The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

"Christmas" is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge, and I think we all have the upcoming holidays on your minds right now. 

What do you think about this time of the year - do you take your time to enjoy some cozy hours, or do you feel stress and a lack of time to fulfill all your commitments?

For me, it´s always a mixture ... I really don´t like the cold weather and always hope that we don´t get any snow, but I´m looking forward to some peaceful Christmas days with my family and to take a rest at the end of the year.

(For this week´s digital postcard, I´ve combined elements from Jen Maddocks, Jopke Designs, Miles Beyond the Moon and Erica Zwart.)

Angels & Music

While it´s rainy and stormy outside with thunder and lighning, we´re all trying to getting into the annual Christmas mood, but I must confess that this isn´t easy this year - I just can´t find those quiet and peaceful hours that are necessary to come to a rest, think about the year that´s almost over and prepare for all things to come. Maybe a little angelic music would help? For me, Bach´s tunes are nearest to that, so I´ll try them tomorrow. How about you? Which music do you like to hear at this time of the year?
However, "Angels and Music" is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge, and making my digital postcard felt like a first step to get into the appropriate mood. Please click on the image to see a larger version with all the details. (All elements used here are from Jen Maddocks.)

Blue

First I must apologize for my blog absence - I´ve been more or less sick for the last 3 1/2 weeks, and every time I thought it was over now, I´ve been sick again.
Though I didn´t have serious health problems, feeling bad for such a long time makes you feel blue - especially if you´re not able to concentrate on anything you´d like to do. So when I read the theme for the new Sunday Postcard Art challenge "Blue", I immediately decided to combine both meanings of blue. So here´s my digital postcard for this week featuring many tones of blue plus a mood that´s not really happy.
For the background, I´ve blended three of my own gelli papers, then added elements from Mamrotka, Miles Beyond the Moon, ViVa Artistry, Jen Reed, Lorie Davison and Blagovesta.

Scarecrow

We´ve had a warm November so far, but this weekend it´s definitely Autumn weather with rain and wind (though it´s still warm). What I like about Autumn are the warm colours of nature, and I´ve used them for my card for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge. When Mandy (who is running that challenge blog) asked me to host again, I thought that "Scarecrows" could be a nice theme that we haven´t seen too often. I just hope it´s interesting enough for you to show us your interpretation!
(By the way - do you really think that such a puppet is able to scare the very intelligent crows?)

I am Home

Once again, my sister Sabine is hosting the Sunday Postcard Art challenge, and she has picked "Owls" as this week´s theme. I like the mystery owls are associated with, and as they symbolize wisdom, it´s hard not to like them, isn´t it? I´ve made a digital card this time using images from Mr Whiskers, Jen Maddocks, and Art by January. Come on and show us your own owl inspired art!

Nevermore

Autumn is here along with darkness, and Halloween is just around the corner - such a great opportunity to think of Edgar Allan Poe and make a card in honour of him. Poe is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge, and I´ve made a card for it using rubber stamps from Red Lead, Crafty Individuals and Cherry Pie, inspired by Poe´s great poem "The Raven" of course.

Alcohol Lift-Ink - First Attempts

Have you already tried the new Alcohol Lift-Ink pad? Here I have a few photos of my first attempts for you. You start by dripping several alcohol inks on a non-porous surface like Yupo paper, and then stamp on that background with a well cleaned stamp inked with that new ink. The stamp lifts up the ink and leaves a white print, and you can then print the colours left on your stamp on a porous surface (I used watercolour paper here) to get two lovely backgrounds in the end.

My detail photo below shows a further step that I tried on the dragonfly piece by overstamping with black archival ink - I love the shadow effect in my result.