Pink "I love" Twinchies

Another ARTchix swap, this time we had to make pink (and green/red) twinchies featuring "I love" sentences. The right one on top has some glass dew drops, so the scan isn´t very good.

ARTchix Animals

These are my ATC for the ARTchix Animal ATC swap.

Chunky Gothic Arches

These are my 4 x 4 collages for the ARTchix Chunky Gothic Arches swap - all images by ARTchix of course.

A Bird´s Home - A Giveaway

Sunday Postcard Art has an open theme this week, so you won´t be surprised to see a bird card from me :-) And as this is my 1000th blog post, I´ll send this card to one of those who leave a comment under this post until Friday.

Merry Christmas

... to you all - I´ll be away for a few days and hope to see you here again soon!

Longing For Colour

Maybe you´ve noticed that I didn´t join any blog challenges for some time (not even my favourite ones!) and that I haven´t posted much lately!? Well, that´s my usual behaviour in December because it takes weeks to make my annual calligraphed calendar (as a gift for my mother) that I´m doing for her since 1988. It combines my favourite quotes and poems written in several script types and b/w newspaper photos from my own collection. So the whole calendar is b/w, and during the whole month of December I always feel a lack of colour. But while I can´t wait to pull out my paints and stamp pads and pencils, there´s just NO TIME LEFT for that.
And then I take a look outside, and what I see is just white again ...

The Letter X

I´ve made my Letter X ATCs today - X-mas, X-rays, and Xylol-Transfer (which is Xylene transfer in English, the one with the Blender Pen). I´m sooooo glad that I´ve finished these; it has been the hardest letter by far ...

Pale Ink

Another bookmark as a little Christmas gift; the text is a Chinese proverb saying: The palest ink is better than the best commemoration.

The Dangerous Age

The theme for Sandra´s Altered Book is "The Dangerous Age". Here´s my spread for it, combining some lines of the original text with my own feelings and thoughts about being 45.

Made From Scrap

I´m sorry that I didn´t have the time to make something for Helga´s online class /blog challenge last week. But this week I needed a tag for a little gift, so I took her challenge to use only scraps that we have at hand as my inspiration. I have used the remains of an ARTchix collage sheet after I had cut out the pics, a used postage stamp that was lying on my desk, and a santa´s hat that I had stamped for another project but didn´t use it in the end. I added a word and had finished my tag.

I have used it for a baggie of self-made cookies.

And here I must show you a wonderful decoration I have found in a shop window in my street - I´ve taken the photo in the dark, so I´m sorry that it´s blurry, but I think you can see what I mean: The shop owner has used old coil springs of a tiny mattress as a frame to put some Christmas baubles on it - what a decorative idea!

St. Petersburg

Our last station for this year at Katrin´s swap "Travel around the world" is St. Petersburg. I´ve chosen a map of Russia, the cathedral, an old advertisement for the Petersburg sledging, a vintage Russian couple and some gold embossing to evoke a feeling of 19th century Russia.
This card goes to my sister Sabine.

Christmas Cards

I´ve made some very simple Christmas cards today - maybe you´re among the recipients?

Santa´s Secret Helpers

We all know that Santa Claus / St. Nicholas doesn´t do all that work on his own, but it´s not easy to catch a glimpse of his secret helpers. For this week´s Wednesday Stamper´s theme as well as today´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge here´s my card showing the truth about modern division of work.

My Home Is Where My Books Are

A bookmark made as a little Christmas gift and my entry for this week´s Theme Thursday challenge.

Birthday Present

My friends´ son invited me for his 18th birthday this weekend. It wasn´t easy to come up with something for him, but as one of the cool things about being an adult is that you´re allowed to watch any movie you like, I decided to give him two tickets with a card telling him just that. I´ve tried to not make it too girlish, but of course there had to be some birds on it, LOL ... Oh, and as his birthday is around Dec 6th, the main bird wears Santa´s hat.

My Altered Book RR is back!

Do you remember my altered book themed "Rules for Happiness" that started its journey in June? Today it returned to me, filled with wonderful entries from six German artists. It´s a pity that you can´t flip through it, but you can see some of the entries on the artists´ blogs; have a look at what Sandra, Sandra again, Diana, Angela, and Ute did! And of course you can find my own opening page on my blog here.
Sorry, but Loreena´s and Samatti´s entries aren´t online.

Let It Snow

... is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge.

Helga´s Online Class No. 6

For her online class Helga wants us to make a holiday collage with those persons who live in our household. Hm, as I´m living alone, I hope you don´t think my holiday collage is too boring!?
The scan doesn´t really show the silver embossed parts on top of the card. BTW, the pointy hat I wear here is a christmas tree stamp - it turned out to be very versatile!

Winter Delights

My ATC for the bi-weekly ARTchix lottery themed "Winter Delights".

Three

My card for this week´s Wednesday Stamper´s challenge themed "Three". I have used stamps by 1 Stamp Dreamer, Stampington, Paper Artsy, Limited Edition, and MaVinci.

Blue Bird

As you all know, I love birds, and as I also like the colour blue, today´s TMTA challenge "Blue Bird" is just perfect for me!

Flourishes

My favourite Flourishes stamps are Michelle Ward´s, and as I´ve just bought those lovely crows stamps, I just HAD TO combine them for my entry for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge!

More Acey Deucy ATCs

Maybe you remember those Acey Deucy ATCs that I´ve made for a swap three months ago - as there are many participants in that swap, I´ve made three more.

The Letter W

It´s time for another German lesson! The left ATC shows winter kids = Winterkinder, the middle one illustrates the word companion = Weggefährte, and the crows on the right are climbing up the waiting loop = Warteschleife.

Self-portrait

What a difficult theme Angela has chosen for her altered book! I´ve wanted to make a self-portrait since I´ve read that fabulous book about mixed-media self-portraits, so I´ve had a lot of ideas, but it has been hard to decide which to use. Now here´s a portrait of mine made with stamps - a one-winged person, groping, collecting memories (symbolized as eggs), with a beak that says I´m well-fortified as well as defenseless, carrying my ancestors in my body and a ship on my head that doesn´t know where to go ...

Maps

As stampers, we all have some stamps that we really love but don´t use very often. This Hero Arts tag stamp is one of them. And then we have stamps that we´ve found on Ebay or anywhere else and don´t know the company that made them - but these may be favourites of us ... like the Jan Myrdal quote I´ve used here. (If you know the stamp company, please let me know!)
The cityscape is by Alpha Stamps, and the swirl by Inkadinkado, and together they make my 6 x 6 entry for today´s Wednesday Stamper´s challenge themed "Maps". It´s a pity that most stamps of maps aren´t very crisp; this is why I prefer using real maps for my backgrounds.

Helga´s Online Class part 5

For her fifth challenge, Helga wants us to make a collage from packagings of goodies we like, then add polka dots and something from nature.
I´m not a fan of any packaging, so at first I had no idea what to do. Then I remembered a passage of a book about crows and ravens that I´ve read recently that said that those birds use packaging for their nests, and that they especially like to use metal pieces. So I decided to make a nest from my packaging and fix it with staples, then add a feather and use the wine cork to make polka dot blossoms.
This is what came out in the end, and here are the steps leading to it -

on the right there are some packagings of bread, art stuff, candies, tea, and a wine cork.

On the left you can see that I´ve cut all those papers and metals into strips.

And this is the background made of vintage papers collaged to a paper, gessoed, and painted with watersoluble crayons.

Stars

... are this week´s theme for the Gothic Arches Challenge.
If you´re like me, you´ll have Don McLean´s "Vincent" in your ears now for a while ...

Music

... is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge.

The Ocean

Debra´s tip-in book is themed "The Ocean", and here are my 6 x 6 pages for her. Hope she´ll like them!