Royal Birds

It´s late, it´s VERY late here in Germany, but I couldn´t stop before I was satisfied with my ATCs for the "Royal Birds" swap at the ARTchix Yahoo group.

The Magic Skies

The bi-weekly ARTchix lottery´s theme is "Enchanted", and as I´ve seen six shooting stars in one night in mid August (the first I´ve ever seen in my life), I now know how enchanting the nightly skies can be, so here´s my ATC for the lottery.

Stripey Legs

... is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge. My phantasy went away with me when I had finally built my stripey legged girl - I don´t know if striped legs may help to find the right way but they led me to use some of my new stamps, LOL ...

Our Travels Continue ...

Katrin´s "Travel around the World" swap continues, and this month we all can pick a town - I´ve chosen the one I´m living in because it would never be chosen by anyone else :-)

Yes, Münster is as nice as the picture shows, but it´s not important at all, and one of the few important persons connected to Münster is the famous writer Annette von Droste-Hülshoff who was born in the castle "Burg Hülshoff" near Münster in 1797. So I´ve used a postage stamp of her for my card that goes to Sigrid on Monday.

Oh, you may ask, what does the bike have to do with Münster? Well, come here and you´ll know: You must be fast to escape all those bicycles cruising everywhere ... Münster has twice as many bikes as it has inhabitants (about half a million for only 280.000 people)!

Halloween Moo Cards

Don´t know why I´m doing that much Halloween stuff this year, but I´ve had fun again doing these Moo Cards for a Paper Traders swap.

I´m a Tree

Don´t you think that there´s something mystical about trees? You feel that when you´re very young or maybe very old, and if you´re lucky you can feel it every day. They´re strangers to us, living a life separate from ours, and many of them have seen times long ago. This week "Wonderful Trees" is the theme for TGIF, and here´s my ATC for the challenge.

My finished Zetti tip-in book

Maybe some of you have wondered what happened to my Zetti book that has been started in July 2008!? Here´s the finished book including my covers and my own spread plus spreads from ten Paper Traders art friends: Letha, Keron, Hermine, Linda, Connie, Beckie, Barbara, Abby, Pam, and Susan. Thanks to all of you!

Blue Moo Cards

My Blue Moo cards for a swap at the ARTchix Yahoo group.

Boo!

Three more Halloween ATCs - these are for a swap.

It´s Mekka Time!

I have filled my ATC album with a few more cards for personal trades at the Stempelmekka in Hagen this weekend - can´t wait to meet so many stamping friends, trade ATCs with them and buy some new stuff!

The Landlord

Today´s TMTA theme is architecture, so here´s my version of a landlord.

Halloween

One of the ARTchix collage sheets that I`ve chosen as a prize when I won at Helga´s blog challenge recently was "Witching Hour" - so I´ve made six Halloween ATCs with it to trade them at the Stempelmekka.

Time ATCs

Two Time themed ATCs for Rein - sorry, the movable arms made the scans a bit blurry, but they´re fun!

Like Home

This 4,7 x 7,1 inches house shaped collage is for Diana.

Turquoise and Red

Turquoise and Red is not one of my favourite colour combos, but as it´s this week´s theme at Wednesday Stamper, I took the challenge.
The ATC on the left was made with turquoise and red glimmer mist over a butterfly mask, then stamped two butterflies and coloured them in red and turquoise.

The ATC on the right is an altered magazine picture that I´ve sanded and painted over, then added the swirls and the stamped text.

Phew!

I´ve just received an e-mail that the last Zetti return envelope has arrived at its new home today! Only Fatma has to wait a bit longer because she wants to get her returns at the Stempelmekka.

Thanks again to all participants, this has been a wonderful swap for me!

Exquisite Corpse page - step by step

Laura has asked me if I could post a tutorial about putting book pages together. Hm, all I have is a bunch of photos that show how one of my Exquisite Corpse book pages (the one you see below, it can also be found in the Sept/Oct issue of Somerset Studio, page 71) evolved. This is the finished book page, colour-copied and mounted on a sturdy base.

The first step was painting the background with watersoluble crayons.

I decided to use this lovely antique photo of a young lady that I´ve found at the flea market in my hometown.

A few pieces of torn book pages were added to the background, and a b/w photocopy of the lady is searching for her place.

The lady is in place here. Before I glued her down, I painted over the photocopy with watersoluble crayons. I added the hat and the border at the bottom and stamped the raven on the branch at the top.

Here you can compare the painted lady to her real ancestor.
There´s still missing something.

Of course I had to add the three text compartments that were necessary for the Exquisite Corpse idea of a page in three parts. Then I stamped the swirls in a dominant colour to balance the design.

This is what I´ve sent to Ingrid finally, together with my second page of course.

(You can see the Shirley Temple page here - I have used a Dover image and gave her new clothes made from different papers. The background was painted with easter egg dyes.