Portrait of a Steampunk Ghost?

Servus and welcome to my share for our mid-month reminder over at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges!

"Gear it Up!"

is this month's motto and we all love to play with gears and cogs, don't we?


My inspirational offer is a rather quick and easy make this time and it originated from a happy accident while cleaning the (Andy Skinner) stencil I used on this project. To do so I had placed the stencil on a white paper sheet and had wiped the paint off it with a baby wipe. This way I accidentally created a ghostly looking image of the top hatted gentleman:

It reminded me a bit of those wonderful old black and white ghost photographs from the early beginnings of photography.

I really liked that very much so I decided to use it for my "gear it up" creation. I added several tones of distress inks in several ways to the image to make it look stained and yellowed.
Then I die cut a panel shape from heavy cardboard and glued the image onto it. I also stamped some gears and words (and the lovely Darkroom Door lightbulb image) in archival ink and added some die cut gears that had been treated with alcohol inks first.

For a finish I dabbed some black acrylic paint around the edges of my panel - et voila! Geared up and ready to show - my ghost portrait panel!

The March challenge is open until the end of the month and we have Tusia's  fab 7 Dots Studio as our sponsor this time! So don't miss the chance to win!

Hugs and happy crafting!

Claudia xxx

FunwithATCs - "Set of Three"

This fortnight we ask you to create a set of three ATCs that belong together.

I chose some of my favourite cities I have been to a couple of times already (and which I will definitely go to again).

I really love the stamp sets from Tim Holtz (London and Paris) and Darkroom Door (Venezia)!

Hop over to FunwithATCs and see what our team holds in store for you! See you (entering your sets of three) soon ;)

die amelie x

"Look left!"

As I love noir comics I also love dark stories - and both is brilliantly combined with the graphic novel "From Hell" from Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell.

Inspired by the book I designed and carved a new stamp today and used it to create this scene with:

Stamps used with this tag: one of my own design and some of Darkroom Door and Artemio.

As this is a "new style", according to a new stamp design, I enter this tag (again) with FSC's "Something New/New Style" challenge ;) and as this is definitely a "Men's Tag", I also enter The Artistic Stampers "Makes for Men" challenge with it.
I also enter Stampotique's "Anything but a card" challenge with it as it is a tag.
Aaaand it also works well with Out of a Hat Creations' challenge "Transport".  ;)
City Crafter's Challenge "Clean and Neutral" seems just to be waiting for my tag *lol.
I also recently discovered PunkyouGirl's challenges - as their first challenge is "anything goes" (as long as it is "dark", "gothic" or otherwise punk), I enter my tag with their challenge too.

Hope you like it!

Hugs,
die amelie x

Our Creative Corner - "history untold"

Hello out there, my dear friends, followers and those yet to become ;)

I am very proud today to officially show you my very first project as a member of  Our Creative Corner's DT and thus offer you some mid-month motivation and inspiration!

There is still almost a fortnight to go with joining the challenge and I would love to see your awesome creations over there too! This month is "anything goes" time!!!! So I am sure I will see a lot of awesome projects entered... ;)

For my first OCC project as a Design Teamie I chose to do one of my favourite "themes" - a booklet. It turned out rather feminine, which is not what I do mostly, but that is just how this booklet turned out - it developed almost by itself (and maybe I developed alongside with it too ;).

I apologize in advance for a rather word and picture heavy post ;)

"history untold" means the history we - the ordinary people like you and me - "write" just by being in places and living our lives... sometimes at places that have a wider known history on their own...but would they have it without people who have been telling it? I believe it is us, who write history and not the places.

Maybe Dr. Watson would have never become Sherlock Holmes' "room mate" hadn't he heard that violin? How would this have changed the Sherlock Holmes stories?

A galant kiss behind closed doors might have changed some lives of girls, we do not know of... but a great "story" may have started with such an event... and I am sure, this has happened in famous places too... Prague, Rome, Venice... who knows? And where did something like this happen to you? This place has it's very special history now for you, hasn't it?

There lived a lot of highly talented women who painted famous places for their own personal keeping...never showing it to anyone but their dearest friends or family. Think of Sibylla Merian, who was one of the first women who became famous for their painted work... just because we don't know of them, this does not mean that there are a lot of gifted artists/painters out there...even today.

I often wonder how childhood days friendships looked like some fifty, eighty, hundred, two hundred years ago... what was it that children rejoiced in? Are the sounds of their giggles, cushioned by hands held quickly to their mouths, and whispered eternal friendship vows still captured with the bricks of old buildings in famous places? Sometimes I touch these old stones and try to listen with my fingertips...

Which untold stories could a boy have witnessed, waiting for his father to return from the pub, hearing the men's laughter and smelling the warm food?

What about history, written about long lasting female friendship? Shared thoughts well hidden underneath new hats? Afternoon tea filled with gossip, great plans and expectations?

I often wonder how many stories that would be real history (and not only fiction) are out there - yet untold, because they would be the history of people like you and me. And I am sure many of them would be as adventurous and special as history we know today, that has been handed down about famous people...

I used papers from the lovely Prima "Script Pad" as pages, cut them to size and treated the edges using the Sizzix OntheEdge tabs die from Tim Holtz. The backs of the single pages - as they were white - were coloured by using DI "aged mahogany", "pumice stone" and "iced spruce"... applying them to the craft sheet, spritzing with water and dipping the pages through the puddles of ink.

The stamps used for this booklet are from flonzcraft, IndigoBlu, HeroArts and DarkroomDoor. The stains were stamped using Andy Skinner, BoBunny and Tim Holtz texture stamps and heat embossed with dark red "Sternenstaub" embossing powder to add a little bling and contrast.

The images and words were stamped on light beige card (with DI "aged mahogany"), cut out and glued - edges blended with DI "walnut stain" - to the prepared pages.











For the binding I bent two rings of dark wire, which I embellished with a lovely
Artemio button and some coloured lace ribbon.


I left the "history" rather sketchy - to leave enough room for imagination and thoughts on possible untold history - maybe even running with ones own family.

Browsing through old photographs showing my ancestors or reading notes they once made in corners of books or written postcards to their loved ones often makes me wonder how much "history" might be found there  - untold yet (and sadly most of the time remaining untold, as noone is left to tell...).



So I created this booklet as a kind of reminder too - to remind me/us to tell our stories/history to our next of kin. Maybe write a diary... or leaving notes in our calendars and keep them... so we can tell our grand children what once was a "moment of importance" to us as it changed our lives...

I leave you with these thoughts and some more close-ups and hope you have enjoyed this rather word- AND picture-heavy post.... I look forward to seeing your creations  over at OurCreativeCorner! :)

I am entering SSSaS's "little paper" challenge and FSC's "Anything Goes" challenge with this project.

Hugs,

Claudia - die amelie xx

"Windows and Doors" at FunwithATCs

Let me welcome you to another challenge at FunwithATCs!
This time our theme is

Windows/Doors

(If you also want to know the challenge theme over at TioT, please, scroll down to the previous post).

Doors are a very mighty symbol... no surprise then that doors come with many sayings. One of my favourites says:

For each door that closes there is a new one that opens. 

I love the idea that we first have to close doors (or sometimes fate closes them for us) to be able to open new ones and step through  - without carrying too much of the old stuff with us. And I like the thought that we never have to be afraid of having nothing to step forward to... fate always will provide us with new goals and challenges worth being met. There's always the chance to evolve by opening unknown doors.

I had this awesome stamp from DarkroomDoor which I used on a background cut from a paper scrap left over from a selfmade background.

and I also stumbled upon my (seldom used but) gorgeous Lynne Perella stamp showing a door opening and a mysterious man standing in it...

On this ATC I did some metal leafing with IndigoBlu guilding flakes and I applied the glue (and some thin layers of white Gesso in other places) using a stencil, thus creating a couple of dotted layers.

I hope you like it and will hop over to our challenge blog to see what my DT mates have created for your inspiration! 

See you at the challenge!

die amelie x

"Let's Get Stitchy!"

That's the motto of this fortnight's challenge with us over at Try it on Tuesday!

We want to see some real or faux stitching with your projects. And remember: this month's sponsor for the prize draw is Crafty-emblies! Maybe you are the one to win the £10 store voucher!

My take on the stitchy motto is a tag that is supposed to be a declaration of my love for one of my favourite cities: London! I love the city, I love the people there, I love the typical London accent, I love the museums and galleries, I love the sandwiches, I love afternoon tea with scones, I love Yorkshire Pudding,... well, I could go on like this for quite a while *lol

I used my new "London Vol. 2" stamp set from Darkroom Door for this and stamped some of the images onto a white ribbon, which I sewed to the tag. The tag was stamped in blue stamping ink with the larger London images from the stamp set, distressed and blended with Distress inks "festive berries" and "faded jeans". The images of the telephone boot and the London definition were cut out, distressed and blended with Distress inks too and sewn to the tag too.

I added some white brads and red scribbling and a stitched black border for a finish. Hope you like it and join in with our "stitchy" adventure!

Hugs,
Claudia x

"Behind Closed Doors"

...is the current challenge at DragonsDream Tag It On and they want to see a door, a lock and a key.

I am also entering Fashionable Stamping Challenges with this tag as this fortnight "Anything Goes".

I did my very first of the Tim Holtz "12 tags of 2013" yesterday (which you can see here) and that made me browse through Tim's tags from last year, where he shows some great techniques. One of them (the September tag) was the faux riveting using self adhesive metal foil and a retractable pen to create rivets. (Go check it out - it's really worth seeing). Well - I have no self adhesive metal foil, but I do have that fab embossing folder...but I really wanted to try that alcohol inking and sanding with steel wool he shows in his tutorial!

Looks great, doesn't it?

I tried to express my thoughts about our dreams we so often do not dare to live... as if we kept them locked behind safely closed doors so we would not have to face the opportunity of them being shattered... but on the other hand they remain unfulfilled opportunities we might have missed. It's not at all easy having dreams and dealing with them the right way.

And maybe there is something waiting behind these closed doors we only yet did not think about? Wouldn't it then be worth looking?

Back to the tag: I embossed some silver metal foil with the Sizzix "Texture Fades" Riveted Metal embossing folder and then gave it a treat with Alcohol inks. I removed most of them using steel wool (love the traces of the scratches rough steel wool creates!) and glued the silver foil onto some cardboard and punched a hole for the ribbon.

Lock and key were made with the "Alterations" cutting dies. I coloured them with the metallic Distress stains and sprinkled some Fran-tage embossing enamels on them to achieve some texture. After heat embossing I inked the edges using black ink and a small piece of a rough kitchen sponge.

For the background of the stamped door image (from Darkroom Door - another of my awesome X-mas presents!!!) I stamped some script using Distress ink "vintage photo" and tore the card to size instead of cutting it. Some more stamping, glueing and distressing, some embellishments (a castle, where our dreams are kept safe or a castle built on air e.g.) - wallaah!

Hope you like it!
Hugs,

die amelie xx

I tried to take a picture showing the metal... not so sure about that... hope you can see what I wanted to show. xx