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Sunday, January 31, 2016

Orange

For this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Orange", I´ve made two digital cards, one with elements from Tumble Fish Studio, and the other with Crowabout StudioB images. I couldn´t decide to post only one of them; which one do you prefer?

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Valentines

Valentine´s Day isn´t far away, so there´s a new kit from Tumble Fish Studio called Valentine Junque 2. Though this is NOT my favourite holiday, I´ve had much fun playing with this kit, and I think you´ll like it, too. I´ve made digital collages this time, but of course the kit comes with printable collage sheets as always.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Using Lynne Perrella Stamps

Sometimes you just need a reason to pull out your rubber stamps and play - this time it was an ATC swap themed "Lynne Perrella Stamps".

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Welcome to Poe´s Birthday Party

Lost Coast Designs and Carmen´s Veranda are having a blog hop celebrating Poe´s Birthday today, and you can join the fun until January 23. Here´s my collection of Poe inspired artwork that includes at least one rubber stamp; these pieces date from 2009 to 2015. 
Hope you´ll join the celebration (you´ll find more info at the bottom of this post)!









Sunday, January 17, 2016

I Burn for You

When I read this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge, "Fire/Flames", Sting´s wonderful song from 1985 came to my mind (I´ve even seen him on his Bring on the Night tour back then, one of the best concerts I´ve ever seen). It´s not one of his big hits, so if you don´t know or remember it, here´s the live video, featuring some of the finest jazz musicians of our time.
For my card, I´ve used elements from Finecrafted Designs, Holliewood Studios and Marta van Eck and a few verses of the song lyrics.

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Inspiration Collages Swap

I´ve been thrilled to see that my friend Lenna has announced one of her wonderful art swaps in December, and I immediately signed up for her "Inspiration Collage" swap. When I returned home after Christmas, I found her package in my mailbox, and the photo above shows what it contained: three 5 x 5 pieces of watercolour paper, instructions for the swap and a bag full of papers, snippets, and embellishments. The rules said that we have to use at least one piece from the bag for each of our three collages.

Soooo - how to go on from here? What would you do? 
Here´s my process: I made three piles, sorted by colours, and ended with one in browns and reds, one in blues and greens, and one that was multicolored in a very modern, slightly Asian way. 
I must confess that I wasn´t very inspired at that moment; I just had no idea how to go on.
I realized that the reason for that was a lack of focal points: there weren´t many images in my piles but lots of papers and ephemera. So my next idea was to search for prompts in the book pages and other text snippets ... and as always, WORDS have been my way to success!

On my first collage named "Play", the Play ticket was my starting point that led me to the lines from a book page; both went well with three papers from the bag. I decided to go with the theme of childhood memories and added a paper scrap and tapes that I´ve had on my desk to hold the other papers visually together, then balanced the colours with red accents in one of the tapes, the postage stamps from the goodie bag, and a stamped boy that I already had in my leftover box and whom I coloured in red. That´s where the story came together: memories of someone who was once confused when he was a boy because he had to make decisions between playing (I added a crown to strengthen the fun factor) and joy (written with a stencil) versus limitations given by parents and others (represented by the "not to be taken" scrap and the large black X). The boy has to listen and learn a lot during his childhood, so I added the journal stamp and added stenciled exclamation and question marks to illustrate his confusion.

For my second collage, I just followed the verses I´ve found in the bag: The kiss of the sun for pardon, the song of the birds for mirth. I collaged my background including the sheet music vellum from the bag, illustrating the birds´ song, added a golden sun from my stash and two birds and a nest with an egg (that I´ve just had on my desk from my latest collages with Tumble Fish Studio stuff). Two of the papers (and the top strip) have been added by me, but two papers, the verses and the angel came from Lenna´s bag.

The third collage was the most difficult one for me as the colours weren´t my favourites ... For a focal point, I started by cutting a "body" from the floral paper from the bag and added a head and a hat that I´ve had on my desk as leftovers from my Tumble Fish collages. I used two other papers from Lenna´s bag for the background and added tapes to hold them together. My little lady looked quite funny, so I went with three lines from a book page found in Lenna´s bag: "Would of my shy advances say: `It´s really quite absurd, you see; He´s very much too young for me.´" I wanted a lady that ignores all rules and just follows her heart, illustrated by her look following the strip torn from the heart paper I´ve found in the bag. I cut one of the hearts to let it beat in her breast. I added two journaling stamps and a tea bag paper from Lenna´s bag to show her process of decision and finally added her decision at the bottom, a stamped "so what?". A purple postage stamp from the bag for colour balance and stamped postal cancellations finished the piece.

That´s it - I´ve been satisfied to see that each of my three collages told a story in the end, because that´s what´s important for me. And now I´m looking forward to the other participants´ results on the Creative Swaps site and my swap returns of course!

Monday, January 11, 2016

Dream Big - with Tumble Fish Studio

 And here´s part two of my collages with the new Dream Big kits at MischiefCircus.com; this time I´ve used Marsha´s part for Tumble Fish Studio, and you can see that it really inspired me to make lots of cut and paste artwork!
The first three collages are bird themed postcards (I wish I´ve had these fabulous bird bodies for my Bird People Blog swap years ago!).

 Then I´ve made two pages in my Moleskine journal:

and another postcard, without a bird this time but with verses from an Emily Dickinson poem that are included in the kit:
And here´s a last postcard made with the kit that is also my entry for the current Quoth the Raven challenge:
I´m sure you´ll have much fun with this kit that comes with png images as well as printable collage sheets!

Dream Big - in Zetti style with Crowabout StudioB

Today we celebrate another Collect Your Own Collab party at MischiefCircus that you shouldn´t miss! Here I show you two Zetti style digital collages with Nancy´s part of the Dream Big collab for Crowabout StudioB.
 And don´t forget: 

Wednesday, January 06, 2016

Published: My Postage Birds


 
I´ve been soooo happy when I noticed a two-page spread with my cards in the brand new Stampers´ Sampler´s preview - and now it´s official and I´m able to show you my cards for their "For the Birds" challenge - my Postage Birds!
For my card above, I´ve used a bird stamp from JudiKins, all other stamps are from Red Lead.
My second card "Silken Wings" was made with a bird stamp from Katzelkraft, the text stamps are from Red Lead again, and the postal stamps are from Stampington.
My Quoth the Raven ATC was made with a raven stamp from Lost Coast Designs and text stamp from Stampendous, the postal stamps are from Stampington again.
And for my last card, I used an owl on books from Stampendous, a text stamp from Impression Obsession and postal cancellations from Stampington.
The rest was just finding the right postage stamps!

Now I can´t wait to receive my complimentary issue and see all the other entries for this challenge!

Saturday, January 02, 2016

Men in Hats

For this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Men in Hats" I´ve been playing with self-portraits from van Gogh and Gauguin, gave them hats and a French background and tried to tell a story around them. Credits for my card go to Sherrie Drummond, Carla Gibson, French Kiss, Anna Aspnes, Crafty Button Designs, and Paula Kesselring.