First Time

 
For this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed New Year/ New You/ New Beginnings I didn´t want to make just another new year card but tried to capture the thoughts many of us have when we´re starting into a new year - making plans, thinking about things we always wanted to do but didn´t, sorting out things and goals, and so on. 

For some of us, trying new things is one of these goals for a new year. And while you do sooooo many new things when you´re young, this is something rare when you get older. But the nest with its egg waiting to give life to a newborn says it all: You can start a new day or a new year with the decision to do something for the very first time.

Madhatter

 

Tags & Labels is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge. Years ago, I´ve had a stamping company made my own custom made stamp with the words "Labels are for cans, not people", and it´s very appropriate for this theme. And guess what - the Mad Hatter is not happy with the label people gave him being mad or crazy ... what if he´s just a bit different? Aren´t we all mad here?

12 Days of Christmas

 

This week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge is 12 Days of Christmas, and it´s not an easy theme for Germans as we don´t know that song here ...

My card featuring the Seven Swans A-Swimming was made using tape and stamps from AALL&Create and a stamp from The Craft Consortium/Crafter´s Companion.

Man in the Moon

 

Here´s my man in the moon for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art Challenge. I have collaged a man to a background made with stamps from CiaoBella.

Colour Play

 
If you´re a stamper, you probably know that lack of understanding in the face of someone you´re telling about your hobby. Especially if people deal with rubber stamps in their office, they can´t imagine what you can do with them if you use other motives and use them differently and with colours. 

What I love about stamping is that you can use the same stamps quite differently over and over, even if you don´t change your basic design. I never make duplicates (like many stampers do), but like to make "variations on a theme".

For example here´s a holiday card I´ve made with just three stamps from Cats on Apple Trees, Charlie & Paulchen, and Butterer. I´ve used the same arrangement on both cards and used watercolours on both backgrounds, but you can see that the different colours make a great difference.

I can´t decide which one I prefer, can you?

Feel the Rain

 
We´ve had soooo much rain last week, and the rain is going on this week, so this card seems appropriate. 

Day of the Dead

My card for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Day of the Dead" was made with several Tim Holtz stamps on a selfmade Gelli Plate print - for the first time I´ve tried black embossing on top of white embossing, and I love it - won´t be my last time using this technique.

Alice in Shoppingland

 

This week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge is bags. So here´s Alice shopping stamps. Stamps are from ArtJourney and Stampington.

Party Time

Party is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge. If you´re like me, you don´t think about parties right now, but IF there were a party nevertheless, these two would be your perfect guests. 

Circle of Life

 
For this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge, I´ve picked the theme "Circles". My card was made with stamps from Red Lead and PaperArtsy/Seth Apter. Can´t wait to see your interpretations of the theme!

Apothecary

 
This week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge is "Apothecary", so here´s my card for it. 

Home Sweet Home

 
Autumn is on its way, and it´s time to make some Halloween ATCs for the annual swaps.

Rusty

 
I´ve had that PaperArtsy Rusting Powder on my desk for a while now but hadn´t tried it yet. When I saw this month´s theme for the Visible Image ATC swap "Rusty", its time had come! 

I used a brick stencil with gel medium, then used the powder on top and sprayed with a mixture of vinegar and water. I could see the effect very soon but let it work overnight, and I received a lovely brick texture of real rust. 

In advance, I had masked the snail on the ATC and the owl on the accompanying card and thought it might look interesting to use shimmering watercolours on these - just believe me that these look great, unfortunately my scanner doesn´t show the shimmer. Finally I added the text and embossed it in black and white.

Coffee & Friends

 
For this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge, my sister Sabine picked the theme "Coffee or Tea". 

While I´ve been a passionate tea lover in my teenager years and twenties, I prefer coffee nowadays, partly because the water in the region where I live now is not good enough for brewing a great darjeeling ...

I like meeting friends for a cup of coffee sometimes, but while the girls on my card have a coffee to go, I never take a coffee with me, and the concept of coffee to go doesn´t make sense to me: I have my coffee at home in the morning, and then I´ll have two more at work, but why should I take one on my way to work? The tons of garbage speak their own language, and in my opinion they´re completely unnecessary ...

However, I´ve had fun making this card using stamps from Hampton Art/Rongrong, PaperArtsy/France Papillon and Art Journey.

Polka Dots

 
I´ve made my card for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Polka Dots" with stamps from Dina Wakley. 

Both women look quite unhappy, so I thought I´d give them some polka dots to lift them up because they stand for happiness and positive thoughts. Maybe it´s worth to paint some polka dots and look what´s happening then.

Summer Vibes

 
This month´s theme for the Visible Image ATC swap is "Summer Vibes". You only have to make one ATC for your trade partner, but I love to make an accompanying card to send it, mostly using the same stamps, maybe combined differently. 

This time, I´ve used the same hippie girl stamp on a gessoed design paper that had musical notes and some flowers and therefore seemed to fit the flower power / hippie / festival theme I´ve chosen.

Meow!?

 
Meow! Have a great weekend!
This week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge is Cats in Hats, and I´m happy that I have this fabulous stamp by Brett Weldele in my stash.

Shells

Shells are this week's theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge. For my card I´ve used stamps and a stencil fron Visible Image and a quote from Impression Obsession. The watercolours in the background have a lovely silvery shimmer that can´t be seen in the scan.

Fake News

 
This card is about Fake News. We all know them, and some people don´t know any more what to believe. AI (KI in German) won´t make this situation any better ...

In my collage, this guy wants to tell us that the world literally turned upside down - fake news so far!

I´ve used stamps from Carabelle, Klartext and Heindesign for my card.

Lost in Space

 

My sister Sabine has picked this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge, and it´s "Space". 

My card is about losing yourself, if in space or wherever else ...

You can get lost in space, in the deep sea or in your own cosmos. Did you ever had a feeling of being lost? Please let me know, and I hope that your cards for this week´s challenge tell me something personal about your own adventures.

Breathe Underwater

Yes, this lady is a bathing beauty, but this card is not about happiness but about depression. Let´s all learn to breathe underwater, it might help someday.
Bathing Beauty is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge, and I´m curious to see what the other participants have made for it.

Would I lie to you?

 
Are these eyes able to lie to you? In fact we think of owls as wise, and the reason is probably that their eyes look like they´ve seen everything, past and future. So my owl themed card for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge focuses these beautiful eyes. 

Fish

My sister Sabine has chosen the theme for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge, and it´s one that I also like. So many options!

Flamingo

 
When I read this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge, I thought that I´d skip it as I´ve never made anything flamingo themed and pink isn´t my favourite colour. 

My second thought was "hm, what about Alice", but as my Alice stamps featuring a flamingo were much too small, I had to make a digital Alice + Flamingo card. For the card below, I´ve used images from Miles Beyond the Moon and Cheryl Budden. 

Then tonight, I´ve made a second flamingo card using rubber stamps from Dylusions and a few alphabet sets. Obviously the flamingo head and legs combined with a self-made collage body were a bit unbalanced, so I had found my words for this card, "Keep the Balance" - hope you´ll like its quirkyness.

By the Sea

 
For a swap organized by Lenna Andrews at Creative Swaps, I´ve made this set of ATC themed "By the Sea". 
I´ve used stamps from Klartext, Darkroom Door, Acey Deucy, Studio Light and Red Lead for these.

Where Do You Come From?

 
I´m hosting this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge, and I like to pick themes that give the participants lots of possibilities to interpret them and show their own definition of the theme. 

This week, I want to know where everyone comes from - sound easy, but is open for interpretation ...

When I think about myself, I could say that I come from Germany as I´ve never lived elsewhere. But does this define me? Is my country my home, or is it the city I live in? Or the place where I was born? Or my family? My home? Is there anything like a home for me? 

In my case, I was born in Cologne and lived there for 9 years, then moved to Bremen for the next ten years and then moved to Münster to study at the university, and I just stayed here. Even after 40 years of living here, I wouldn´t call it my home, whereas I still feel strong emotional connections to Cologne and Bremen. Feeling at home is a difficult thing.

I could have made cards about Cologne and Bremen and would even have had several stamps to illustrate them, but it would have felt like denying the fact that I´ve been in Münster for soooo long now and my whole life as an adult. 

So I asked myself what characterizes Münster for me. It´s not as big as Cologne or Bremen, it has only 320.000 inhabitants. So it somehow feels small and cozy. Most tourists like its center because it looks historical but really has been reconstructed after WWII because it had been destroyed almost completely. Only two of those picturesque houses at the famous Prinzipalmarkt are really old. We have much cobblestone here, more bicycles than inhabitatns, lots of one way streets, and there´s an old saying that in Münster it always rains or the bells of the many churches do ring. 
I´ve tried to illustrate some of these characteristics, combined with my feeling of this city as a young one that is shaped by its 65.000 students, and I´m very happy about this fact as we have more music, art, literature and other cultural life here than most other cities of this size. 

I hope that I´ve been able to capture a bit about this city, and now I´m curious about YOUR creations and the stories behind them. Please feel free to interpret the theme as you like!

Rainy Day

Rainy Day is this week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge. My card started as a collage of several papers torn from a magazine, then I added gesso and watercolours for the background and some stamps and watercolour pencils for the finished design.

Postage People Again!

 
Probably a lot of you remember my blog swaps featuring Postage People. Though these happened long ago, these creatures want to come to life from time to time, and when my sister announced a Postage People swap and I knew I had one week off work, it all worked together. I´m pretty sure that I won´t need all these ATCs for the swap (and I have some more half finished on my table), but as always I just couldn´t stop making them. If you haven´t tried them, just do to feel the addiction. I´ll never get tired of these.

Sketchbook playing

 
I got out my watercolour sketchbook these days and found an old crow sketch that I decided to work over with watercolours.

Today I´ve been watching Tamara Laporte´s video on Sketchbook Revival 2023 and drew and painted this fox while watching. As I only used watercolours and pencils and didn´t work on it after the video, it has lots of mistakes, not enough white etc., but for such a quick sketch, I´m happy with the result.

Spring Greens

The theme for this month´s Visible Image ATC swap was Spring Greens, so I knew I wanted to make an ATC that welcomes spring. 

The accompanying card was inspired by images of Chicago and its green coloured river celebrating St. Patrick´s Day. As always, the scan doesn´t show the shimmering mica sprays behind the city skyline ...

Chicken Eggs

 
Once in a year, I´m having a fabulous afternoon and evening together with 3 of my best friends, painting Easter eggs and having fun with cake, beverages, music and political discussions. It´s one my highlights of each year, but usually I only paint two eggs. This year´s eggs show chickens as I´ve loved painting my chicken postcard recently. I have used watercolours and several pencils and markers here.

Chicken

 
When I saw that this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge theme was "Chicken", I thought "I know I have a matching stamp" ... then I didn´t find it tonight and drew my own chicken. Then I found that stamp but liked my own chicken so much more. Art is to be open to surprise yourself (and maybe others).

Alice - First Step

 
For this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed Alice I´ve made a paper collage hand coloured and finished with some rubber stamps. Such a nice theme as Alice never gets boring, there´s always something new to find in this book.

Masks

 
Wearing your everyday face can be a necessity or a betrayal. You should be allowed to just be you, but you´re not.

Here´s my card for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Masks".

Red Roses

 
Have you ever tried to scan something red? You´ll be surprised to see the result ... Reds that go well together in real life will look weird together on your scan. So you have to believe me that the reds on my card really look great together on the original card!

I´ve collaged two magazine photos of a woman and a bunch of red roses, used clear gesso upon them and painted them with watersoluble crayons, then added two stamps from Red Lead. 

And the whole card is my entry for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Red Roses".

Love is all around

 
Valentine themes are always difficult for me as I´m not into hearts and love themed art. So for this month´s Visible Image ATC swap themed "Love is all around" I took a different path that suited me more. This card and ATC reached Canada in high speed and and have found a loving home :-)

Imperfect Circles

 
For this year´s rubberstamping art project at Heindesign themed Circles, I´ve made this card using stamps from Red Lead, VivaLasVegaStamps and De Stempelwinkel. I think you can see how much fun I´ve had with this one!

Bauhaus Design

Last night I´ve made two Bauhaus themed postcards to accompany a Bauhaus themed gift for a friend. Now I can´t decide which one I want to use for this purpose ... do you have a favourite?

Light and Darkness

 
I´m hosting this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge this week with the theme "Light and Darkness".  

For my sample card I´ve picked a quote from Goethe´s play "Götz von Berlichingen": Wo viel Licht ist, ist starker Schatten. 

So I´ve used a custom made Goethe stamp, a light bulb from Katzelkraft and a text stamp from PaperArtsy to illustrate my thoughts. Plus gesso and shimmering watercolours of course.

I hope you´ll feel inspired to show us your own version of this theme this week!

Butterfly Effect

We´ve all heard of the Butterfly Effect - doing one thing and causing many effects this way. That´s the thought behind my card for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge. 

I´ve used stamps from Paper Artsy/ Lynne Perrella and Visible Image and used shimmery watercolours from VHAquarell for colouring.

Year of the Rabbit

 

I never really got the idea of Chinese zodiac signs because I can´t believe that soneone born in the a specific year has something in common with everyone else born in that year. However, in a few days the Chinese new year will start, and it´s the Year of the Rabbit. 

When I read that this is the theme for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge, I thought "hm, I know I have some rabbit stamps", but it wasn´t before tonight that I found out how many I have - and I won´t tell you ;-))

Then today I read that stamp designer Tracy Evans is ill with Covid right now, and I thought "Why not make a card with only her designs" ... and here it is, my card to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit - may it be a good one.