Winter Woodland Life - Snow

Winter Woodland Life is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge. I´ve made a collaged background with a few paper scraps, then added stamps from Tim Holtz and Penny Black.

Professor Santa

 This week is an open theme for Christmas at Mandy´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge. So I tried something new and combined our beloved Tim Holtz "The Professor" with some Visible Image stamps and got Professor Santa as a result - now we know what the professor does during the next days.

Angels

My sister Sabine has chosen the theme "Angels" for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge. 

Do you believe in angels? I don´t, but I do believe in online friendship. 

An online friend asked for a Christmas card today, so this card will go to California on Monday.
Most people I know in real life don´t have any real online friends and don´t believe in online friendship, but I do. I have a few online friends found in former Yahoo groups more than 20 years ago who feel like near friends and who know almost everything about me, plus they have shared their art and life with me for decades. It´s not their fault nor mine that they don´t live where I do, so they really are my friends.

Sending handmade cards is an important part of staying in contact, not only with online friends but with everyone you know, so I hope you´ll send a batch of handmade Christmas cards this year to make your friends happy. 

My Angel card was made with stamps from Pink Ink Designs and Tim Holtz/ Stampers Anonymous.

Mona Lisa

 

Mona Lisa is an icon, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I´ve seen her in the Louvre in Paris but wasn´t impressed much to see her behind all that glass, and did you know that this painting measures only 77 x 53 cm? Leonardo painted it from 1503 to 1506, and he still owned it when he died.

Mona Lisa is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge, and my card was made using stamps from MaVinci and Visible Image.

Moths - von Kopf bis Fuß

 
Moths is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge, and while I didn´t want to make a card featuring brown moths on a dark background, I thought of Marlene Dietrich´s famous song from "Der Blaue Engel", "Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt" from 1930. In my eyes, Marlene is one of the very few persons from this time Germans can be proud of as she was emotional and intelligent enough to chose the right side and fight against fascism, no matter what her country thought of her. 

That famous song was written by Friedrich Hollaender for the movie "Der Blaue Engel", an interpretation of Heinrich Mann´s novel that made Marlene Dietrich a movie star, so let´s celebrate her for her courage and character - she deserves it.

Autumn Melancholy

 

Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
und auf den Fluren lass die Winde los.
Befiehl den letzten Früchten voll zu sein;
gib ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage,
dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
die letzte Süße in den schweren Wein. 

Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr. 

Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben, 

wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben 

und wird in den Alleen hin und her 

unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben.

Rilke´s poem "Autumn Day" is one of the most beautiful German poems, I think. And it contains everything I´m thinking of when I think of Autumn. It means farewell, accomplishment, loneliness and contemplation. It has its own dark beauty but usually makes me sad.

When I was younger, autumn was my favourite season. Now I prefer spring with all its hope. And you?

My card for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Autumn" was made using stamps from Carabelle, IndigoBlu and PaperArtsy.

Full Moon

 
Full Moon is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge. My card was made with stamps from Dina Wakley and Red Lead plus a die cut from Stamperia.