The Raven´s Tale

I´ve made this collage just for fun, using elements from Cryztal Rain, Xquizart, Rucola Designs, Eena´s Creations, and Beth Rimmer.

All Things Alice Swap finished now!

(digital ATC made with elements from Hidden Vintage Studios, 

Crowabout StudioB and Crafty Button Designs)

After three weeks in the mail, yesterday the last return envelope was delivered in Australia, so I´m happy to be able to finish our swap now. None of the return envelopes got lost "down the rabbit hole", and I haven´t heard any complaints about the return ATCs this year.
Thanks to all participants for making this swap a successful one again!

Altered Postcards

Be honest, isn´t this the dullest postcard you´ve ever seen? I can´t remember if I´ve received it as a gift from a fellow artist or if I purchased it on a flea market, but when I found it in my stash recently, this one begged to be altered. (The back of this card says that it was sent from Pequot Lakes to Boston in 1954, by the way.)

As I´ve picked "Altered Postcard" as the theme for this week´s Sunday Postcard challenge, I´ll show you what I´ve done with it and hope that this will inspire you to take a look at your own stash of cards and join our community this week with your own approach.
You can use a store-bought card or a vintage one, then paint it, stamp it, stencil or collage, whatever you want. And if you´re a digital artist, you can even scan your postcard and alter it digitally - and if you don´t own an actual postcard, you can even download a digital one and alter it afterwards. (I don´t know how long this link will be working before it expires, but Stampington had some nice cards in one of their latest newsletters.)

I´ve altered the card above in two different ways for this challenge, one mixed media and one digital version.
Here´s what I did for the mixed-media card: First I gathered a few things that looked like I could use them for a card with a lake image; I´ve found a magazine photo, brads, gesso, stamps and embellishments.

Then as my first step I sanded the original card to make the surface ready to receive some paint.

After that, a light coat of clear gesso helps to make the surface even rougher. And as I wanted to use my magazine cut out, I put the gesso on that one too in order to make its surface workable.

Here´s my finished card using crayons, Prismacolor pencils, rubber stamps from BoBunny, Hampton Arts and Sommerabend.com, and several brads:

But I´ve also used the above scan of the card to show you a digital version that I´ve made using images from Miles Beyond the Moon and Eeena´s Creations:

Now I´m really eager to see which cards you will use and what you´ll make with them!

Wild One

Nancy Baumiller from Crowabout StudioB at Mischief Circus came out with two lovely new kits today, called Wild One and Wild One Paper Pack.
I´ve made two digital collages with both kits, and I hope they inspire you to make your own art with these kits. If you prefer cut and paste artwork, you can print the digital collage sheets that come with the kit and have fun with these colourful images!

Anatomy

For this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed Anatomy, I´ve made a digital card using elementsf from Tumble Fish Studio (Greg´s Anatomy) and Marta van Eck (The Anatomy Lesson).

Lost Coast Designs has a Giveaway!

Have you noticed that Lost Coast Design´s blog is celebrating its first birthday? And even better, they have a great giveaway for their blog readers, so maybe you´d like to join the party?

Baroque

Considering the fact that Baroque is an era with a range of 200 years (1575 to 1770), it´s quite diverse, no matter if you concentrate on politics, architecture and other arts, or clothing.
However, I don´t have enough rubber stamps with baroque elements (only some patterns and architecture), so I had to go with digitals for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge.
I wanted to include the baroque emphasis on pomp and ornaments, and also colours. As in Germany there was a lot of important literature in the baroque era, I used some typography for the background. And as still life is one of the most interesting genres especially in Dutch baroque paintings, I´ve chosen the grapes to represent this aspect.
I´ve mixed images from several Itkupilli and Foxeysquirrel kits for my digital postcard, and layered them with a sprayed background and a map (that stands for the Thirty-Years War happening all over Europe) from my own stash - hope you like it.

The Right Direction

Today Nancy Baumiller came out with her new image kit "The Right Direction" at Mischief Circus.
For my cut and paste pieces above, an A5 sized journal page and an ATC, I´ve used the printable collage sheets that come with the kit.
Finally, I´ve also made a digital collage with the png images in the kit and a background from the coordinating paper kit "The Right Direction Paper Pack".

Have Fun!

Maybe you own that new Tim Holtz rubber stamp set named Dapper!? I really like it because it´s so versatile - here´s a tag I´ve made with it, including some other rubber stamps from Cavallini, EK Success, and Darkroom Door, and a hand image from Crowabout StudioB.
This tag was born out of the daily mess on my desk because that´s the way most of my designs come to life - what about you? Do you like your studio to be tidy, or do you prefer to create a little chaos before you´re ready to make art?

Black and White

If you know me a bit, you probably know that I´m a COLOUR person - one of my few talents is to choose appropriate colour combinations. So Black and White is always a difficult theme for me, and my first choice usually is going Zetti! This is what I did for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed b/w - hope you´ll like it! And as today´s Take a Word challenge is Monochrome, it´s also in there.

More Challenges

The challenges in the MischiefCircus forum are going on - you can join the fun until May 15! So come on get creative using your MischiefCircus stuff and create some lovely artwork. Here´s what I´ve made on Friday and Saturday:
The Bird Family above is for the "Put a Bird on it" challenge. (credits: Cryztal Rain, Tumble Fish Studio, Holliewood Studios, Mr Whiskers, Finecrafted Designs and Hidden Vintage Studios)

My second piece "Darkness" is for the 3 elements challenge that wants us to use only a background and 3 elements to tell our story. (Background and elements are from Holliewood Studios here.) 

And finally I´ve used my own face for our Zetti-fy Yourself challenge. There´s a freebie kit in the forum for you that I took the face pattern and legs from. All other elements are from Crowabout StudioB (Beary Good Friends, Wings Unfurled, Something About Trees, Flying Lessons and Black White & Gold, the crow is from an old freebie.)

Flower Power

The challenges in the Mischief Circus forum are always a good excuse to play, and for the Birthday Bash that´s going on right now, there are four different challenges, two of them providing lovely freebies for you.
This collage was made for the Flowerheads challenge, and I´ve used images from Tumble Fish Studio, Art by January, and Itkupilli.

Celebrate the World´s Greatest!

Mischief Circus is celebrating its 6th birthday with a new "Collect Your Own Collab" themed "World´s Greatest". Here are four samples for you that I´ve made with Marsha´s part for her Tumble Fish Studio.
The cut and paste collage above was made on a vintage book page that I´ve dyed with spray inks
The journal page below is also cut and paste and was made in my Moleskine journal.

 My next two samples were made digitally, also using only elements from this new kit.

And if you haven´t already noticed today´s news, here´s my invitation to MischiefCircus´ party:

Plan A

For this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Alphabet" I used a rubber stamp alphabet from Darkroom Doors.