"Collage!"...

...is what we want you to do for this fortnight's challenge over at TryItOnTuesday!

This means that - as always - our challenge is an "anything goes" as long as you show us a collage, which must also include some script somewhere ( ...and of course stick to the challenge rules in general ;)


I recently stumbled upon a lovely book about soldered jewelry and so I decided to take up soldering again. This is a technique I had learned over 20 years ago during my arts studies, but honestly never taken any further. But now was the time:
I created a collaged deco hanging with some of my favourite stamps, book pages and images: insects, script/words and plants!

I also wanted to use the awesome bookpages from an old herbarium, which were given to me by lovely ELLIE during a swap! (Thank you for this rare and wonderful treasure, my dear crafting friend!)
And they were just perfect for this project! I sooo love how they are displayed now.

I used 5x5 centimeter Memory glass plates, self adhesive copper foil tape and the soldering iron from dear hubby ;) - and I had a lot of fun!

In the following I will show you all six sides of the hanging ornament:

To create my six small collages, I used pages from the old herbarium, some script and animal stamps which I stamped onto beige card or scraps from the pages' borders and also some scraps from Tim Holtz papers which I stamped some images of insects on. Most of the scraps were cut to size, some of them were torn. All of them were blended with DI "vintage photo" around the edges. Then I glued them to place and put front and back images between two pieces of Memory glass. I covered the edges of the glass sheets with self adhesive copper foil tape and soldered around them afterwards.

Stamps used are from DeStempelwinkel, 7Gypsies and Artemio, stamping inks: archival black jet and sepia. 

Sssshh....my favourite collage is this one ;) :

Working on such small space is something I really like to do. But of course the collages you enter with the challenge can be of any kind and size you want ;)

I invite you now to hop over to Try It On Tuesday to see what my fabulous team mates created for your inspiration! Thank you for stopping by and I look forward to seeing your awesome collages soon entered with our challenge!!!!

I enter FSC's "Script/Books/Pages/Print" challenge with this make.(Thought I already had, but it seems I deleted this paragraph accidentally during editing :(

Hugs,

die amelie xx

WOYWW #216

Wow, I made it again for this week's workdesk wednesday snoops...er... visits, hosted by lovely Julia Dunnit! :)

As there is not much going on today on my workdesk (honestly it is rather close to my best state of being tidied up ;), I decided to show you what is beside my workdesk this time. (Hope, this counts too ;).

The shelves to the left hold all the embellishments, ribbons and cords, idea-ology treasure boxes, colour sprays, ephemera and also my tools for wire, wood and metal work and for painting tin figures for tabletop strategie games. There you can also find my inspirations library (on top).

The shelf behind my desk holds the acrylic colours, mediums, crayons, felt tip pens, scraps and stuff like that.

One last look on my "empty" desk:

Well, yes, you are right - tidied up looks different *lol. But at least there's some space left for starting something new ;)

I hope you all enjoy a happy workdesk wednesday and I wish you a wonderful crafting week!

die amelie x

"Counting Shells"

"By the Sea" is SSSaS's theme for this week and almost last minute I decided to create a project for entering their challenge, using my recently bought Sizzix Accordion Flip die.


As it is too hot for me to think properly I skip a long how-to today and leave you alone with the pictures. I hope you like it and that you enjoy the hot summer weather!

I used white Gesso, a blending tool, DI s "broken china" and "gathered twigs", blue card, some mica, alcohol inks, Sizzix, Sizzix accordion flip die, Oxford Impressions images stamped onto tissue paper and glued to the background using DecoArt Decou-page matte (which I watered down a bit), some cord, texture paste, the TCW "Mini numerals" stencil, my HeroArts letter stamps, archival ink "Rich Cocoa", two half pearls and some glue.

Hugs,

die amelie x

I also enter this project with Fashionable Stamping Challenge's "Flora and Fauna" challenge, with Country View Crafts "Summer Sizzler" challenge, Heck of a Challenge's "The Sea" challenge and The Crafting Cafe's "Summer's here" challenge.

Another swap....

This time with wonderful Ellie Knol from "Paper-Stamps-Color"!
We already swapped some months ago, but we still keep finding more "treasures" with each other's blog that we would like to swap ;)

These three ATCs are what Ellie sent me in return for two tags she wanted to have.
Aren't they awesome? I know noone else who does flower themed ATCs and tags like she does. She definitely has developed her very own unique and artistic style, which I really love.

Along with this gorgeous trio she sent me this adorable ATC:

...and again a lot of yummy stuff to lay my crafting hands upon ;). Thank you so much, Ellie, for all the lovely printed paper backgrounds, tissue paper, cords, tags, lace and ribbons! They are fab, fab, fab!

Lucky me! Yay!

Hugs,
Claudia - die amelie x

"Create Art!" - a mixed media tag tutorial

Hi there and welcome back to another tutorial! This time I want to take you through a lot of steps by which I created this tag:

To make this tag I used:

- an old paper palette from your latest acrylic painting session full of yummy colour remains (you can of course use any "messy leftovers" from your creative work)
- DecoArt Traditions Acrylic Colours "Raw Umber" and "Quinacridone Gold"
- DecoArt Metallic Lustre
- DecoArt Americana Decou Page (matte or glossy)
- DecoArt One Step Crackle
- DecoArt Texture Crackle (colour of your choice)
- DecoArt stencil with words
- a bristle brush, a palette or similar, baby whipes, scissors, a carpet knife, four brads, some rough fabric ribbon, a rivet and a rivet setting tool and mat, a hammer, a punching needle, some rough cord


The main idea of this tag is to recycle some of your left overs from colouring or painting sessions. For example I love to use coated paper plates as palettes, when it comes to painting with acrylic colours. And I never throw them away as they look awesome, having a lot of colours and texture on them that I could not produce that way if I wanted to ;) .

I used a Sizzix die to cut the tag, but you can also use a ruler, pencil and scissors to cut your tag from the heavily colour coated "card palette". The image above shows one of my unused paper plates and the cut to size tag to the right.

Once you have prepared the tag you want to work on, you can start turning it into a piece of art on its own :)

1. Cover the tag with a coat of DecoArt Americana Decou-Page sealer and let dry.

2. Then give it a coat of DecoArt One Step Crackle. See to it that you do not apply the medium too evenly - the crackles get larger with increasing thickness of your layer. So I tried to vary the thickness of the coat to get various sizes of crackles on my tag.

Let dry and crackle.

3. In the meantime prepare the "imagine" plate (or whatever you choose as your word/s) that will be mounted to the tag's center. Use DecoArt Texture Crackle (no matter which colour, as we are going to cover the letters with acrylic colour anyway) and apply it generously through the stencil to a piece of cardstock with a palette knife. I used "Light Mocha" btw.

Be careful when removing the stencil to avoid smearing the edges! Your stencilled word should look like this now:

Let dry (or even speed up the process with the heat tool). Your crackled word will look like this afterwards:

4. In the meantime the crackling of your tag should be finished (do not try to speed this up with the heat tool as it will make the crackle medium create bubbles instead of crackles).

Use something (an old brush or a piece of cloth) to rub in some "Carbon black" DecoArt Traditions acrylic paint. Cover the whole tag with the colour and quickly whipe off the excess using baby whipes, before the colour dries. This will leave some dark colour in the creases and make them more visible.

If you happen to take off the colour from the crackles too, try to whipe using less pressure or change from baby whipes to telephone book pages (which take off the colour as they are slightly absorbant, but do not get into the creases).

See the black and orange "tool" to the upper left? I created a so called "tampon" as is used with printing techniques when it comes to rubbing the colour paste into the fine detailed etchings of copper plates for printing. I used an old T-Shirt and cut out a circle which I filled with some cotton and closed with a rubber band. It allows you to "massage" the colour into the creases and works much better than a brush.

When wiping off the colour excess be generous and change baby whipes quite often, as you will only be whiping the dark colour from one space to another as soon as your whipe has taken too much colour. I needed at least three baby whipes to get the colours of the tag being bright again.


5. Cut the stencilled word plate to size and distress the edges. Therefore use a carpet or crafters knife and scratch it along the edges of the card as shown in the picture:

This will roughen the card's edges, which is perfect for a distressed look.

6. Punch four holes into the plate as it will be fixed to the tag with four brads.

7. Cover the plate with a coat of DecoArt Traditions "Raw Umber". Try to stipple instead of stroking the paint on with the brush. Don't be afraid - the crackles will still be visible afterwards.

8. After this has dried, add some traces of "Quinacridone Gold" DecoArt Traditions with some spots of the plate, half painting half dry brushing it to the surface.

9. Afterwards give it a rub with DecoArt Metallic Lustre of your choice.

I made images of the single steps so you can see the development:

10. The tag needs a darker edge to get the focus centered. Use DecoArt Traditions "Raw Umber" and a bristle brush and stipple some of the colour around the edges, leaving traces of the brush visible.

The next image shows how the brush's bristles partially apply paint to the upper side of the tag, leaving traces of the single bristles, which creates some nice texture instead of an even outlined border.

11. Cut some rough ribbon to size. It should be at least five to six millimeters larger than the plate. We want the ribbon's fibres to make a kind of "frame" for the plate, to make it stand out from the background of the tag.

s

Remove some of the outer fibres by pulling them one by one off the ribbon.

This will create a rough edge of the ribbon and also let some of the background show through. The rougher your ribbon, the easier:

12. Position your plate on the tag and poke four holes through it to insert the brads afterwards that will fix the plate and the ribbon to the tag.

13. I then wanted to insert a rivet and discovered that my tag's hole was too large.

I fixed that by cutting a small piece of card to size and punching a hole of the right size into it. I then glued that piece of card behind the tag's hole.

Now I could set the rivet without having it fall through the hole :)

14. Use some strings of rough cord to add it to the tag.

15. I then stamped some artistic words (using self-made stamps from funky foam (tutorial can be found here)) onto some card, cut them to size and added them to my tag.

Done! 

I hope you like it and will try some artist's tags from leftovers of your palettes too! Thank you for staying with me this far and happy crafting!

die amelie xx

Of course some close-ups as usual ;)

More mixed media tutorials from talented fellow crafters and artists can be found here.