First off, a big thank you to everyone who took part in my Instagram office hours on Friday! Thanks for asking questions and thanks for stopping by to read my answers! You can check out what went on right here. I'll probably do another office hours day in a month or two, so don't be sad if you missed it this time.

Apart from that busy Friday, last week was a slightly less productive one in terms of getting things done, but c'est la vie - sometimes we need a sluggish week to gather our strength and get on with new projects. This Mixed Media Monday piece was one of the few things I managed to finish last week, but I'm very happy with the creative process of this piece. I often find it difficult to let things be very simple. Not that my mixed media work ever is a cornucopia of embellishments, but letting less be more is still a challenge. In the pale nights was a kind piece to create, a bit slow at times, but never taunting.

I've had these cut up bits of text arranged as these lines for a lot more than a year now. I feel the pale nights of summer somehow amplify all feeling. Sometimes up to the point where you feel so much you could burst, or where you could almost touch the clouds. Summer is an especially great time to be in love and/or to be creative. Here in the North it stays light all through the night during the midsummer weeks, and it's still not very dark even though we've now reached August. As someone who gets to set their alarm clock to whenever (or not set one at all), it's tempting to just enjoy the quiet of the night-time and never go to sleep. I'm always attracted to the ephemeral, and these pale nights are just that. They come every year, but they're so fleeting, and the opposite winter darkness is an entirely different beast.

(vintage photobooth photo, vintage book cover, cut up and rearranged vintage text, linen, silk thread, leather)

14,5x18,7cm / 5.7"x7.4"

Playing with the reverse side again. Dangling silks and recycled leather. The cover paper reveals new tones when the top layer of the paper is removed. I feel creative work has a lot to do with scraping off the top layers.