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.