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.

Fashiontime

It's fashion-time at FunwithATCs challenge blog and I can proudly call myself a member of their new DT!!!

Sadly, I am not at all a fashionista, so the chosen topic "Fashion" was quite out of my comfort zone. But, please, go and have a look at the fabulous ATCs the new DT made!!! They really are worth it!

At least the Tim Holtz paper got me on the right track. ;)

I used Distress inks "pumice stone", "rusty hinge" and "vintage photo", Tim Holtz and Graphics 45 stamps, washi tape, a brad from My Mind's Eye, some cord and a piece of ribbon.

Thanks for your visit!
Hugs,

die amelie xx

Tag Album "creepy.crawly."

Maybe you know that too: you have just received gorgeous new stamps but the inspiration won't come....

Well, I found some really awesome Halloween stamps at RedLead! And when they finally had arrived, I still had no idea for a Halloween project that got me going.

Yesterday evening, finally, I stumbled upon Frilly and Funkie 's "A Different Kind Of Tag (Plus A Theme)" and THAT (thank you so much, FaFs!!!) turned the switch. So today I started my "Four Tags Halloween Album", also keeping in mind, that I wanted to use my beloved flonzcraft stamps (frame on cover and all the flourishes and borders in the project are flonzcraft stamps. Skeletton as well), as I was invited to a wonderful new challenge blog, called "Vintage Stamping Challenges" , which is sponsored by Flonzcraft (which I think, is absolutely fabulous!!). So I planned to use some of my flonzcraft stamps too, to enter their challenge too.

I also enter the challenges from "ABAC" with my sparkling front cover and all the embossing, from "Loves Rubberstamps", as I luckily found "scarecrow" and "Halloween" in the word cloud for the actual autumnal challenge and the one from the "Smudger Challenge Blog", where "anything Halloween" is asked for.

This time I decided to do a size 5 tag project, as it fitted my stamps best.
This is how it looks like:

First I cut out four tags from four sheets of some of my paper stashes ("Chillingsworth Manor" from echo park and "Olde Curiosity Shoppe" from Graphics 45) and - for the binding - a strip out of corrugated card the same width as the tags, but twice the length plus about a centimetre for the album's back. 


Then I also needed something to attach the tags to. So I folded a small accordion, where I wanted to glue the tags in between. I did twice the amount of creases, to have spare folds between the singel tags, to provide space in the album for things attached to the tags.

Hope, you can see it here:

Stamps used for the tags and the cover are from: Tim Holtz, flonzcraft, My Mind's Eye and RedLead.
Distress inks used: "peeled paint", "pumice stone", "mustard seed", "spiced marmalade", "black soot", "barn door" and "antique linen".

Here are the four tags the booklet contains:

 (Click on pictures to enlarge)

Spider webs on the tags were embossed with white, black and deep red "Sternenstaub". Images were stamped with archival black ink and Distress ink "black soot".

The cover was first sprayed with Glimmer Mists "Marmalade" and "Pomegranate" and Maya Mist "Espresso Brown", afterwards partially painted with the "Snow Cap" acrylic paint dabber and the edges blended with black stamping ink.

 (This is the backside of the cover).

For little "Darla's" glowing red eyes (see third tag) I used "Xmas red" Stickles and for the embossed title "efco embossing powder "red superglitter".

I attached various ribbons to the tags, glued them into the folded accordion and then the whole bundle into the pre-cut and folded cover.

Here some more close-ups as usual!

Hope, you like it!
Hugs,
die amelie xx

"Love, I am so worried about you!"

DragonsDreamTagItOn's "In a heartbeat" - challenge wants to see a beating heart, a worn time piece and a bit of grunge on this fortnight's tags, so here they come:

As a passionate P&P roleplayer, I especially love settings from the Victorian aera. So, when I stumbled over this lovely couple, I had a whole scene in mind immediately, which I tried to tell on this one tag. She is so worried about him, not having been well for quite a long time yet. Will he really be fine, as he says? Or does the torn pocket watch - meant as a symbol? - tell otherwise? Who knows...

The badge, telling about perfect blood circulation being perfect health, tells us part of the story too. And Carter's Little Liver Pills... did he take them in vain for all these years? So many facts to consider. So much to worry about.

On this tag I used some self printed ephemera, stamps from Tim Holtz and Graphics 45's "Olde Curiosity Shoppe" collection. I used Ranger Distress inks "walnut stain", "vintage photo" and "rusty hinge". I altered the pocket watch embellishment with AAI "rust" and "sunset". For drawing and writing the speech bubbles I used a permanent black lumocolor pen from Staedtler. The self adhesive black velvet ribbon comes from the Depot store's sale.

Here some close-ups and different angled views:

ATC-storage

Today I did my very first altered art project and I admit it - I so want to share it with you! (This will also be my last project before we leave for a three-weeks' holiday, so I think it may be a longer post than usual ;)
 As this will become quite a long post, I will only do it in English this time, hoping this will neither offend my German readers, nor my English readers because of my rather "moderate" English. 

Two or three weeks ago I stumbled over this metal photo-box and immediately the idea was clear in my mind: this was to become my one and only precious atc-storage! (Costing only 9 Euros, it was not too pricy - therefore I dared altering it. I admit, I can be quite a sissy with things like that...).

This is the "before"-look of the box.

As you can see, there are three hanging storage compartments in the box and I loved especially the handles at it's side!

First I altered the sides and the top with Ranger Alcohol inks "Rust", "Sunset Orange" and "Juniper".

After that it took me quite a while to choose the "perfect" papers for the back and front. I wanted them to match with the rusted look but also to be some of my favourites in grungy and vintage style. Because I only own "favourite sheets", this turned out to be the most time-expensive step of the project.

Finally I was successful when browsing the Tim Holtz paperstashes. Of course ;)

But during the search I stumbled upon some long-time treasured single sheets from Graphics 45, which I decided to use for some layering.

I cut the back and front papers to size, inked the edges with "rusty hinge" and "vintage photo" and glued them to the front and the back.

So this is how the box looked like
after doing the sides with Ranger alcohol inks and covering the front and back with the Tim Holtz papers.

Next I needed to cut out some chipboard letters for the "atc" on front. They should match the look of the silvery metal and rusty tones, so I stamped the Tim Holtz script stamp with embossing ink over the three letters in one turn and embossed them with silver "Sternenstaub".

After embossing, I inked them with Distress inks "rusty hinge", "mustard seed", "vintage photo" and a light shade of "broken china". As the edges still turned out too bright, I did some additional outlining with a dark brown felt tip pen.

The "finish" consisted of a rather long time of "playing around", arranging the paper-pieces and scraps I had intended to collage on the front. Some of them I tore, others I cut out. I inked all of them at the edges, but not before distressing some of them with my carpet knife blade.

After fixing the layers on the background paper with my new and cool permanent glue roll-on from tesa, I stamped some Tim Holtz images with "rusty hinge", "spiced marmalade" and "vintage photo" to get more texture. Finally I  finished the front with a self-adhesive paper-lace-border at the right. To add at least a tiny bit of depth, I attached the "storage"-label with sticky foam pads. Voila!

At the backside I just added a border and one gold-embossed image of the Tim Holtz airplane, as the paper itself was already quite vibrant.

I almost forgot to do the little "atc"-tabs to stick into the label clips on the lids at the top. I used black card and embossed the letters in silver, to match the metal.

Here, finally, some pictures of the whole finished box, which I cannot wait to fill with awesome new traded cards! Hope you enjoyed sharing this project with me! CU, die amelie xxx

I am going to enter this project at the Fashionable Stamping Challenges-blog, where "anything goes".