New Beginnings

 

This month´s theme for the Visible Image ATC swap is "Something New", and my ATC and card for Tracey in the UK are my New Year´s greeting for my blog readers - I´m wishing you all a better, healthier, more colourful and creative year 2022. We won´t miss 2021, I´m quite sure ... see you in 2022!

Believe

This week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge is an open one, so I´ve chosen a card I haven´t shown yet - it could be used as a holiday card but doesn´t have to ...

Angels

 

My card for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Angels" was made with rubber stamps from Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous and Visible Image. I love to combine traditional items like the angel with modern images like the cityscape.

Travel

 

Due to Corona, I haven´t left my hometown for almost two years now. But even before, I´ve never been on a plane or outside Europe. When I travel, I love it, but if I don´t, I´m not missing that much. I still enjoy travels I´ve made in the early 80s, and there are many parts of the world that don´t attract me at all.

But what I really love is travelling in my thoughts when reading a GOOD book - even then I prefer some regions and avoid others, but I really love exploring the world through books. 

So this is my card for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Travel" (hosted by my sister, one of my favourite travel partners!). I´ve used rubber stamps from Stamperia and Kaisercraft for it

Nevermore

 

You may have seen my last blog post, and trying some drawing again during the Life Book taster sessions has encouraged me to also draw my sample card for this week´s  Sunday Postcard Art challenge for that I´ve picked "Ravens and Crows" as my theme. 

If you know me a bit longer, you also know that I have LOTS of raven and crow stamps and have even hosted several raven themed ATC swaps myself. So it would have been easy to make something with them, but instead I started with a watercolour paper and sketched my raven head with a pencil. I added an eye from a Jane Davenport washi tape and painted my raven with watercolours, Then I chose more washi tape from Jane Davenport and AALL & Create for the background and painted the rest of the background. The raven was then enhanced with pencils and pens, and finally I added the VLVS "nevermore" stamp.

I´m pretty happy with my card and hope I´ll give drawing a try more often now, and I hope you´ll also like it and find it inspiring to make your own piece for this week´s challenge!

Life Book Taster Lessons

Today I started watching the Life Book Taster lessons that are free for two weeks on Tamara Laporte´s Willowing site. 

When I saw Toni Burt´s "Quirky Girl" lesson, I decided to draw while watching it, and the picture below shows the result. Then she started putting watercolour and gouache on it, and I went on and had so much fun emphasizing my sketch. In the end I really liked my quirky character and think I´ll even frame it ...

My first trial of sketching while watching the video lesson was for Tamara´s "Focus on Love" portrait, and I liked that my person looks totally different from her style. I´ve taken notes on her way of colouring and using mixed media on this and will go on when I have more time.

Asemic Writing

I think it was Dina Wakley who introduced me to the term "Asemic Writing". But as a lover of handwriting, handlettering and calligraphy, I´ve always loved the look of letters as a graphic element. For my first card above I´ve used a stamp from Dina and another one from Darkroom Door, but though I liked the result, I wanted to go forward and made this second card below using the same border from Darkroom Door but added my own handwriting and some Dada Stamps from Heindesign, and I think this tells the story much better: Asemic  Writing is about the graphic design of letters, and the concept of Dada is to tell nothing serious, so I´ve brought all this together. I hope that my samples inspire you to show us your own interpretation of this theme! I´ve picked "Asemic Writing" as this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge and can´t wait to see your interpretation of this theme!

On my Way

 
I don´t have a driving license and have never been on a plane, so I have to take the train when I travel and use my bicycle for any trips I don´t use the bus for. My hometown is known for its many bikes, and in fact there are more bikes than inhabitants here.

For my card for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Bicycles" I have used a background made with the gelli plate, added a strip of a map and rubber stamps from Heindesign and Klartext.

Night Owl

 

This is a confession - yes, I am a night owl. As a teenager, I made my homework for school around 10 p.m. (thanks to my parents who didn´t care as long as I´ve been good at school), then later I wrote my final thesis at the university mostly between 10 and 12 p.m., and today, I still love to create at night - while I have to get up at 5.30 a. m. during the week ... maybe you can imagine how much I love weekends!

For this week´s Owl themed card for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge I´ve used stamps from Visible Image, Distress Mica Sprays and some embossing powder.

Autumn around the corner

I just love the monthly ATC swap in the Visible Image FB group. This month, the theme is "Whispers of Autumn", and autumn is really just around the corner - we´ve had so much rain recently, days are getting shorter, and I´ve been thinking about heating in the evening ...

As I don´t have any leave stamps from Visible Image, I started with a collage of paper snippets, gessoing it, and spraying some Distress Mica Stain. Then I used two stamp sets from Visible Image using several autumnal colours of stamppads. A few finishing steps with a white pen and coloured pencils, and my ATC was finished. It will be on its way to Queensland, Australia tomorrow, accompanied by a card that I´ve made using the same two stamp sets. It´s always an adventure to send your art half way around the world, so wish me luck!

 

Make Your Story Incredible

 

It´s a pity that you can´t see the shimmer of the Distress Mica Sprays on this card and the golden spots in this giraffe´s fur - but those just aren´t scannable ...
However, the card was made for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Giraffes", and I couldn´t resist using this lovely giraffe stamp from ArtSpecially and added words from Visible Image.

Alice Chess Game

 

Games is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge, and as a fan of Alice, I had to chose Chess as my game though I don´t play it myself ...

Getting Older

 

I´m hosting this week´s Sunday Postcard Challenge, and I´ve picked "Old Age" as the theme. 
For my card, I´ve used rubber stamps from A Capella, LaBlanche, and Klartext, and I´ve typed one of my favourite poems from Ulla Hahn about getting older. Bare with me when I try to give you a translation that doesn´t show the beauty of the original words of course ...

hesitate in the midst of a sentence
inquiring when you think you understood
not to be in a hurry anymore with wanting to know
a stone a glass a hand holding longer than necessary
touching the sleeve of your counterpart when talking
to feel you´re still here
to lose a book a view a skin
and don´t want to find it anymore
remembering instead of longing for
the thought: all this will be here when I`m not
train like a muscle
a feeling like someone were in the room

I think there´s a lot to think about in these verses - what are your ideas about getting older?

I can´t wait to see your interpretations of this theme!

Bring me a Unicorn

 

When I was a teenager, a friend of my mom gave me Anne Morrow Lindbergh´s "Bring me a Unicorn" for my birthday, and I liked it. I´m not into fantasy and unicorns and such, but when I think of unicorns, I still think of these words that I just can´t forget. 

This card has been made for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge, and I´ve used stamps from Zettiology and an alphabet from Concord & 9th.

Get Edgy

 

This month´s ATC swap theme in the Visible Image is "Get Edgy" - we have to think of using different techniques to emphasize the edges by using borders, doodling, embossing etc. 

Here´s my ATC for Shirley in Australia that will be in the mail to her on Monday.

Sing Loud

 I love birds, so I really needed the stamp with these two birds. I`ve stamped them on a book page and combined them with stamps from Klartext and PaperArtsy and a number stencil.

Ocean

 

For this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Ocean", I´ve started by painting with watercolours, then added that fabulous quote stamp from Darkroom Door, some AALL&Create tapes torn in wavy shapes and another stamp from PaperArtsy. 

Sherlock

 

This week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Detectives" was chosen by my sister Sabine, and here´s my card for it featuring Sherlock Holmes.

Not Bad

 

For this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Monkeys" I´ve decided to go with a street art monkey.

Flower Fairy

 

If you know me a bit, you´ll be surprised to see a fairy card from me, and in fact, when I first saw this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge theme "Flower Fairies", my first thought was "I´m out ...".

But then I thought it would be nice to "build" my own flower fairy and to play with colours again as I really feel a need for this right now. And in the end, I´ve been happy with my card using stamps from Visible Image again.

Here Comes Summer

 

For a swap in the Visible Image FB group themed "Here comes summer", I´ve made this ATC using Visible Image stamps only. It´ll be on its way to London tomorrow. My inspiration went Flower Power, neon colours and joy - something unusual for me that is big fun nevertheless from time to time ...

Old Book Pages

 

Old book pages are something I´m using all the time, so this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge was a simple thing to do for me ... here´s my card using gloss sprays and rubber stamps from Dina Wakley.

Street Art

 

For this week´s challenge at Sunday Postcard Art, I´ve made a card using stamps from VivaLasVegaStamps, PaperArtsy, A Capella and Stempelbar.

Books

 

Books is a theme I can´t ignore, so of course I had to join this swap in one of my ATC groups.

Characters

 

These digital collages "Broken" above and "She" below have been made with the new Songbirdy Character Mixes One and Two - lots of great people to use in your collages!

Just Be You

For a mini ATC swap with Visible Image stamps themed "Just be you", I couldn´t decide on sending one these two ATCs as they both represent me: always struggling (below), but trying to enjoy life (above) nevertheless ... so my swap partner will receive them both to get a realistic image of me. These will be on their way to California tomorrow.

Extraordinary

 

This week, the challenge at Sunday Postcard Art is to make our card extraordinary - hope I´ve met it! At least I´ve had fun mixing some washi tapes with three cool stamp sets from Visible Image to send out some positive vibes!

As my scanner didn´t catch the pink in this card, I´ve added a photo of the card below.

Pandemic 2.0

 

After more than 12 months of pandemic, it´s your decision how to cope with it ... but you´re not able to ignore it.

(stamps used here are from Dina Wakley, Jane Davenport, Klartext, VivaLasVegaStamps, Sommerabend.de and others)

Tableaux

 

My friend Beth aka Songbirdy came out with two new kits today at Mischief Circus, called "Tableau Uno" and "Tableau Deux". They´ve been made to mix and match but can also be used separately as done here in "The Gift" above and "Corona Walks" below.

More Postage People

 
These two Postage People ATCs have been made for an upcoming swap.

Zetti Magic

 
Last weekend I gathered my Zetti stamps and started to prepare a few ATCs for a Zetti themed swap in one of my ATC groups. When I came back to them today, they turned out completely different, and I think that´s the magic of Zettiology - when you´re in the process of making something Zetti styled, your thoughts tend to go wild and you get into a creative swirl and never know what you´ll end up with.

Snail Mail - a true story

 

Yes, this IS a true story, as the words on the left tell you. My sister sent me a package from Berlin on February 8. It couldn´t be delivered when it arrived in my town on February 10 because of the LOADS of snow we´ve had then. Okay. The same day, I found a card in my mailbox (how did it get there if the parcel service couldn´t reach my address??) that told me my package was handed over to a shop far away from me. I couldn´t go there because of the snow, so I applied for a second delivery three days later, which was confirmed by email. I´ve been waiting for my package on February 13 but it didn´t arrive. So when the snow had melted a bit and it was possible to go to a post office, I asked what I could do, and they couldn´t even find out where my package was - the shop told to me on that card has been closed for a whole week because of the snow so they couldn´t even tell me if my package ever arrived there. They asked me to wait. Then yesterday, I saw online that they told me the package wasn´t fetched by me - well, of course not as I had applied for a second delivery (which was written on the same web page). So today, I called the hotline a second time to ask what to do, but it didn´t help - my package had been sent back to Berlin last night and was delivered to my sister by noon. So the postal service is still alive and working, it just didn´t do what it should. Another phone call (couldn´t have done by me but had to be made by my sister) and she got an online refund to send the package again. Please pray for me that I´ll get it this time!!

This was the loooong story, and you can see the advantage of visual art: it really makes long stories short.

My card says it all with the help of rubber stamps - isn´t that easier? 

And guess what - this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge is "Snail Mail"!

Rain

 

We´ve had much rain lately, but tonight we have loads of snow coming down which makes me want to have the rain back again ...

Rain is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge.

Coffee First

 

I´m a night owl that has to get up at 5.30 in the morning, so a small cup of coffee is what really helps to get me started ... though it doesn´t always take that grumpy look from my face.
I´m happy that my parents understood and let me stay up really late when I was a teenager and didn´t worry when I made my homework for school late in the evening. My most creative time is before midnight, and that didn´t change since I was young (it´s 2 a.m. when I post this!).

How about you? Are you an early bird or a night owl? And what´s the impact for your everyday life?

My card was made for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Coffees Stains", and as the background was stamped with real espresso and an espresso cup, I´ve also used stamps from AALL & Create and Altenew here.

Music

 

Life is going on, and maybe music can help you to deal with its daily challenges - at least I hope so!

This is my entry for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed Music hosted by my sister Sabine. Hope you´ll play with us and let us know about your thoughts!

New Postage People

 

I´m sorry that I haven´t been in the mood to create lately, but when I saw Postage People as a swap theme in one of my ATC groups, I just had to make something, and here´s the result.

The Raven´s Song

I´ve just started my first online class at Ivy Newport´s online class portal, and of course it had to be "The Raven´s Song" by Natalie Eslick. These are my very first charcoal sketches, and I´m already amazed of how many shapes and hues can be found in an almost black in black image ... soooo much to learn, but it´s great fun!

January Blues

 

January Blues is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge, and I wanted to combine the feeling of being lost in a cold and grey month with actual tones of blue colour. So I started with a collage of blue papers and tapes and used blue paints and inks on it, then stamped and coloured upon it. (Stamps are from Dina Wakley, Badass Stamp Studio and Red Lead.)