"Feenwünsche.../Fairies' Wishes..."

I tried a lovely technique today - stamping with water into Distress ink (thus removing some of the paint), which leaves a kind of "watermark".

The impression of that background inspired me to work a rather playful and "lovely" tag. Did I ever mention that I love fairies? Well, maybe you remember this image (one of my very first and still most beloved scrap pieces)...

A lot of different mixed-media went into this one:

I gessoed a page from an old book and stamped the fairy image (a nice goodie that came with an order some time ago) and the words on it.
I treated a small, thin vial with alcohol inks and filled it with some glitter flakes and some hand written lines that came to my mind while working on the tag.
I drilled a hole into a piece of bark (that was blended with some Distress inks to match the colour scheme of the tag) to use it as embellishment and add some depth and texture.
I fiddled a small flower from another piece of the book page and inked it with some Distress inks.

Well - enough about the what and how to - enjoy the images!

Hugs,

die amelie xx

"Feenwünsche - leicht wie Sommerbrisen -

 landen sacht in deinem Herzen,

fliegen über Wald

und Wiesen"

( a rather loose translation:)

"Fairies' wishes, lighter than a summer breeze,

disembark on your heart's shores,

softly sail 'cross mountains,

glens and fields"

WOYWW #195

I am a little late today, but  of course I love to join in the workdesk hopping tour over at Julia Dunnit's awesome "What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday"!

Today I will join in being around workdesk No. 110...which indicates that it has to be around noon here ;) (who needs the sun for orientation any more! It hasn't been showing up for weeks anyway btw... still every day passes by being grey in grey...*sigh)

Well, what's on my workdesk today? As I had to leave the house early today there are still some traces of my latest projects to be found:

the Kappla blocks holding my selfmade word stamps for example or the empty glass with the chop stick in it from my drawing-gum-background-tag I made a few days ago. The leftovers from the glue dots I created another background with... but today at least my shears aren't crammed which means they are ready for use (which isn't often the case to be honest ;).

I bought two red plastic containers (to the right) recently to hold the stuff that's usually spread across my crafting table. I found out that the Tim Holtz stamp sheets fit in there just perfectly. So they are right in reach now and alltime ready for use, which made my crafting a lot more intuitive and spontaneous! (I usually have to fiddle the stamps out of two ring binders or some of my drawers... which isn't very inspiring, is it?).

I hope you had a wonderful (half) workdesk wednesday already or still will have a wonderful (half) workdesk wednesday ;)

Hugs,

die amelie

"Time flies!"

Oh, yes, it does! Proof is, that my next "Challenge Tuesday" is already here (how quickly a fortnight passes...) and with it the new challenges at FwATCs (please scroll down to the previous post) and TioT too:

The challenge crew from Try It On Tuesday want you to create something that corresponds with the title

"Time Flies!"

 

So go give it a try! I really would love to see what you create for the flying time challenge!

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My time piece is - again - a tag I used my awesome new pocket watch dies from Xcut on! I love them as they give you the possibility to create a lot of different lovely layered pocket watches by combining the different parts in various ways...some parts you can also mount moveable (as I did with the inner part that shows the moon phases for example).

I cut the outer watch parts and the letters from gold covered glossy card and treated the watch part lightly with alcohol inks. The gears were coloured using metallic Distress stains. Before mounting the pocket watch parts I stamped some script onto the clock face. The black frame was stamped on some acetate from packaging material with StazOn ink.

The image of the old man's eyes was cut from a flyer I got with the mail and mounted behind the transparent frame using brads. I love the wrinkles and that soft look on the eyes. (I love wrinkles, as I think they tell a lot about the way a person has been leading his life so far - they are like lines in an open book).

The texture of the tag's background was stamped using some texture image stamps and cut out stencils to overlay the images. Letters were cut using the Tim Holtz Alterations "Alphabetical" die. Gears are also Xcut dies.

I hope you enjoyed your visit and will have fun crafting (maybe even something for our "Time Flies" challenge?)! Hope to see you there!

And don't forget: for the month of February we were lucky to get Really Reasonable Ribbon as our sponsor for the prize draw, offering a   $15 gift voucher to this months winner! 

"Vintage"

Welcome back to another challenge at FunWithATCs!!!
So glad to see you visiting (and maybe joining in) again!

Vintage is what we want to see on your ATCs - so have a go and fetch all those gorgeous vintage loveliness you have in store to enter our challenge!

My vintage creation shows some use of one of my alltime favourite themes: birds. I stamped some of the lovely Kaisercraft "Periwinkle" and TJ Designs "Birds of a Feather" images on crinkled, ink-blended and water-stained card, fixed a lovely button, some (pink "tainted") lace and rough cord to it and added the vintage picture of the lady with the roses. Here comes the result:

Hope you enjoyed your visit (well, of course I always hope you do)!

Hugs,

die amelie x

More word stamps and a tag

As I showed in my previous post today, it is rather easy to create one's own word stamps by die cutting letters from funky foam and adhering them to wood blocks (Kappla blocks for example) with double sided duct tape.

This is the result with some additional word stamps I made today:

You can see the word stamp blocks in the corner. I used the Tim Holtz "Typeset" die this time for creating the stamps and the wonderful statement stamp from RedLead for the background (to the left).

I also stamped the white ribbon with IndigoBlu stamps using archival black ink from Ranger.

This time I only added red GlimmerMist to the black and white look of the tag to keep it clean and simple and not to draw attention from the main focus: the writing.

I am entering Creative Inspirations Paint Challenge with this tag.

Make Your Own Word Stamps!

I have to confess: I stole some Kappla bricks from my son's building bricks pile today (shame on me, I know ;)...but they were the perfect blocks to mount my letters on!

Yes, you heard me right: I built my own word stamps today. And it is absolutely easy peasy (and of course I am not the first to do this, but I wanted to share this with you anyway ;)...

All you will need are:

-double sided duct tape
-alphabet die/s and die cutting machine
-funky foam
-Kappla bricks (or any other solid block to mount your letters on)
-scissors


1. Choose your word

2. Cut the letters from funky foam using an alphabet die (I used the "Alphabetical" die from the Tim Holtz series for Sizzix).

3. Arrange the letters on your table until you are content with their appearance. Keep in mind that they have to fit in the size of one Kappla brick (which is quite narrow...but you can of course mount your words onto any other surface as long as your mounting block is solid, which is mandatory for stamping). I also thought about cutting old plastic rulers to pieces and use them as mounting blocks - which would provide full visibility of the space you stamp your word onto.

4. Apply some double-sided sticky tape onto the Kappla brick (press firmly)  and cut to size afterwards.

5. Pull off the foil of the sticky tape and press the brick with the sticky side onto your laid out word. Cool thing is: you don't have to lay your words mirror inverted!

This is what I came up with after playing around for a while:

"embrace imperfection"

...which mostly means "learn to love yourself" as I see it. ;)

Love the quote and the stamp too and at the moment I especially love to get inky - really inky!!!

For this tag I used the colouring technique with felt tip pens on acrylic bloc and water spraying bottle again (the one I used for this tag).
It was great fun - as was stamping the grass image onto the sticky dots and applying them to the tag afterwards.

Some additional doodling and added texture using the Tim Holtz stamp with the rings...done!
Hope you like this one too!

Hugs,

die amelie xx

"INSPIRE"

As this is going to be a quite picture heavy post, I will try to keep the text short at least ;)

The background was made by spraying various colour sprays onto an acrylic block, adding some water from a spray bottle and squishing and dapping the block onto a white card tag thus creating loads (!) of layers.

Textures were stamped with embossing ink and heat embossed, using Ranger Old Paper, black and white embossing powders.

Trinket is from finnabair's sunset rise collection. Stamps are Tim Holtz, Andy Skinner and Indigo Blu. Enjoy!

I am entering SSSS's "metal-ology" challenge with this tag.

"Ever Seen Real Fireflies?"

Well, I have. This is what they look like:

I played around with drawing gum and water colours today and thus created the background for this tag.
So I had that enchanted forest... but no idea who should inhabit it... fairies? Too obvious!

I still had some steampunk stamps lying on the table (I am not too speedy when it comes to cleaning up after a crafting session ;)...and then the idea just hit me: fireflies (or glowworms as we call them) were the perfect fauna for this environment!

So here they are! Take a close look - they are very, very shy!

Hope you like them!

Hugs,
die amelie xx

And the "Liebster" Goes To....

...well, let's see in a sec (or two). :)

I was only recently awarded the "Liebster Award" even twice by two lovely ladies, Francesca and Buttons! Thank you very much! I really appreciate that and am honoured.

Want to know more about it?

This award was designed to be a blog award in the pay it forward fashion. Once you've been nominated you award it to blogs that you like that have fewer than 200 followers to encourage new visitors to visit these new blogs.

Rules for acceptance:

thank the person who gave you the award and link back to their blog.
Post the award onto your blog.
Give the award to 5 bloggers who you appreciate that have fewer than 200 followers.
Leave a comment on their blog letting them know that you have given them this awesome award.

So I am going to give the Liebster award to some lovely blogs I stumbled upon.

Rebecca's Scrapping On The Edge 

SanDee's blog SanDee1899

the Ranch Girl's Seahorse Ranch Life

Debi's My Bird Flying Free

and 

 Suzanne's Papercrafting

Time for some Steampunk

Today I received the lovely "Vintage Trinkets" from finnabair's wonderful "sunrise sunset" range for Prima and had to do at least a small project for a start.

There was also a scrap left on my table that came from an embossing experiment with a cogs and gears embossing folder, some distress stains and clear heat embossing afterwards. A left over piece of acetate from some packaging material...that led to this ATC I stamped with some of my favourite images from Oxford Impressions (using StazOn to stamp on the acetate).

Why Steampunk? Because I love cogs and gears, everything that has to do with the Victorian age and metal looking surfaces. Aaaand because there will be an announcement here tomorrow that will have to do with Steampunk as well. So check in again tomorrow for some exciting news! :)

I am entering SSSS's "metal-ology" challenge with this ATC.


Happy crafting!

die amelie xx

WOYWW # 194

Good morning from Vienna. Weather's grey in grey as it has been during ages it feels...and the world's best "weeks-counter" ever tells us that another grey week has just passed within the twinch of an eye it seems.

Don't know what I am talking about? Well, go visit and maybe even join Julia Dunnit's fabulous "What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday" community! I really love it!

So here's what's on my desk today:

Nothing too exciting, I know, but these are the materials I bought for the next canvasses my friend ordered (for a housewarming party this time) immediately after she got this one from me. Something lovely and vintage it has to be this time...well, let's see. Lots of white, beige and pale shabby pink this will bring to my crafting table (something rather unusual for me to work with). Thinking hat is already on ;)

More interesting at the moment could be what is ABOVE my workdesk this wednesday *giggle.

See it? There - hanging from the ceiling? I refunctioned a sock dryer (from a very famous Swedish furniture store) into a scrap chandelier *LOL. As my crafting room really lacks any displaying surfaces (as all the walls are crammed with shelves), I had to be inventive ;) . Ah, yesss, and surely you have detected all the board games by now... let me tell you that these are just a fraction of the board games we possess...when my husband and I met, we were both heavily into collecting and playing board games with our friends - so two households, each holding at least forty to fifty games, fused into one. The board games stayed (of course) and have been happily proliferating ever since... :))

Wishing you all a happy Workdesk Wednesday!

Hugs,

die amelie x

"Love is...

....the only thing that multiplies by wasting it." (Ricarda Huch)

A friend needed a canvas as a wedding gift - something more personal than a gift from a store. I had actually no idea what to start with, so I googled a saying first and found this wonderful one by Ricarda Huch, which I really love.

I had played with my Sizzlits dies earlier on this day and had experimented with the big baroque ornament die. The Sizzlits only cut through rather thin card and paper and metal foil (and also funky foam I found out!) and so I had this deeply etched impression on this glossy card (taken from some packaging material) and did not want to through it away, as it looked really cool.

So I cut the whole card to a panel, rounded the edges with a corner punch and gave it an intense treatment with various alcohol inks. After that the ornament was hardly visible, so I decided to take away the alcohol inks from the inner shape which turned out that way:

Love it! Then I punched some holes through the corners and adhered rivets, distressed the edges of the panel with the blade of my box cutter - voila!

I especially love the crackled/marble look, where I worked with the cotton buds quite sloppy!

Then I created the canvas background using the "chipped paint"-technique I learned with Andy Skinner's Timeworn Workshop, that is to create the impression of chipped paint from a rust metal panel. Love that effect, as it really gives you the feel of having something "old", that has already lived to see a lot of things.

I stamped the saying onto some mud coloured card and cut it to pieces, distressed the edges and blended it with "vintage photo" DI. I also spritzed some water onto it, as this makes the colour bleed out a little and softens the card, which makes it look even more old.

I collaged the saying, the "Sizzlits engraved" panel, a background paper from my stash and some rough jute ribbon to the canvas. For a finish I added some rough cord, which I attached to the holes of the panel and tied them on the back, which makes the panel look like it was tied to the canvas instead of glued...done!

Hope you like the result!

I enter Vintage Stamping Challenges ("Blues, Brown and Beige") and SSSS's awesome challenge "metal-ology" with this canvas, as the background is meant to be "faux rusted metal with chipped paint". (Hope, this counts; ....well maybe the four metal rivets will do the job...)

Hugs,

die amelie x

Tiny Tin

Today I gave another Fossil tin a timeworn treatment. (Thank you, Caroline, for the tiny tin - it was just perfect for the ornament I wanted to use on it!)

This is the result of some die cutting (the "baroque ornament" is a Sizzlits die) from black foam rubber and glueing the ornament onto the tin, some acrylic paint coating and dry brushing and the use of a stud, which I treated with alcohol inks:

Some close-ups too of course:

Hope you like it! I am entering SSSS's "messy" challenge with it.

Wishes,

die amelie x