Ho ho ho

GOD JUL & GOTT NYTT ÅR!

Which means Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in Swedish - Thanks for 2012 everyone!

xxx

I Like: Santogold

It makes me so unbelievably happy when a woman hits the music industry with integrity and refuse to bend her back and objectify herself but knows what she wants and how she wants it, and when she actually has skills, soul and brain it is even better. Santogold is one of them and I cannot believe that she has not been grammy nominated or got more of her tracks on rotation, this song writer and artist is amazing so I had to make sure you have not missed her, so here's some Santogold classics for you;

Santogold L.E.S Artistes

Santogold Creator

Santogold Starstruck

Bilingual by Music "Kids Songs - English and Swedish Children's Favourites"

Happy days, now it's out! The new double CD "Kids Songs - English and Swedish Children's Favourites" from Bilingual By Music that I illustrated & art directed and my copy just fell down through the mail box so I have tried to take some photos of it to show you and finally I think I should also explain and write some about the project itself, I think Bilingual by Music does it best so I nicked this from their website; 

'For bilingual families and everyone else who wants to practice their language skills in a fun and easy way. Music and nursery rhymes are a big part of children’s lives all over the world. Some songs are only sung within a certain culture or country. However, there are some tunes that have travelled far beyond their origin and become well known and loved across many countries and cultures. We all know the melody but the language and the meaning is often representative of that culture or country.

We have embraced this fact and created a fun, bilingual musical environment for children to easily learn these nursery rhymes in each language. Our first products will focus on the Swedish-English relationship"

The two cd's contain classic children songs as "My hat it has three corners", "Twinkle twinkle little star", "Eensy weensy spider" and "Old MacDonald" and is packed in a booklet where each song is represented in Swedish and English with my illustrations.

For more information about Bilingual by Music and this project, where you can purchase the album, listen to snippets etc please click here

There is also a interview with me about this project over at Bilingual by Music that you can read if you click here. 

This has been a really great project and I am really happy to have been asked to be a part of it and that guitar playing crocodiles and rock n roll goats were accepted and that I could do my quirky thing, I hope you like it!

Sauna time

Here's a little ice-skating sketch that I never finished

I like winter. Where I am from we used to have lot's and lot's of snow, we ice skated and went skiing with school as well as with our parents, sat on frozen lakes and drank hot chocolate and built snow tunnel systems and caves and could spend hours and hours outdoors.

Now I am old, grown up. Boring. And there is no snow even though it is very, very cold in London at the moment.

So, no ice skating, no skiing,  and definitely no snow tunnels. But it's okay as I can't stand how cold it is, it feels much colder here in London now then it felt in the north of Sweden when it was -20C!

…or maybe I am just getting old? Either way, I am going to the closest swimming hall and sauna instead to defrost!

I hope that you are enjoying the winter where ever you are!

Bilingual by Music

Do you remember the children's song book that I was working on for Bilingual by Music? I am super excited, it should come from the printer any day now! Here's a little sneak peek while waiting, Klappa händerna när du är riktigt glad / If you are happy and you know it and Huvud, axlar, knän och tår / Head, shoulders, knees and toes.

Mint

Mint © Åsa Wikman



Gold © Åsa Wikman


Lately I have been working on a new pattern collection and now I just finished it and is celebrating with a nice cup of tea and thought I'd share a little sneak peek from the new collection with you, so here is two of my new patterns, Mint and Gold, what do you think?

I have always enjoyed working with graphic shapes and photography so this time I thought that I would base the new collection around that and plunge into it, and as a child of the 80's I wanted to go back to the 80's colour palette with pastel pinks and bubblegum colours. I like the contrast between sterile and controlled graphics and black and white photography of real living animals.


PS. There's a short interview with me regarding my latest projects in Lemonade Magazine 04, to read the interview click here

Sunday at the cemetary

I told my boyfriend that I had it with shops, crowds, traffic and pollution and that I am from the north of Sweden and need some damn air to breath, some trees and something a bit spiritual which I do not consider shopping or hanging in cafe's to be. London does that to me sometimes, I get enough, I need space, I need nature, I need to sit by the ocean and read a book, go to a lake for a swim or take the bike through the forest - I sound like a real city girl don't I?

He knows me by now and knows that when I start googling Stockholm flats or life in Costa Rica it is time to drag me to the closest coastal town or forest. This time we went to High gate Cemetery and their east wing, a Victorian cemetery which for many years was abandoned and now is an overgrown jungle of beautifully decayed graves (over 52 000 graves) from a lost time. Karl Marx has his resting place with a lot of celebrities on the west side of the cemetery but we focused on the secluded eat section that you can only get access to via a guided tour. It felt like walking around in a Miyazaki film, very magical.






It was what I needed, now I feel better and get deal with the big town again. Here are some photos from the day, unfortunately the guided tour was on a very strict schedule so it was hard to get a chance to take pictures. I might try and go back in summer time and get lost with my camera...






I took a picture of this grave to remember the destiny of the woman which grave it is, like many women during Victorian times she died as her massive dress caught fire.

Tea and doodle time. Have a nice Sunday everyone.