Almost two years ago I made Swimmers, another mixed media piece created inside a vintage compact case, and I totally fell in love with it (luckily it did go to a very good home once I was ready to sell it). Ever since finishing Swimmers I've been collecting compact cases so I could make more tiny compact art pieces. Still, this is the first one I've made since Swimmers - for some reason the cases feel so precious I struggle to actually use them. Now that I've had my small collection of compact cases for some time, they've become more approachable, and I already have plans for creating a few more art pieces. Next I'm going to make a box of some sort, though. I need something rectangular...

To Kiss is a pocket treasure, of which I think there should be much more in the world. I rarely use my pockets for anything, apart from maybe a tissue, but I find the idea of having something really lovely in your pocket to look and to fiddle with every now and then extremely attractive. The case fits perfectly in my palm and it's so satisfying to snap it open and closed. I'm beginning to understand that super annoying zippo flip thing some people do. This compact still has the faint scent of rouge and powder that wafts out when you snap it open - much more elegant than zippos then.

This is perhaps the most feminine piece I've ever created ( yet it has no lace! okay, there's a bit of lacy handmade paper there - I was wrong to think I had avoided lace). The poem consists of example fragments cut from an old English-Finnish dictionary I've mixed up and rearranged after careful consideration. Dictionaries and encyclopedias are really much more poetic than one comes to think - they're full of (often obscure) gems that feed my creativity unlike pretty much anything else. Got to love language!