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Good Vibes Come with Stripes!

January and February have been really intense at work, but also before and after :). My father started his latest book publishing project in June, 2021. Now, 9 months later – his “baby” is ready to be presented at different book fairs like the known German Frankfurter Buchmesse.

As co-editor, I checked and reworked the proofs sent by the publishing house. From October to February, I guess I spent 2-10 hours every week by revising dad’s book and the suggestions made by the publishing team. Whoever says “writing a book is something for easy-takers” should try it first – it is a hard, hard business!

Nevertheless, Thomas and I took some lucky moments for ourselves to become creative – and this is the secret: no matter how stressy your life at the moment is – take some time FOR ART (or for whatever makes YOU happy)! Because, happiness will give you the energy to overcome the stress!

Last year in July, I was searching for a good container for my different brushes and other painting tools. I used a basket first, but some brushes got damaged by the other stuff inside – so, I decided to find a new home for them. Inspired by my best friend who uses a vintage workbox for everything – as a container for make-up, for kitchen utensils, or also for art tools – I chose this little beauty here from ebay for 20 euros:

YES, makeover required, definitely! Thomas started right the way with a base coat:

We had some yellow wall paint left – mixed some white and red in it, and created a fresh apricot colour for the second coat:

Then – shame on me – it stayed untouched for 6 months in our living room before the next step took place (but I couldn’t resist to put already all my stuff inside – works perfectly :))!!!

Next step was: adding black knobs and legs 🙂

And last but not least: inspired by nature, I started to decorate the remaining apricot parts with some stripes – pastel-turquoise stripes! My “Little Zebra” became alive:

Wanna check some more from-old-to-new-stories?

Wishing you a big bunch of good vibes for your weekend :)!
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Goodbye, Mr BI!

Incredible how fast a month can run away – January, 2022 is almost over (!) – feels like sitting in a time machine (that reminds me could be cause to start a Back-to-the-Future-marathon again one weekend:))!

October 22nd, 2021 was an emotional day for me and my colleagues. It is a big move to decide, after years of doing a fine, appreciated work, to take a step outside and jump into a new, unsettled life experiance – putting the tether away – breathing deeply and feeling the excitement of something NEW happening in one’s life. Philipp is the brave guy in this story: He felt something didn’t fit any more, and had to change. That may happen to everyone of us – but not everyone is just as couragous as Philipp to make the jump – that’s the difference!

For almost 7 years, Business Intelligence (BI in short) was a one-man-show – Philipp’s one-man-show. Imagine all your wishes in a bubble – he would analyse them all, translate them to formulas and put them into a funky chart – that’s what a BI guy usually does :)!!!

I really enjoyed to work with him – the Business Intelligence Guide we wrote together as our last big project during the pandemic, it was all worth it! With this post I want to say THANK YOU, PHILIPP – for all the great time we had working together – and I wish you all the best for your new future challenges and all the new wish bubbles to fill in ;). Here comes MR BI:

Wishing an ingenious weekend to everybody,

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Momorable Moments

This is my last 2021’s card art post I guess (you’ll never know which pretty flash of inspiration could come over in the next couple of hours – so I’ll stay open-minded for all of what might happen ;)).

2021 was a year full of emotions: HOPE, JOY, DISILLUSION, LOSS, RELIEF … no one expected to deal almost 2 years with a pandemic situation, but it is still there and seems to continue with 2022. Some of our dear friends and neighbours suffered by some reason of the Covid-19-virus, some of them even lost a friend, a familiy member, or a lover. It is so hard to accept the fact that “time and unexpected events overtake” us all (The Bible. Ecclesiastes 9 vers 11). No matter how hard you try your best to avoid dangerous contacts, sometimes you are at the wrong time at the wrong place, in the middle of them – and it’s not your fault.

The following cards were created in the past seven months for special people in special occasions (happy ones, but also sad ones). With this post I want to remember you people and the moments spent with you: We* love you* and always do!

*THOUGHTS.* Watercolour on paper. 11,5*15 cm.

*THE PURPLE HILLS*. Watercolour on paper. 11,5*14 cm.

*DELIGHTFUL DESERT.* Watercolour on paper. 11,5*14 cm.

*MAKE YOUR WAY*. Watercolour on paper. 11,5*15 cm.

*EBERHARD.* Watercolour on paper. 11,5*15 cm.

*THE POPPY WALL.* Watercolour on paper. 11,5*15 cm.

*FOR MY ‘LAST ROSE’ :).* Watercolour on paper. 11,5*15 cm.

*THE YELLOW FIELD.* Watercolour on paper. 11,5*15 cm.

*THE ORANGE SKY.* Watercolour on paper. 11,5*15 cm.

Interested in some more card art works? See also

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Let’s get coupled!

It was a pleasure being part of a lot of exciting Secret Mission Projects organised by friends and colleagues in the past five months. This blog post is all about the idea of portraiting LOVE :)!!!

Portraiting someone means more than trying to carve out his or her “look”. It means to reflect the person and his/her personality, to turn chracteristics out – to bring the person inside alive on paper.

First couple: Remember my friend Daniel who invited me to his Zoom Drawing Group from time to time? I wrote about those meetings in an earlier post. He and his wife moved to Southern Germany in August, 2021. Due to the pandemic, we couldn’t celebrate a big goodbye party for them, but we did our best to make them an individual Goodbye-Daniel-and-Anne-Present including their portrait card with an IKEA voucher and the signings of all their dear friends – here they come:

Second couple: Tamara and Uwe. I know them for 14 years now and Tamara has always been a dear and special friend to me – in good times and in bad times, you know what I mean, Sweetheart ;)! In June of 2020, we were invited to celebrate their 15th anniversary and to have a great party all together – but they had to cancel the event because of the tightened pandemic restrictions. The following card was handed over after their 16th anniversary this year in July, so I just added a “+” to the 15 as a symbol for an everlasting happy marriage – wishing that for you two lucky lovers :)!!!!

Third couple: The youngsters in my quartette 🙂 – Anastasia and Mario. They got married in October and invited us together with other +300 (!) guests via videoconference – for Thomas and me, our first Zoom Wedding this year – really exciting! We are glad to see you so happy together – félicitations à vous deux <3!

Fourth couple: Thomas’ best friend and best man on our wedding – Andrzej with his wife Renata. They had their 7th anniversary in October as well (in German we call that “Das verflixte 7. Jahr” like “the seven-year itch”). For us, they make an examplary dream team – could be brother and sister, but are best friends and lovers. We will never forget all those special moments with you, love you guys ❤ ❤ ❤

“Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost …”

A new reality has become part of our lives. We all follow the up and downs with hotspot regulations, 3G and 2G rules, antigen tests and other COVID hygiene measures day by day, week by week, month by month, for almost 2 years … The hardest part is the one to accept that the plans made for tomorrow may have to be reconsidered – the uncertainty that all the efforts put into an occasion may blast away sooner than expected.

The expression quoted above is known from Pina Bausch (and also the film title of the documentary film Pina) and it has a really profound meaning – all the dancers of you undestand what I’m talking about :)!! My mother used this quotation exactly two weeks ago, during the dress rehearsal, as a motivation for our first company dance event after having survived two hard lockdowns, and all in all 11 months without any dance training: The big moment of presentation, after 3 extreme hard-core get-in-shape months, was finally there!

The last 8 weeks involved a new challenge for our little family-artist-cooperation :): During the hard COVID-19 lockdowns, my mother kept practicing her technique – not in the studio, but OUTSIDE in the nature! My father started to film her at several points of interest in Bremen (e.g. the Bürgerpark), documenting the changing seasons at the same time. More than 40 shorter and larger videos were the result of her hard work. She chose 9 sceneries of them to have them cut and reworked. She used the material collected to apply on a special grant initialised from the Senator of Culture Bremen to support artists like her to overcome the crisis. Now, get who was the person to help her out with video cutting and uploading them to her website? YES correct – me ;)! It was not so easy first – I tried a lot of free source tools before I – after having installed (then uninstalled) 7 programs plus minus (and getting completely frustrated :D) – decided to work with a professional one. I chose MAGIX Video deluxe (the simple version!) to proceed and was served with some good-looking video editing finally. My mother’s homepage got a new section for her COVID project and we included 11 short videos from the 9 scenes selected earlier. It was nice to see that hard work invested as a result on screen – and to share it with family and friends: https://www.tanzunterricht-hannele-jaervinen.de/projekt-covid-19.

Best thing: Our dance event took place – we didn’t have to cancel anything <3! Sunday 14th of November, 2021 became our day: performing despite pandemic – for us, and 40 guests invited to celebrate with us, a longed for date! We started with a 40-minute film presentation of “CHRONOS et horae – A Danced Dialogue With Nature During Times Of Pandemic” followed by our two dances as Ensemble and Hannele Järvinen herself in a solo performance.

A special evening we won’t forget so fast. Thanks to all helpers from the Radisson Blu Hotel Bremen who made it possible for us to perform in the beautiful location of the Himmelssaal <3.

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From Old To New – Glama Rama

It was quite a special moment for me: walking through the streets with a couple of friends – talking, laughing – and then, there it stood: besides a big cluster of old, sleezy furniture – with a broken leg: my future “Leone” :).

I carried it home and Thomas fixed the broken leg – it was nearly perfect – I was in love with it in the first moment I saw it – with all its slashed and faded surface – nevertheless, it was my pretty 2018-bulky-waste treasure I never want to give away anymore.

Nothing better than having a piece of furniture that is nice enough to be appreciated as “special” but not too special to put glass or mugs on it without using coasters – yeah, that’s unstressed life, guys ^^!

Nevertheless, with the years passed by, we finally decided to pimp the Leone and to add some more glow to it :). In July of this year, Thomas took it to the garret and started to grind the old lacquer away. He brought the Leone’s real beauty out: a wonderful intarsia, a gorgeous handwork!!!

I know – a shame considering the beauty discovered – but for us, it was a little bit tooooooo antique (unbelievalbe to write that down!) and we wanted it to come alive with some more pep :). So, Thomas put a layer of copper varnish on it and then another one. The result was a dazzling, cool new look – The “Leone alla Glama Rama” was born ;):

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Secret Mission III of … Wishing you all the best, Mrs Fancy!

This blog post is dedicated to another very lovely person in my young business life – my Mrs Fancy* (in November of last year, I already wrote about my former boss Rainer)! When I started as a student worker at the company I still work for 10 years now (oh my! 10 years! That’s 1/3 of my life!!!) – I was low-brow concerning my duties and future activities. I needed a person to be there for me concerning internal knowledge – who could help me along with detailed information if need be. Someone who wouldn’t count the times I ask for help or improvement … someone to count on, irrespective of time or location – that’s my Mrs Fancy!!

How to describe Mrs Fancy? Nothing easier than that: always polite, extremely accurate and (most important!) in every situation super stylish ;D! She knows everthing (!) about financial accounting – so unbelievable! To picture her in a typical situation: a review full of software developers – every presentation sheet prepared, every scenario stated – Mrs Fancy’s pleasant but firm voice appears: “Did you consider our financial accounting interfaces?” … silence … no, they didn’t. But she never misses the point to put her advice on record. I learned so much from you, Mrs Fancy!

It was an emotional moment when Mrs Fancy had her retirement party with us – all her close colleagues – in mid July, 2021. It was so special because for the most part of us, it was the first time after 1.5 years that we celebrated with more than 10 people at the same time – a remarkable, not “a given” feeling! We laughed, ate and discussed side by side in a group of 20 persons – it felt extraordinary – I’m so happy to have been there with you, Mrs Fancy! Thanks for having me 🧡.

And here she comes: Mrs Fancy in action, 3 … 2… 1…

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* In real life Mrs Fancy’s name is not Mrs Fancy. But she kindly asked me to not put her name or other data to the internet – and I think “Mrs Fancy” fits so well to her that I hope so much you like your new name as well as I do, Mrs Fancy :)!

Skate away with me

Movement, electricity, dynamics – it’s part of every kick, lift, jump or push – but also swing, drive and stretch.

As you know from my Hello-post, ballet is one of my big passions and I love to draw dancers and dance-related actions. BUT – there is another attraction sprouting to be discovered and developed – my attentions for skateboarding, professional skaters and their special moves! My husband and his dear friend (and best man) love to skate themselves since teenager times :). It’s incredible what skaters can do with and on their boards – their power, their inexorableness, their ambitiousness – and: their fun! I started to create a little movement series dedicated to the skateboarding theme, have a look:

Right to the wall. DINA4 format. Pencil on paper.

Acting like a cat. DINA4 format. Pencil on paper.

The Casual. DINA4 format. Pencil on paper.

To be continued […]
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Congrats, Jennyta! Secret Mission II of …

A month ago, my friend Sarah started to plan a big Zoom party for our friend Jennyta who passed her final secondary-school examinations (in German called “Abitur”). She collected money, sweets, little presents and vouchers from everyone and made a gift basket from all those treasures.

My job was to create an unique card for Jennyta all her friends and family members could sign. Here she comes – Jennyta For The Universe!!

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Top Secret Mission I of …

My June was full of projects, but I cannot tell you about all of them by now 🤫.

A lot of friends and colleagues will start a new stage in their life from July/August on. Therefore, I am pretty busy to help their friends finding individual card/gift ideas and to realise them.

Then, one big charity project ended at the beginning of July. My friend Vera organised three handful helpers who created, painted and worked nearly 800 (!!!) handmade cards and gifts for the staff of the Hospital “Klinikum Bremen-Ost” – in only three months! Quite amazing! The situation at Bremen’s hospitals has been crazy also before the COVID-19 crisis. Not enough staff, not enough rooms, the personal does a lot of overtime … A THANK YOU is often the simplest way to express someone that his/her work is appreciated and important. Here come some of my Thank-You-Cards (I asked Vera to send me fotos from the whole boxes, so you could get an impression of the impact 🤩):