CCC: Extreme Masking

It´s time for another CCC technique again, and the theme for this week is Extreme Masking. As suggested, I left out step 5 here, so it isn´t that extreme :-)

The Witch´s One-Time-One!

If you´re a regular visitor of my blog, you won´t be surprised to see verses from Goethe´s "Faust" as my entry for this week´s SPA challenge themed "Witches". I imagine the man on the right could be Goethe himself, reading from his drama, but maybe it´s just a second witch or a magician ... I can´t tell! But here´s the spell:

"This you must ken! From one make ten, and two let be, make even three, then rich you´ll be. Skip o´er the four! From five to six, the witch´s tricks, make seven and eight, ´tis finished straight; and nine is one, and ten is none, that is the witch´s one-time-one!"

(This translation is very close to the German original: "Du mußt versteh´n, aus Eins mach Zehn. Die Zwei laß geh´n und Drei mach gleich, so bist du reich. Verlier die Vier! Aus Fünf und Sechs, so sagt die Hex, mach Sieben und Acht, so ist´s vollbracht: Und Neun ist Eins, und Zehn ist keins. Das ist das Hexen-Einmaleins!")

A Heart needs a Home

I´ve had fun with my book page yesterday, so I´ve made another page today plus the cover for my book.
Do you know the song "A Heart needs a Home" by Richard Thompson? "The world´s no place when you´re on your own/ A heart needs a home", it says, and that´s oh so true. If you don´t know that song, maybe you´d like to take a moment and watch a video from 1975 here.
This page is my second entry for this week´s Wednesday Stamper´s challenge themed Hearts.

And on the right you can see the book cover with this page lurking through the window.

Home is where the Heart is

If you´re reading my blog from the beginning, you might remember that once I hated hearts - really! Well, today I own some lovely heart stamps and like to use a heart brad from time to time, so it´s obvious that your likes and dislikes don´t have to be carved in stone ...
This week´s theme for the Wednesday Stamper´s challenge is Hearts, and I´ve made a chipboard book page (about 4 x 7,6 ") here using some favourite stamps from Stampington, Darkroom Door, Paper Artsy and Stampers Anonymous.

Steampunk

It was a surprise to find out that Steampunk and Zetti have one thing in common: when I start making ATCs for a swap I don´t need any ideas in my head but just play with the things I have and get results I´d never had thought of in the beginning. These Steampunk ATCs were made for a group swap.

A is for Architecture

It´s been a while since I´ve posted the last spread in my own Alphabet Discovery Altered Book. Here´s my letter A spread illustrating not only the word architecture - the German words mean "I do not know my town any more", and this is the feeling that I know too well and that inspired these pages. Have you ever moved to another town and found that you´ve lost contact to what and whom you´ve left behind? Have you come back after years and years to find out that you don´t even remember the names of the streets in the quarter where you´ve lived? Have you ever mixed up streets or buildings or shops of the cities where you lived? (Well, this didn´t happen to me yet, but my mother does this all the time, so I´m sure it will happen to me when I´m over 80 ...) Did you ever walk along a street you believed to know well and then discovered that something had changed, but you couldn´t name it? You´ll find some places of my life in this spread - a map of Bremen on the right, a few silhouettes and a faux postage stamp of Cologne - but where is the home that I´ve posted in the left corner? Did I leave it behind somewhere or is it where I live now? Maybe it got lost on my way, or I´ll find it one day, or it´s just in my mind.

Alone with Trees

Again, I have tried to illustrate a text by Rainer Maria Rilke that I like very much, not only because I have lived near the place that he wrote about for ten years ... this is from his book about Worpswede:
"For let it be confessed: landscape is foreign to us, and we are fearfully alone amongst trees that blossom and by streams that flow. Alone with a corpse one is not nearly so defenceless as when alone with trees. For however mysterious death may be, life that is not our life is far more mysterious, life that is not concerned with us, and which, without seeing us, celebrates its festivals, as it were, at which we look on with a certain embarassment, like chance guests who speak another language."
I have written these words on the back of my 4 x 6 postcard and hope my swap partner will like them though they may seem strange for many people who like trees and maybe even feel familiar with them.

Two Bookmarks

I´ve made two bookmarks for swaps in one of my groups, one with a Zetti theme and the other one (front and back shown here) with the theme "Hot Air Balloons".

This post is for you, Bonnie!

I´ve had several comments on my blog during the last years asking where to buy or get appropriate postage stamps for making postage people. Most people commenting don´t leave their e-mail addy, so I´m not able to answer elsewhere than in the comments. But as I doubt that readers come back to find an answer to their questions there, I´ve decided to make an extra blog post.
I´ve received most of my stamps on envelopes from swap returns or as ephemera with swaps. But sometimes I´ve purchased some great stamps in the department store.
When I sent out the returns from my own Postage People blog swap, I sent a little bag with head stamps to everyone. I´ll do that for you, Bonnie, and other people who told me that they´re not able to find the right stamps. Please send me an e-mail with your address, and I´ll send a few stamps to you; just click on the "e-mail me" link in the sidebar of my blog.

School Days - the finished book

So here it is, my finished tip-in book themed School Days. Many thanks to all artists who have participated: Lorna, Jeannie, Beckie, Janne, Letha, Debra, Connie, Colette, and Sharron.
Many of you have included personal memories into your pages, and some have sent some personal ephemera from their own school days.

School Days

Do you remember my tip-in project themed School Days? After I have received the pages from the other participants and have showed my covers here, I´ve finally made my own spread tonight. I´ll show you the finished book in the next days.

My school days have been from 1970 to 1983, so you will remember that there were NO stylish satchels or clothes as pupils have nowadays. The building you see here was my actual school from the 5th to the 13th year. It had closed a few years after I´ve left school, but I´m happy to hear that it will soon be used as a school again! Isn´t it a lovely building? It was built in 1905, and it has been so nice to learn in such an old building and not in one of those new ones where each floor looks like all the others.

The boy on the right is one of my favourite photos from my family album, but I don´t know the girls on the left - this image just spoke to me, and the reason why I painted their cardigans in blue for the younger girl and red for the older girl is because during my first years at school I had to wear the same sweater design in blue first (which I got from my five years older sister) and then in red again three years later (from my eight years older sister) ... do I have to mention that it always had been out of fashion when I got the first one? Well, I´ve been an ugly child, and these clothes made it even worse. I´m happy to say that things like that didn´t really matter in those old times.

The words "Don´t do this and don´t do that" are from a song of my school days, Supertramp´s "School" from 1974. Whenever I hear that song or that LP (not CD of course!), it reminds me of my own school days.

Asia

... is a theme that´s interesting for me. I´ve read some Chinese books during the last years, have tried Chinese calligraphy, and I like old Japanese wood carvings. If you´re a regular visitor of my blog you know that I´m trying to tell stories with my ATCs, so these are an exception - as they are just decorative.

A Trip to Paris

This 6 x 6 collage is my entry for Mary Green´s October challenge - please visit her site and see what the other participants did with the nice collage sheet Mary has made for us to download.
The scrap in the top right corner is talking of "my first trip to Paris about 1900 age 10", so I just enhanced this idea by giving the girl her luggage, a Paris map, an Eiffel tower as her guide, and a vintage French postage stamp. When first I saw the collage images for this month I thought they wouldn´t inspire me because I missed some colour, but hey - I added a lot of colour and that solved my problem, LOL!
My printer didn´t work for a few days, so many thanks to my sister Sabine for printing the images and sending them to me so that I could join on time!

Let Go

Here´s my last 4 x 8 skinny for Lorraine. It´s feeling strange to have finished the last skinny for this 10 months project ... When the project started, I feared that I wouldn´t have an appropriate idea each month, but now it´s hard to accept that this is the last skinny for our project ...

Working without a theme at first was intimidating, but I think I´ll miss the freedom of just making what comes to my mind by accident.

Away from here

no words necessary