Three Halloween ATCs

When I fist saw this background paper, I knew this had to be used for a halloween project! As I usually love to do more than one ATC at a time, I made a threesome.

I cut out the ATCs and distressed the edges, which I afterwards blended with "black soot" Distress ink and a rough kitchen sponge cube. I tore strips from a page of an old book and gave them the same treatment.

Then I stamped the images of the skeletton, the crow and the Snake Oil label on them and set them aside to dry.

In the meantime I stamped the quotes (from My Mind's Eye and Martha Stewart) onto lilac cardstock with embossing ink, covered them with black "Sternenstaub" embossing powder and heated them. The finished quotes were cut out, the edges distressed and again treated with "black soot".

To add some depth, I stamped images of a pumpkin (My Mind's Eye), a skull ((My Mind's Eye) and a raven (Tim Holtz) onto the background as well as a text-border from the Martha Stewart Halloween stamp set.

I covered small brads with lilac nail polish and added some orange glitter flakes as embellishments with a "bling". Book page strips and quotes were glued onto the background, brads fixed. Done!

Hope, you like them! (Maybe you wanna trade? ;)


Hugs,
die amelie x

Here are some close-ups as usual:

I am going to enter the City Crafter Challenge blog's challenge "An Early Boo" with these.

"Fallen Leaves II"

Today just a short post, as I am suffering a terrible headache due to the unusual warm weather for this time of year.

But I wanted to show you the four ATCs I made today and the pictures speak for themselves I think.

Backgrounds were made with Distress inks "barn door", " spiced marmalade" and "peeled paint" and water from a spray-bottle. Then the leaves were stamped with embossing ink and embossed with clear embossing powder. After that I blended the edges of the leaves again with distress inks to achieve better contrast.

And: YESSS - THESE ARE MEANT FOR TRADE! (as most of my ATCs are btw...) ;)

Hugs,
die amelie x

"Pocket-ATC"

I was once again invited by the lovely DT of FunwithATCs to do a guest designer's project for them and I decided for a pocket ATC. Thank you so much, girls!!! :)
Of course you have to see all of their pocket ATCs too, as they are really great!!!!! 

Here is my project for their challenge:

Maybe you remember my diptych-ATC "Looking for Mr. Hyde"... ? I had some scraps of the great background image left, which I used for the ATC and the inside of the pocket, namely the part that can be seen when the ATC is taken out.

The handle for the pocket is made of thick wire, wrapped around a big nail, to get it spiralled. 

Little Red Riding Hood wants to know, where the big bad wolf lives. Well, I know the modern day wolves from the concrete forests are more dangerous than their animal colleagues out in the forests...

Quote and basket were printed and covered with a layer of Ultra gloss Podge. Distress inks used: "barn door" and "pumice stone". The stamp with the "wolf-gentleman" is from a "flonzcraft" stamp set.

Some more views:

"fallen leaves"

I had fallen in love with the Tim Holtz stamp set "Falling Leaves" at first sight, so when I finally had it in hands, it came as a surprise to me that I absolutely did not know which project to do with it, that would show the whole potential of these gorgeous images...

It took me some days to find an appropiate approach. I stamped, cut out, inked ....and discarded. Then I had the idea, that instead of the leaves, that should look like they had fallen on the ground, the paper they were stamped on should take their place instead and look like a pile of fallen leaves...with pictures of fallen leaves on them. AND I thought it the perfect project to do my very first inchies.

This card is the outcome of a lot of stamping, cutting stencils, searching for exact positions, sparkling and inking:

I combined 1 and 2 inch inchies for the project, which was very helpful to fill the "gaps" that had developed after I had stamped the three big leaves onto the five big inchies (which was quite tricky I have to admit).

After I had all my inchies covered with my puzzle of leaves, I inked the edges with Distress ink "peeled paint" and gave them a spritz with water from my fingers to get some texture, that should contrast the fine details of the stamped leaves images. Then I inked the edges with "pumice stone", which I also used as the background colour for the card. The border once again was treated with "peeled paint" (stamped small leaves AND inking with blending tool) to get a frame-like look. The letters from the Hero Arts stamp set were stamped with "black soot" after I had glued some of the tiles directly onto the card, some with foam sticky pads on top to create some depth.

Hope, the pictures show some of the threedimensional pile-of-leaves-look!

With this project I enter the challenge at City Crafter Challenge Blog, where they ask to use inchies. Well, I did! Inchie-leaves, to be exact. ;)

"Finally Fall!"

As fall is my favourite season of the year, I was already hopefully looking forward to challenges that required autumnal colours and themes. Well, here they come: DragonsDream Tag It On want to see "Misty Autumn Glaze" and Frilly and Funkie ask to "Fall into Fall" and last but not least the gorgeous "Fairy tale challengeblog" that celebrates the beginning of fall as I do. Well, they would not have needed to ask ME, as I love to fall into MY season after a long and (too) hot summer anyway. ;)

So here is my project for them:

I think I have not mentioned yet, that I am interested in children's books and illustrations too (according to my art studies AND my education as a school librarian). Good illustrations in books for children are really hard to find, as they imho should not only visualize a scene from a story to cut off an intimidating long text, but capture the spirit of the essence of the story and create something behind the shown action, that drags the reader in. (I hope, this makes some sense to you and I have explained that right).

So in this tag, I tried to create a scene that would show all the things and sensations I so love about autumn - the especially clear air and lighting, the earthtoned colours, the textures and the contrast of still warm, vibrant colours forming a contrast to rotting and decay. Metamorphosis at it's best!

I punched a stencil out of card for the leaves on the ground and did them with Distress inks "mustard seed", "spiced marmalade", "rusty hinge", "barn door" and "vintage photo". Then I tore stripes from masking tape to cover the upper part, as I wanted to create a glossy and bright space between the trees that were to come later. These spaces I inked with "broken china" and "shabby shutters" and embossed them later with clear embossing powder as a resist to the stamping of the bark and the shading of the trees.

Some of the punched out leaves were embossed in red, copper and gold. I stamped a pine cone, some mushrooms and a snail onto the forest ground and did the bark with my small texture stamp, which I only partially inked with walnut stain to get that fading structure.

Then I carefully sprayed GlimmerMists "Mustard Seed" and "Marmalade" and MayaMist "Espresso Brown" onto some areas (mainly at the edges to create a kind of frame for the scenery). At least I added the stamped owl and the banner on top.

I hope, the close-ups show the glimmer and glaze, that can be seen when you look at the tag from various angles:

"Whodunit?"

A tag, inspired by the new Steampunk Junkies challenge blog ( which will be entered with this project of course):

I am also entering in at Loves Rubberstamps Challenge with it, where they ask for selfmade backgrounds.

This background, made out of one of my glossy cardstock party plates, which I love to use as small palettes for acrylic colour painting or glueing, actually was an "accident" that happened while I was playing around with stencils and gold acrylic colour, which I afterwards treated with AAI.

The rather suspicious person on the right (SHE did it!!!) is a picture from my fabulous beloved "Steampunk Sourcebook", stamped images (Tim Holtz stamps) were embossed with aged copper embossing enamel and black "Sternenstaub", paper scrap (inked on the torn edges with Distress ink "pumice stone") comes from BoBunny's et cetera Collection.

Some close-ups as usual:

"Hänsel und Gretel" - 2 ATCs

As there were still two images on my copy from the "Oblatenbildchen" left (and some playing cards too), I decided that I wanted to try out my new verdigris patina set and combine this with the altering technique from the "Let's tell off for play"-leporello.

This time I put the crumpled paper tissue layer on top, also covering the images of the two children. And I love, how some parts of the playing cards still are visible, adding colour and detail to the whole in some spots without being too distinct.

I also highlighted the creases by slightly drybrushing them with gold acrylic colour.

Here some more close-ups, which I hope you will enjoy as much as I do:

As these two ATCs are made of recycled playing cards, which I reused that way and reduced in size a litte (*gg), I enter the Smudger Challenge Blog, where they ask for "Reduce Reuse Recycle", with this project.

Let's tell off for play - Leporello

This project is the result of (at first) totally bored and annoyingly uninspired play with a single set of playing cards my son won at a tombola and which were quite unuseful for play.

I haven't been creative (but wanting to be) for days and suffering from a nasty cold and nothing inspirational seemed to have crossed my mind for ages (sure, you know this feeling too...brrrr!). So I fiddled around with these cards (which on their backs were awfully ugly - some advertisement from a bank was printed there) and decided to give them a treat with AAI, because I hoped the outcome would turn the switch of inspiration.

Well - they looked treated with AAI afterwards.
Still not too inspiring. Hmpf. Then I browsed through my scraps, my stamps, my paper stashes - NADA, NIENTE, NIX! No spark of an idea in range of vision. Then I remembered my collection of wafer pictures or "Oblatenbildchen", as we call them (reprints from sheets that were popular around 1900). I had always wanted to do something special with them, but never had an idea. Till now!

They have been long stored treasures and very precious to me, as I got my first paper doll from my grandma, when I was just a girl. It was a self-drawn and coloured one and came with a large chocolate box full of self designed dresses from almost all periods of historical costume history. I started designing my own dresses then and made a "daughter" for my Grandma's paper doll, which I copied many of her dresses for.

Since then I love and collect paper dolls, construction papers and Oblatenbildchen (not all of them, but the ones with pictures from the second half of the 19th century and untill around 1930), as I love the time-warp they provide, when looking at them and imagining how children played with them in former times. Paper toy theaters are one of my hobbies too because of that.

The sheet with the children in gorgeous dresses and toys from the time around the turn of the centuries  with them finally hit the switch! I also remembered the lovely antique English Lesson Book from Hedwig Knittel, "Little by Little", from 1912, which my great aunt once was taught English with. There were nursery rhymes in it and I was sure, I would find some appropriate rhyme for my project.

I colour-copied the "Oblatenbildchen" and cut out the children's images. Then I treated four more playing cards (as I needed five in whole) with AAI "rust", "sunset" and "juniper", stamped a Tim Holtz stamp with columns and numbers with gold on after the inks had dried and covered this with a layer of paper tissue, using Mod Podge. After that layer had dried too, I mod podged some scraps of a paper napkin onto that and sprayed the cards with Glimmer Mists and Maya Mist. Some more paper napkin scraps - done!

During all the drying time I stamped a lovely hinge from Crafty Secrets' stamp set "Hardware" with archival black ink onto white card, which I had first covered with Glimmer Mist. Then I cut them out and stamped them with sepia on the back with the same hinge image, as I knew these parts would be seen from both sides, when my project would be finished.

I also needed five backgrounds for the inner sides of the leporello booklet, so I cut out five pieces of white card, exactly the same size as the playing cards, inked them with Ranger distress inks "spiced marmalade", "mustard seed", "shabby shutters", "rusty hinge" and "pumice stone" and sprinkled water on them afterwards to get this wonderful stained look. A touch of Glimmer Mist was added to get a bit of bling too, which fits nostalgic projects very well, I think.
The golden arches were also stamped with combined stamps from the "Hardware"-stamp set mentioned above.

I tiped the tell off rhyme at the computer and printed it onto white cardstock. Each line was cut out separately and inked with "broken china" and "vintage photo". Then I glued the backs together with the pre-folded hinges, using a ruler to keep the cards in line.

I collaged the images of the children and the lines onto the backgrounds and glued the dried cards onto their counterparts. Wallaaa!

The whole leporello is held together by a thin leather string, which simply has to be tied around. It kind of looks like a small package, so I enter Fashionable Stamping Challenges ' "Good Things Come in Small Packages" with this project too. I am also entering ABAC's and Craft-room 's challenges with this project, where "Texture" and "Childhood Memories" are the subjects.

Hope, you (and they ;) like it: