I had a wonderful opportunity to meet Maria Karppinen at Villa Tahmela and to hear how she wished to make a story trail for small children. She had in her mind three friends, Elmer the Elephant, Aino the Alligator and Lauri the Ladybug who were blowing autumn leaves, touching a stone, collecting treasures, leaning towards a tree trunk, sheltering from a dark raincloud and so on. So then I just created the characters and made the images as she wished. Hope to work more like this and especially I hope that the families enjoy our nature trail which took off during half-term but will be on till the end of November. Such an inspiring place, this Villa Tahmela!
