, but it rarely occurs these days. Kind of hard to have a genuine Christmas feeling when the lawn is green...!





Well today is January 13th. A very good thing is that after winter solstice on Dec 22, the day has increased with 32 minutes - YAY! The light is coming back to the North! I really dislike when it's getting dark at like 3.30 pm. 
In all of November we only had like nine (9!) hours of sun in total!!! The last time I saw a blue sky was the weekend at the cottage in November. Was sooooo happy!  😀
I for one welcome the light - and spring!


Nowadays I craft most in my junk journal (JJ), or make things to put in my JJ out of old bookpages - and in my bullet journal (bujo) daily. 
Have done some art journal spreads since I last blogged (which was ages ago...).



The background is made by different shades of pink markers (from Netto), and then white acrylic paint through a stencil from Netto.





Same concept but it didn't turn ou that well - but sometimes we just have to experiment and play......




... and use what we've got!





Really like fall as long as the leaves are still on the trees! Tim Holtz stencil. The alpha letters are from Netto.





The cute animals are cutouts from Daphne's Diary. As a birthday present my lovely husband gave me a year's subscription of this fabulous magazine (of Dutch origin, but it comes out in different languages).




Third and last fall spread. Got the beautiful mask , 7 gypsies, from a lovely friend in Florida. I absolutely looooooove it! It's so usable. Have also used it for a subtle background in my bullet journal. The mask is sticky on the back so there's no risk it will move on you while inking your project. Great!

Every time we go to the cottage I always bring my pink mini suitcase with white dots, packed with crafty stuff. Well, in November I forgot it up in the cottage - including my bullet journal in it....! đŸ˜±đŸ˜±đŸ˜± Unbelievable that both I & husband could miss this bright pink thing!!
Fortunately I had  Memory Books designed by Norwegian Vibeke Spigseth at home, and one was this:





Bought several memory books at Panduro some years ago, so glad I had one with a Christmas theme. Served very well as my bujo this December. Gotta' work with what you've got!


 The community of Röros is actually a Unesco World Heritage site

There are beautiful images in it. Thought I recognized this picture a little, and after commenting on a Poppy Design post on Fb, designer Vibeke Spigseth answered that this is actually from a community called Röros (RĂžros in Norwegian), and this particular house was in a winter scene when filming Swedish children's story Pippi LĂ„ngstrump (Pippi Longstocking) during the 60's!! 
No wonder I thought it looked a bit familiar - ADORED Pippi LĂ„ngstrump when I was a kid, I wanted to be her, haha ha ha!


Did very few cards this Xmas, here's one of them:



Trying to get an Aurora (norrsken) feeling in the background. Unfortunately you don't get this phenomena down here in the south of Sweden, it's much more frequent in the north.





On to a completely different subject! So I used to work as a nutrition advisor; 
If you take vitamin D, make sure to take it with fat and magnesium for a better uptake. I take my vit D-tablet while having dinner, together with a magnesium pill.
If you do NOT take blood thinning medicine (antikoagulantia, dvs blodförtunnande) you can also take Vitamin K2 for maximal uptake of vit D. Vitamin K2 is a bit pricey though, but if you really need vitamin D it might be a good idea to take K2 (as long as you're not on any kind of medicine that makes your blood thinner).

Here in Sweden we can't take up vit D from the sun until May (April if we're lucky). The sun has to be in a special angle towards the earth.
Since a lack of vit D can cause all kinds of negative things, including depression, I make sure to take my pill daily (until May)!


This pic is actually from February -18. Don't know if we're going to get snow here before spring will arrive.....


Wishing you all the best!  🙋