Mona & Friends Blog Swap Update No. 6

Today´s the due date for my Mona & Friends blog swap. 18 of your 19 envelopes are already here, but I´m waiting for the last one that couldn´t have been sent earlier because of the Canadian postal strike - so please be patient, I´ll swap them out as soon as this last entry is here.
In the meantime, you should go and have a look at the last four entries for this swap and leave your comments; I´ve told you before that I´ll use your comments as hints when swapping ...
So don´t forget to visit the pages of Tamara, Ulrike, Fiona (you´ll find them on the left side), and Ingeborg to see what they´ve created.

Colour My World ...

These are my ATCs for Lenna´s "Colour My World ..." swap over at Creative Swaps. If you know me a bit, you know that I usually don´t like colour themes and that I almost never do anything monochromatic ... But I decided to take the challenge and make three ATCs showing my world coloured in grey, teal, and rust, three colours I really love (did you know that grey was my favourite colour when I was about 17?).

Zetti Cats

I´ve had SOOO much fun making this 4 x 6 page for our monthly Zetti page swap - this time it´s themed "Animal", and I couldn´t help letting four of them in ...
And because there are 11 stamps on this page and the final Wednesday Stamper´s challenge "At least one stamp" isn´t closed yet, here´s my last entry for one of my favourite challenge blogs - so sad to see it closing.

Nature´s Beauty

... is the title of this 3,5 x 5 " page for our monthly bird journal pages swap.

Clothes

The cool thing about this spread in my own Altered Book themed "Untold Stories" is that these pages originally are about clothes - thus the glued in passage on the left side (glued in many, many years ago and NOT by me) ... the original book is themed "Instructions for

Domestic Economy in the Prisoner´s Institutions in Prussia", Berlin 1923.

Stairs to the Moon

Is this an adult Alice taking the last steps on her way to the moon? Which door will she be able to open after she has gained the sleeping gryphon´s key? Stairs surely have a mystical potential, and that´s why I´ve chosen this story for my Three Muses entry this week.
(Images by PaperWhimsy, Riandesign, FinecraftedDesigns, Pixelmusic, Tangie Baxter and Tartx)

Mona & Friends Blog Swap Update No. 5

This is an older Mona ATC of mine just to illustrate my latest swap update ...
Time is approaching, and there are only two weeks left before due date, so if you´re from outside Europe, your ATCs should be in the mail very soon, but if you´re anywhere from Europe, there´s still time to join my swap.
Here are three more links to the lovely entries for this swap made by Sabine, Trudi, and Ilka. Have a look at them and please leave a comment on their blogs if you like their cards - this swap is not only a swapping event but a nice opportunity to meet new online art friends!
Have fun creating, hope to see my mailbox filled with your ATCs soon.

Life is a Circus

This 6 x 6 card is my entry for this week´s Wednesday Stamper´s challenge themed "Circles".

Mona & Friends Blog Swap Update No. 4

Today it´s time for Mona herself to enter the stage of my blog, so here´s what she´s dreaming of when staring at the Louvre visitors gets too boring.As time is approaching, more and more of you participants get your cards finished and in the mail, and I hope the others will do that soon. Remember, the due date is July 15.
In the meantime you really should have a look at these fabulous entries by Xela, Barb, Ann, Janet, and Glenda. Hope you´ll get inspired by their fabulous ideas!

Paris Butterflies

This card started as an attempt in today´s Grungy Monday Tim Holtz technique, but as the stamp, the paper and the acrylic paint didn´t really work together, I dabbed over a different paint colour and added several stamps, and here´s the result. As I needed a birthday card just today, I´d call this a happy accident.

The Raven King

The other way round Zetti is the theme for our monthly 3,5 x 5 bird page.

1/6 Original

The theme for our monthly 4 x 6 Zetti exchange is Birds this month, so here´s my Zetti bird.

Bird Brain

My 4 x 6 postcard for this week´s SPA challenge themed "Vintage Men".

Mona & Friends Blog Swap Update No. 3

Here´s another of Mona´s sisters, Leonardo´s Lady with the Ermine, but she has found an ermine-sitter for one day as you see here to be able to follow her dreams.

You´ll find another version of this painting when you´re clicking through the entries of the other participants who have finished their entries - please go to the blogs of Marnie, Astrid, Wendy, and Abby to see their wonderful ideas.

One of you had to drop out of the swap, but eight of us already have their cards finished, and two sets are already lying on my desk. There´s exactly one month left before your cards have to be in my mailbox, so I´ll be sending an e-mail reminder to all participants today. Have fun creating, but do it soon!

Red Lead Vintage ATC Swap

Sea Dreams, Home, and Bird Watcher are three ATCs I´ve made for a Vintage ATC swap over at Red Lead.

This is what Life looks like

Almost forgot to post my hostess card for the Anatomy swap ...

Anatomy

Anatomy is a swap theme I never can resist!

Grungy Monday 11: Emboss Resist

Here´s my entry for this week´s Grungy Monday challenge using Tim Holtz´ Emboss Resist technique.

Me

My entry for this week´s SPA challenge themed "Me". I don´t think that I have to tell more about me because you can easily see who I am by clicking through my blog ...

She´s back!

Mona & Friends Blog Swap Update No. 2

It´s time for another swap update!

Botticelli´s Venus didn´t like standing around naked any more, so she decided to put on her garden clothes!

And what are your Renaissance ladies turning into? Can´t wait to see more of your samples!

Look at Martina´s Steampunk ladies here to get an impression of the possibilities.

I´ve had three more sign-ups since my last update, so now we´re 21 players - but there´s still plenty of time to sign up and make your three ATCs for this swap! Please don´t forget to send me the link to your ATCs when you´ve finished and posted them.

Dreaming by Numbers

A quick ATC using what I´ve had lying on my desk this weekend.

It´s my entry for this week´s Wednesday Stamper´s challenge themed Numbers.

Shipwrecked

My card for this week´s SPA challenge themed "Boats". Stamps by Zettiology, Mirkwood, and VLVS.

Mermaids & Kitties

I´ve spent this afternoon making my ATCs for the ARTchix Mermaids & Kitties ATC swap.
Strange combination, you might think ... but when I made these cards, I noticed how easily things get mixed up a bit :-) Please click on the image to see more details.
(BTW, if you don´t know what I´m talking about in my first ATC "Anchored down in Anchorage", you should listen to this great song by Michelle Shocked, for example here.)

True to Yourself

I´ve just been playing a bit today with images from Tumblefish at Deviant Scrap, Freubel, text strips from Tangie Baxter, and other elements.

Empty - Gone

A Scary Place

This week´s Wednesday Stampers challenge theme is Nest, so I thought that one of my ATCs made for my own Mona & Friends swap would qualify here.

(If you´d like to play in my swap, please let me know, there´s plenty of time left.)

The original painting is by Piero del Pollaiuolo.

Stamps used are from Cherry Pie, Scrollswork, Invoke Art, and Artful Illusions.

At Home

When I saw the new SPA challenge theme Storks, I didn´t like it at first - but then I remembered a photo I had taken last month, and I decided to alter it a bit.

Grungy Monday No. 8

This week´s Grungy Monday technique is one of my favourite ones that I´ve learned from Tim Holtz, and it gives this stamped bird collage a dreamy springy feeling.

Update No. 1: Mona & Friends

Hey, it´s already time for the first update on my Mona & Friends swap! On the left, you can see my first ATC for that swap using a woman drawn by Andrea Mantegna - you can see that woman (known as Barbara Gonzaga) in the middle of the painting below.

Let me tell you that I´ve already had 17 sign-ups from six different countries!

And some of you are unbelievably fast - here are the links to the first finished sets from Bine and Peggy; go check them out!

There´s plenty of time to join this swap, so come on and play with us!

5th Annual Blog Swap Announcement: Mona & Friends

I know that many of you have been waiting for my annual blog swap impatiently, so I´m happy to be able to announce it today!
You all know Leonardo´s Mona Lisa, and most of you probably have used that image in your art like I did in the sample on the right. Well - I must confess that Mona is not one of my favourite Renaissance paintings ... I prefer portraits of women painted by Botticelli, Bronzino, Ghirlandaio, Holbein, Rogier van der Weyden, Pollaiuolo and others. This is the reason why I haven´t chosen "Altered Mona" as my theme but want to include any Renaissance women to alter (you can see a variety of them on the left).
Let´s face the word "Re-naissance" and give these ladies a new birth by altering them and their surroundings!

And here are the rules:

Please sign up via personal e-mail (just click on the E-mail me link in the sidebar) and let me know your snail mail address. There´s no sign up date.

Then send 3 ATCs to my address (that I´ll send you when I answer your e-mail) before July 15.

As always, you´ll find updates on my blog with links to all participants´ ATCs. So when you´ve finished your ATCs, please send me an e-mail with the link to the place where you´ve posted them online, and I´ll add that link to the next update so that everyone can go to your blog or other website to have a look at your artwork.

I´ll send out invitations to all previous blog swap participants, but this swap is open to all my visitors. Have fun!

Make Room for DADA

This week I´m a guest host for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge, and I´ve chosen one of my favourite art styles, DADA, as this week´s theme.

Artists like Kurt Schwitters and Max Ernst have not only been among the first collage artists, but have also introduced mail art to the scene, and they even made some collages we´d call Steampunk today. And don´t forget the female DADA artists - Hannah Höch made some of my favourite DADA pieces!

DADA could be just anything, pure fun and nonsense as well as political statements as in John Heartfield´s artwork. So: Make Room for DADA this week and just play!

A Dog´s Life

At the stamping convention in Zeist I´ve found this lovely dog stamp in the bargain bin for one Euro - how could I resist?

My Garden Journal

I´m not a scrapbooker, so working with templates is not my cup of tea at all. Nevertheless I wanted to try the Creavil challenge template - and finished my card today which is one day late ... But look, there´s a butterfly on the left, and the new challenge theme is Butterflies, so here´s my card for it :-)