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!

New Eyes

This week´s Wednesday Stamper´s theme is "Zettiology". As I didn´t want to make just another card using Zetti stamps, I´ve tried to use some of Teesha Moore´s journaling techniques on this 4 x 6 card. The stamped lady is a Zetti stamp, but not a typical one. And the new eyes I´ve given her are from a Zettiology collage sheet - but of course I could have used a magazine cutout instead.

Schooldays

I have already received spreads from Lorna, Jeannie, Beckie, Janne, Letha, and Debra for my Schooldays themed tip-in book, but hadn´t made my book covers yet. Today I finished them, and as I wanted them to have a simple design, I´m quite satisfied with the result.
I´ll make a spread for this book myself, and there will be more spreads by Connie, Colette, Susan, and Sharron before this book will be bound.

Childhood Memories

... is the theme for these ATCs that I´ve made for Loreena.
The girl on the left is me (well, at least the head) at the age of three; the girl below was taken from a painting by Frederick Leighton.

Berlin

Here´s my Berlin card for Katrin´s Travel around the World swap. It´s always a challenge to find a stamp for each card, and this time I really thought I didn´t have a Berlin stamp. But when I flipped through my folder, I was surprised to see that the little Dada stamp at the top features the words "Berlin Friedenau"!

The two boys in the bottom left corner look like the working class children Heinrich Zille has drawn in the 19th century, so I let them have a look at what Berlin has become now: a very big city with a mixture of old and new buildings, museums, and remains of history everywhere - illustrated by the Gedächtniskirche as a monument of destruction as well as Eisenberg´s Holocaust monument. The two boys would hardly recognize their town today.

This one goes to Sandy, hope she´ll like it.

Broken

My 4 x 6 postcard for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Crackle" - I´ve used crackle paint and crackle medium, but as I wasn´t satisfied with the result, I added a crackle stamp.

The Music of Nature

I´ve been looking forward to trying the fourth part of Helga´s challenge for a few days now. Whenever I´ve been out during the last days, I´ve collected nature materials wherever I could find them - at the bus stop, on my balcony, on my way to the supermarket. Here you can see my collection lying on the gessoed pages of my journal.

Since we´ve had weeks of grey and wet days, I´m longing for colours right now - I even wear a red (!!) coat from time to time which is VERY unusual for me, LOL. So I didn´t pick natural colours for my project but a light blue, turquoise, dark green, and dark blue.

This is how my stuff looked after my pages were finished ... this has been a MESSY challenge! Sometimes I wish I had a studio so that I wouldn´t have to do all that on my kitchen table.

On my left page you can see the shapes of a small twig, of beech tree leaves, of a flower umbel, and of those maple parts that are often called "noses" in German - what´s the English name?

On the right you have the circle imprint of the little "hats" of acorns, a dove´s feather, some rosemary from my balcony, and a maple leaf together with some rose leaves.

Asia

This Asian book page has been lying around on my desk for some time, already stamped and coloured, but without the additional postage stamps, text plate, and embellishments. This week´s Wednesday Stamper´s challenge "Asia" was the reason to finish my card at long last.
It´s quite large (5,9 x 8,3 inches), and I´ve used stamps by Tin Can Mail, Ma Vinci´s Reliquary, and Limited Edition.

Helga´s Online Class part 3

For the third part of her online class, Helga wants us to pick a magazine page that inspires us colourlike, then gather some stuff we have at hand in these colours and make a collage with it using circles again. My page has been too large for my scanner, so the scan above doesn´t give the correct colour balance on the original page.
If you know me a bit, you know that I don´t like colour themes, so this has been a challenge for me. And I´ve chosen a page that combines colours I usually wouldn´t combine myself: light blue, dark grey, dark blue, a bright green, chocolate brown, and a touch of light purple.
And here´s what I´ve made with these colours - the words "timeless reflection" led me to use clocks as my circles this week:

Taste Life Twice

This week´s Gothic Arches challenge wants us to use a painting of Frederick Leighton (1830-1896).

Edgar Allen Poe

... is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge - and I love it!