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.

Time to celebrate on Monday!

Gothic

In my international tip-in exchange group, Mel´s theme for my March/April pages was "Gothic". 

First I did some brainstorming - what came to my mind were black roses, ravens, fog, Gothic architecture, melancholy, and a dark, black/green/purple colour scheme.

Mel wanted her pages to be made on old book pages in the size of 10 x 15 cm, without a margin.

So I had a look at my old books and found one with German songs. I had to cut the edges to get the right size, and I had to be very careful with these brittle papers.

My first idea was a Poe themed spread, and I´ve made a digital collage with images from Finecrafted Designs that I printed on the old book pages and then lightly coloured it with coloured pencils. I was thrilled about the result!

For my second spread, I wanted to use a couple of rubber stamps in the themes of melancholic women and Gothic architecture. I stamped them on dyed book pages in appropriate colours, then collaged them on the song book pages, and finally coloured in with watersoluble crayons to hold it all together. The song title on the right page ends with "in dunkler Nacht" (in the dark night) which was just perfect for my purpose, so I highlighted these words. Finally I added a quote on the left page.

My two tip-in spreads will be in the mail to England tomorrow!

Connected

"Connected" is the name of Nancy Baumiller´s new Crowabout StudioB kit that I´ve used for my collage "Rule No. 1" above. There´s so much fun stuff to play in it, and of course it also comes with printable collage sheets for your cut and paste collages. The background is from Nancy´s extra Connected paper kit.

All Things Alice Blog Swap Update No. 9

It´s three days before this swap comes to its end now, so this is the last regular update.

Finally, we´ve been 24 artists submitting to this swap: 8 from Germany, 9 from the United States, 2 from Australia, 2 from Canada, 2 from the UK and 1 from Austria.
Last week, I received envelopes from Jo, Anja, Nan, Trudi, Solvey and Ilka. Almost all envelopes have already arrived, I´m only waiting for one envelope from Germany and one from Australia. Thanks to all of you for sending your ATCs in time!

If you haven´t visited our swap pinboard for a while, you´ll be surprised how many ATCs we now have there. (Jo even made a second batch of ATCs because her first batch was lost in the mail - thanks, Jo!)

And here are the last links to finished ATCs:
Please have a look at Nan´s blog or have a look at her ATCs together with Leigh´s at the Lost Coast Designs blog here. And you´ll find Solvey´s, Anja´s and Ilka´s ATCs on their personal blogs. And two ladies from MAKIstamps, Andrea and Kerstin, teamed up to send their ATCs shown here.
Finally, I´m still waiting for a link to Glenda´s ATCs that are already finished and sent but not posted yet.

Now that all ATCs are finished and posted, it´s time to visit all the blogs and albums of the other swap participants in order to meet some new faces. When you´re there and see something you like, please don´t forget to leave a comment.
If you´ve been a participant in my blog swaps in the past, you know that I use your comments as hints when swapping out all ATCs in the end. You can also leave comments on our Pinterest board, but if your Pinterest name is NOT your real name, I won´t be able to assign your comments to your person unless you send me an email with your Pinterest name.

That´s all news for today - I´ll be back soon with more infos on the swap.

Just Breathe

After a longer break, Nancy Baumiller from Crowabout StudioB has come out with a new mini kit today called "Just Breathe", and it comes together with a pack of papers.
I´ve made a digital sample for you here, but of course you can print the papers and the collage sheet and start making cut and paste art!

All Things Alice Blog Swap Update No. 8

Our swap is coming to an end now very soon, and I´d like to remind you that your swap ATCs have to be in my mailbox within the next 10 days.

I´ve had one more sign-up last week, and the ATCs from Laura, Dani, and Leigh found their way into my mailbox. But I don´t have any new links to finished ATCs for you right now: Though a few of you have already mailed their envelopes, they haven´t made their blog posts yet, so I can´t share their work today.

I received 15 envelopes so far, but I´m still waiting for 8 more. I´ll send out personal reminders today to those of you whose ATCs haven´t arrived yet. If you won´t be able to send your ATCs in time, please contact me.
See you next week!

Cut apART

Marsha´s new Tumble Fish Studio kit named "Cut ApART" is something special: it contains colourful collage sheets plus several shapes in png and jpg versions, and you can print and cut those sheets to make collages, or your can work with them digitally and mix them with other images (like I did it here), or you can click clip or glue parts of the sheets to shapes (I´ve also done that in my samples). If you have a look at the pictures featured in the shop listing for this kit, you´ll get more ideas about how you can use it, and I can tell you that it´s versatile and fun!

All Things Alice Blog Swap Update No. 7

It´s time for my weekly update on our Alice swap, and there´s quite a lot news this week:

I´ve had one more artist signing up last week, and another person showing interest.

My mailbox filled up with ATCs from Jannet, Lenna, and Brandie - thanks for sending your entries in time, ladies!

And here are this week´s links to finished ATCs:
Please have a look at the lovely cards from Lenna, Laura, Leigh, and Michele, and don´t forget to leave them a blog comment if you like what you see. (Of course they´re also pinned to our swap pinboard here.) This swap is all about getting to know more artists and especially Alice lovers, so I hope some of you get connected through this swap.

I´ve been to a stamping convention in the Netherlands last weekend and met three of our swap participants there, found some Alice ATCs in the albums of people I´ve been trading ATCs with, and bought some more Alice stamps and stencils for my little collection.
However, I´m not sure if I´ll be able to make more Alice ATCs with my new findings while this swap is going on, because the due date is near - please keep in mind that all cards have to be in my mailbox before April 30/ within the next two weeks. I hope there´ll be more colourful stuff coming in soon!

Starlight

Marsha from Tumble Fish Studio just came out with her kit "Starlight" which is perfect for making digital as well as physical journal pages. I´ve made two digital collages for you, "Your Secret Universe" above and "Magic Night" below, but as the kit comes with loads of printable collage sheets, you can also use it for all kinds of cut and paste artwork. 

All Things Alice Blog Swap Update No. 6

It´s Wednesday, so it´s time for some swap news!
Last week, I´ve had two more sign ups for the swap, and I´ve had envelopes with ATCs from Judith and Cathy in my mailbox. Thanks, Ladies!

You may have seen the new ATCs on our swap pinboard, but in case you haven´t, please take a look at Cathy´s, Jannet´s, Dani´s (1, 2, 3, 4), and Brandie´s ATCs now.

Please keep in mind that the due date for this swap is April 30 which is only 3 1/2 weeks away - so if you´re from outside Europe, your ATCs should be mailed within the next 10 days! All ATCs have to be in my hands before April 30. I´ll send a reminder newsletter this week.

Finding My Way Home

For this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Architecture", I´ve made a digital card because it was much easier to tell a story that way ... If you´ve ever explored a foreign city on your own, you´ll probably understand.
For my collage, I´ve used elements from Anna Aspnes, Christina Renee, Jen Maddocks, Maya de Groot, Just Jaimee, Tangie Baxter, Holliewood Studios, and Krysty Scrap Designs.

All Things Alice Blog Swap Update No. 5

What did YOU do last week? Did you use your free Easter days to finish your Alice ATCs?
Well, I did - I´ve made five more ATCs, and the one above is one of them. I´ve used rubber stamps from Carabelle Studio and VivaLasVegaStamps here together with a background paper from Crafty Button Designs and a mushroom from Hidden Vintage Studios.

(Of course I will not swap all 12 Alice ATCs I´ve made so far - I need them for illustrating my swap updates on my blog and for filling gaps while swapping all ATCs in the end, for sending extras etc.)

Last week, I received three more envelopes with ATCs from Liz Waring, Michele Storms, and Helene Huber. Thanks for sending your envelopes that early!

And Judith sent me a link to her finished ATCs posted here: ATCs 1, 2, 3.
Of course, all ATCs so far have been pinned to our swap board at Pinterest here.

Sooooo - 7 of you already sent me their ATCs, 3 more have sent me photos of their finished cards that are still on their way to me, and 9 of you haven´t contacted me yet. That´s no problem as you all have 4 1/2 weeks before your ATCs have to be in my hands; just keep in mind that they have to be in my mailbox before April 30.
Have fun creating!

Spring Awakening

Happy Easter to all of my blog readers! This week´s theme for the Sunday Postcard Art challenge is "Springtime", and this time I´ve made a card with a lot of German text that needs a bit of explanation for most of you ... 

The card´s title "Frühlingserwachen" means Spring Awakening, one of those wonderful old-fashioned German words. The text in the background behind the nest is the beginning of Faust´s Easter promenade in Goethe´s famous play; the English translation is

Loosed from their fetters are streams and rills

Through the gracious spring-tide's all-quickening glow;
Hope's budding joy in the vale doth blow;
Old Winter back to the savage hills
Withdraweth his force, decrepid now.
Thence only impotent icy grains
Scatters he as he wings his flight,
Striping with sleet the verdant plains;
But the sun endureth no trace of white;
Everywhere growth and movement are rife,
All things investing with hues of life:
Though flowers are lacking, varied of dye,
Their colours the motly throng supply.
Turn thee around, and from this height,
Back to the town direct thy sight.

For my card, I´ve used Dylusions sprays and rubber stamps from Character Constructions, Red Lead and Karten-Kunst.

All Things Alice Blog Swap Update No. 4

It´s time for my next swap update, and there are some nice new ATCs for you to see:

Liz has finished her ATCs and posted them on her blog, as well as Helene and Sabine. 

(Sabine´s ATCs aren´t on the swap pinboard yet; I´ll pin them as soon as I´m back home.)

I´m glad to see that more an more ATCs are finished, and please remember that your ATCs have to be in my hands before April 30. But if you haven´t signed up, you should consider to do so because there are still several weeks to make and send your cards, and it´s not too late to join the swap - the fact that I ask you to send your ATCs in an unpadded business envelope means that they travel quite fast.

Have fun creating and please don´t forget to send me an email with a link to your finished ATCs once you´ve posted them.

Colourful Easter Eggs

Last weekend, I´ve been painting Easter eggs with a few friends; we´re doing this every year and always have much fun. This year, I´ve been a bit lazy and tried my Brusho and Bistre colours on white eggs instead of painting - I sprayed a little water on the eggs in order to make them wet enough to hold the colour powders, sprinkled on a few colours and spritzed on some more water, then let the colours flow and mix a bit. You can dry the egg with a paper towel or a heat gun once you´re satisfied.
On my photo, the egg on the left was made with Brushos, and the left one with Bistre colours. Obviously, the Brushos work much better; they really stain the egg and stay intense even if you use a paper towel to dry the egg.

All Things Alice Blog Swap Update No. 3

It´s time for our weekly swap update again. As Alice finds a hidden rabbit on my ATC this week, I find more and more Alice ATCs in my mailbox now: Last week, I received the very unusual ATCs made by Kim.
Rosie has also finished her ATCs. And Trudi sent me a link to her last ATC for the swap.
(Michele has hers finished and put in the mail, too, but they won´t be posted online before April.)
You can find all ATCs so far on our Pinterest swap pinboard.

I´ll be out of town for a few days next week, but I´ll have internet access, so I´ll be able to receive your emails with links and post them in my weekly update.

Delightful

Marsha´s name for her new Tumble Fish Studio image kit is "Delightful", and that´s what it really is! 

I´ve had much fun making these two digital collages with it, called "The Queen" (above) and "A Bird Whisperer" (below). Of course, you can also make cut and paste collages with this kit as it comes with printable collage sheets as always.

Ocean/Sunset ATCs

For another swap at Lenna Andrews´ Creative Swaps blog I´ve made these Ocean coloured and Sunset coloured ATCs - they´re already on their way to Florida!

All Things Alice Blog Swap Update No. 2

Since last week´s update, there has only been one more sign up, so we´re 19 artists playing right now.
But I´ve had the first ATCs in my mailbox already from Stephanie in Delaware, and they prove how fast your ATCs can travel if you use an unpadded business envelope - please remember that this is the only way to avoid weeks of waiting for envelopes that went to the customs.

I´ve pinned Stephanie´s ATC on our swap board where you´ll also find Jo´s ATCs now.

When you´ve finished your ATCs, please don´t forget to send me the link to your online album (blog, Flickr, etc.) where you´ve posted them so that I can share your ATCs in my next swap update.
Have fun creating!

Mad as a March Hare!

When you hear the saying "Mad as a March Hare", you probably think of Alice in Wonderland, and that´s why I´ve made an Alice themed card for this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge with that theme (credits for this one: Sherrie Drummond and Finecrafted Designs) - and I hope you´ve noticed that there´s an Alice themed ATC swap currently running on this blog (if you´re interested, just scroll down a bit ...).
But did you know that the saying appears in a book of proverbs in 1546 already? Originally, it recurred to the mad behaviour of hares in the springtime, and that´s the idea behind my second card for this week, using rubber stamps from Stempelmine, Red Lead, Catslife, and Stamping Fairies.

All Things Alice Blog Swap Update No. 1

It´s time for my first swap update, and I´m happy to say that this swap had a good start!
Right now, we´re 18 participants from 6 countries, and I´m sure there will be some more as there are loads of time left to join the fun ...

Use your imagination, says the Mad Hatter in my ATC above, and that´s the only thing you´ll have to do to make your 3 ATCs for this swap. Just keep in mind that your ATCs have to be in my hands before April 30.

You can see the first swap ATCs by Trudi on our swap board at Pinterest now, so go and have a look and maybe leave some comments if you like what you see.