Good Things Come in Small Packages - a Canvas Corp Brands Project

Servus and welcome to my first ever invitation for you to check out my full tutorial on this project over at the really inspiring Canvas Corp Brands "The Creative Studio" blog!

As I am pretty new to all the other fab product lines they offer besides the Tattered Angels Glimmer Mists and other fab spray paints (that were among my very first crafting products I bought when I discovered crafty blogland), I was more than positively surprised by the wonderful and wide range of canvas substrates they offer as well as the 7 Gypsies papers and their newly released "Architextures" that I will have to lay hands on soon.

My first project as a Creative Crew Member for Canvas Corp Brands though is rather simple and quick and paper crafts related as they offer beautiful brown Kraft paper bags in various sizes too. And I love working on Kraft!

So this is the finished project:

And here are some of the Canvas Corp Brands products I used to create my little gift bags:

If you are interested in the full tutorial or even in more inspirational input from the rest of their DT, simply click HERE to get to the CCB Blog.

Hugs and happy crafting!

Claudia

xxx

Nature Study - March tag for 12 tags of 2014

Inspired by Tim Holtz' March tag I tried to create my own today using what I already had at home.

I love the subtlety of the ghost print and Tim's March tag tutorial was a good reminder to do more of this kind.

I used stamps from Red Lead, Stampendous and 7Gypsies and the "Sprayzas" which I borrowed from my son ;)

The lovely embellishment was a gift from one of my dear crafting friends (thanks again :-x)

Thanks for stopping by and know that your comments are always very much appreciated ;)
Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia x

Autumnal Tag

As autumn is my favourite season of the year I always enjoy its approach - even though I love late summer too ;)

But no other season of the year is as meaningful as autumn is. And has as wonderful colours and clear daylight....

The Wienerwald ("Vienna Woods") is so wonderful to hike during this time of the year, having mist, fallen leaves in all colours and all those tiny creatures on the ground, looking for winter homes.

When I found the lovely paper napkins with the mushrooms on them, I knew I had to use them for (at least one) project!

So I applied the image to a cut out tag using Art Podge and stamped on some insects images after it had dried.

LOVE the 7Gypsies "Bugs Life" stamps!!!!

I also added some more red dots to the design by using one of the Tim Holtz "Ultimate Grunge" texture stamps and "Barn Door" distress ink.

Alongside that I stamped two leaves from the Tim Holtz "Fallen Leaves" stamp set  to the "ground".














After that my beloved all time stampin' stars - my HeroArts alphabet stamps had their moment!

I cut out the words and glued them to the tag. Then I outlined them using a black Indian Ink pen.
For a finishing touch I added a dotty red ribbon. Done!

I am happy that you stopped by! Thanks for visiting!

I enter this tag to The Artistic Stamper's "Autumn" challenge. 

Hugs and happy crafting,
die amelie x

12 tags of 2013, "Emboss" and "Anything From Your Garden"

Today I want to share with you two tags I made.

The first shows my try on Tim's September tag from his 12 tags of 2013. He used a lot of stencils which I don't have (and which can only be pre-ordered at the moment over here) - so I made my own using some of his alterations and Movers and Shapers Sizzix dies.
But it was a great opportunity to play a bit with my new Tim Holtz stamps from the awesome "Laboratoire" and "Poisonous" stamp sets!

So I did some masking and some stencilling .... some shapes get visible at second sight I am afraid, but the layering led to some effects I really like.

With the second tag I enter Vintage Stamping Challenges challenge "Anything from your Garden".

I played around with the clear embossing powder resist technique, some stencilling and texture paste, with distress inks, chipboards, Stickles and my new stamps from 7Gypsies.

Maybe you can see it on this picture: I used a wood grain stencil from TCW and first applied embossing ink to the tag and after I had blended the tag with some Distress inks after heat embossing, I applied some texture paste through the same stencil and with some of the same spots.

I wanted to incorporate all the colours my garden shows when it is in bloom. And of course I had to show all the wonderful creatures that make our garden the wonderland that it is to us.


I enter this tag to SimonSaysStamp's Monday challenge too, as they want us to "emboss", (which I did ;).

Thank you for visiting!

Hugs and happy crafting,
Claudia - die amelie x

Witch Myrtle's Favourite Travel Case

Hello, dear readers and followers old and new,

welcome back to my tiny spot! I am so glad that you stopped by again (or even for the very fist time!) and I am ever so thankful for all the lovely comments you leave with me. They really mean a lot to me and I know I have been MIA for quite some time now (due to our long school holidays and all the preparations for my son's start at the new school directly after returning home - gosh, they grow up sooo fast!) I hope you forgive me that I have just started to try catching up with visiting your blogs and leaving some lines there.

Today I want to share my first Halloween make with you. I made it on the first day with enough spare time to sit at my workdesk and although I had planned to do something "quick and easy" it turned out as a whole day's project in the end ;)

Last Halloween you met the three witches Amealia, Prudence and Porticia who live together in a flat sharing community. They had some problems when you saw them the last time, but those luckily seem to have been fixed shortly afterwards. ;)

Well, they have a very dear friend, Myrtle Twizzlethwaite, who is one of the youngsters among the witches' community.  Young witches often get used special items from their witch ancestors. So did Myrtle. She got her Grandma's Travel Case - a very practical item, even though it is not as modern as the tiny Witches' Emergency Kit I showed you last autumn. But it provides a lot of space for travel equipment and therefore Myrtle is using it very often and with pride.

Myrtle's Grandma became very forgetful and absent-minded during her last years - so she put on the "Poison" stickers as a reminder of the dangerous load the travel case carried then. A lot of the labels on the travel case are remnants of Myrtle's Grandma's great times as a highly notable witch...which makes the travel case even more precious to Myrtle.


And maybe you have already spotted Archie, Myrtle's Hercules guard beetle in there.

Every witch has an animal partner with her - some love to have ravens by their sides, some love the company of snakes and lately some have started choosing small creatures like mice, rats and even beetles or spiders (which some of the old fashioned witches think is humbug and just a short-lived fashion).

But Archie has already proven very useful, as he drives off  pickpockets by his rather ghastly sting (which is extremely hurtful and makes a victim puke for four days).








Archie always guards Myrtle's Spellbook, which is the most important thing a witch owns.

Myrtle also carries a crib with her, as she still is not too firm with some of the spells.

As you can see she has been using it quite a lot and has also added a lot of handwritten notes to it during her first years as a graduated witch.




One of the compartments holds a pencil and some stamps, as Myrtle loves to travel and write postcards to her friends and family from all over the world.




The tiny metal tin once held a dangerous poison but now holds Myrtle's earplugs, as she is a very light sleeper.

But the most important things Myrtle carries with her are her tiny bottles with spells ingredients - from simple ocean salt over glowing termites, poisonous spider bones, ancient scarab's shine, hornet's sting, bristles and wings to concentrated pumpkin crystals.

The "Happy Haunting" pennant on the case's handle is a memory of Myrtle's very first studies trip to "Blocksberg Manor", THE meeting point and seminar hotel with the best sorted library of the world.




 With this project I'd love to enter Frilly and Funkie's "Anything Goes" challenge.

I leave you with some more close-ups and a materials list and hope that you enjoyed your visit!
Hugs and happy crafting,

die amelie - Claudia x

Materials used:

cardboard, glue, scissors, ruler, hole punch, crafting knife, cutting mat, crafting sheet,  DIs "spiced marmalade", "walnut stain", "vintage photo" and "gathered twigs", Distress paint "brushed corduroy", DecoArt Traditions Acrylic Colors, DecoArt "Weathered Wood" Crackle Medium, 7Gypsies label stickers, new Tim Holtz stamp sets "Poisonous" and "Laboratorie", alcohol inks, masking tape, MyMindsEye brad, Prima brads, stamps from Martha Stewart, archival ink "jet black", leather from an old leather rucksack, corked vials from idea-ology and Vaessen, papers from Echo Park's "Chillingsworth Manor" stash and Graphic45.

12 tags of 2013 - May

Finally I found some spare time between shoving big boxes filled with books, DVDs and tableware from one space to another (due to our living room and kitchen renovation) to at least take a chance on Tim's may tag from his 12 tags of 2013.

This time Tim shows the rub on resist technique, which really looks very effectful and was definitely a lot of fun to try.  I don't use rub ons really, so I had to use what I had (which was exactly one single sheet with rub ons to be honest ;) - which lead to the tags theme - the way I look at nature and art. Nature is all around us, so art is too as it influences an artist's work and view at the world. And art is somehow expressed nature - the nature of the person who created that piece of art to be exact. At least that is how I think art, artists and nature are related.

The Distress stains used for the background were "crushed olive", "pine needle", "tumbled glass" and "brushed corduroy". Background images were stamped using "sepia" archival ink and stamps from the Tim Holtz classics #7 plate, his small "Mona Lisa" and the bird image from the Shabby French plate were stamped using jet black archival ink.

As I do not have the film strip ribbon I used the Sizzix Tim Holtz "mini film
strip" die and glued it onto the tag.

The enameled tag was blended using Ranger alcohol ink "juniper". Not owning any remnant rub ons, I used StazOn black ink with the Tim Holtz stamp from the classics #7 plate and pressed the tag onto the inked up stamp, trying not to smear the image.

For a finish I stamped "art" using the fantastic Tim Holtz "worn text" letter stamps with embossing ink onto the tag (and partially over the glued on film strip) and heat embossed it with white embossing powder. Mona's eyes needed some lighting up with a white gel pen and the philosophers tag, the enameled tag and the stamped saying were fixed onto the tag using tiny Tim Holtz brads (white and aged bronze).









The white ribbon was coloured using Distress stains, dried with the heat gun
and attached to the tag. I also used a self made ring fastener, which was die cut along with the tag and stamped with the same stamp from the classics #7 plate as the enameled tag to fit the look of the rub on resist.






A little blending around the edges of the fastener and the tag. Voila! Hope you like it!

Happy crafting and thanks for stopping by!

die amelie x

"buttons - part 2"

As I had promised earlier, I am going reveal the content of the altered tin-box with the "buttons" book plate today.

So... drums, please!....here it comes: a buttons bracelet for my sister!

I was working on it for quite a while, as a nasty facial neuritis and/or the medication against it have been slowing me down for almost the last two months, which made tiny crafting and reading (and also commenting - sorry for that, folks!) quite exhausting for me. And it also took numerous attempts to fix the buttons to the bracelet as shown in the "Distressables 2" book by Tim Holtz.

There the buttons were fixed with thin wire, but I wasn't content with the curled up ends of the wire, as they always would stand out (at least a little) no matter how tight I curled the wire and I was afraid they might pull strings from one's clothing or scratch the skin. So after a few failures I decided to sew the buttons to the bracelet rather than use wire.

So I had to sew at least twenty-five buttons to the small rings of the bracelet. (Did I already mention how much I love sewing buttons?).


 But first I had to glue the transparent buttons onto some scraps of design paper, using transparently drying glue. Then they had to be cut out and coloured on the backsides (which I did with Distress stains "brushed pewter" to match the silvery look of the bracelet). I also sealed that with one layer of glossy Mod Podge to make it a bit more "waterproof".

For the inside of the tin box I wanted to have a "mould" that would hold the bracelet in place. Therefore I glued a small oval piece of thick corrugated card to a larger oval piece that fitted the size of the tin box and covered it with the lovely 7 Gypsies "Paris" collage tissue paper. Some more crumpled up tissue paper to cover the bracelet against the lid of the box - done!

(Hope, my sister will like her present!)

I am entering Simon Says Stamp and Show's "gift-spiration" challenge with this project.