Matchbox Steampunk - August challenge "chez SanDee&amelie's"

Welcome back for another appetizer for the new challenge over at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges :)

This month we want you to 

use one or more matchboxes with your projects. 

As always our challenge is "anything goes"

as long as it is Steampunk 

and our monthly theme is incorporated. 

Of course this month we have a wonderful guest designer (with a lot of contageous creativity going on ;) with us again and a prize to give away for this month's randomly drawn prize winner. ;)


I had rolled this theme in my head for quite a long time - having no idea even though it was me who suggested the matchbox challenge... but after I had a long play with some white matchboxes, combining them in multiple ways, stacking them, building a row and whatever you can do with three matchboxes, I came up with a creation that I would call "cubist", as it reminds me of a lot of cubist sculptures that all have in common that the artist had a play with cubes, trying to arrange them to a shape and form that might draw the viewers interest to it ;)

So here comes my "Steampunk Cubism" *giggle:

It also reminds me of geometry drawing one learns at school ;)

I first covered a piece of crumpled and then again unfolded brown paper with random brushes of white DecoArt Gesso and after that had dried I stamped some Kaisercraft "dicitionary meanings" and IndigoBlu adverts on it with black archival ink. I covered the matchboxes with this paper, cutting off the excess afterwards.

The compartments of the matchboxes were sprayed with GlimmerMist first and then covered with a filmstrip washi tape on the outsides (which also helped to stabilize them).

Then I gave the edges of the boxes a shading with Distress ink "walnut stain" and glued the three boxes together. I also added some torn scraps of the brown stamped paper for more interest:

For the insides of the compartments I stamped three Steampunk images (from Oxford Impressions and Artistic Outpost) onto more gessoed brown paper, cut three pieces to size and glued them to the boxes' bottoms.

Next I stamped the "cube steam punk" onto white card using my HeroArts letter stamps and jet black and sepia archival inks. I cut the letters out separately and glued them to three different areas of my "sculpture". Afterwards I drew a black border around each letter for more depth.

Having all my paper work done I went on with embellishing. I created a handle for one of the compartments using thin black wire.

The second "drawer" got a metal tab on it showing my lucky number: 7.

To this matchbox I fixed a Tim Holtz idea-ology light bulb using wire again. The wire also holds the gear in place.

To the top of the third compartment I glued a Prima butterfly nut that I gave some dabs with alcohol ink "terra cotta", with which I also coloured the bulbs' sockets.

The bottlecap (one of my on-my-balcony-rusted ;) was embellished with a plastic button I coloured in black and gave some metallic rub ons from DecoArt afterwards. I also glued a rusty screw to the side of the "cube" matchbox.

The upright matchbox compartment was glued to the box to stay in place. The other two compartments can be closed and opened (to hide or reveal their "treasures").
I had a lot of fun embellishing my tiny sculpture with Prima-, selfmade- and Tim Holtz idea-ology goodness and I hope you like the outcome too :)

Please, hop over to our challenge blog to see what my dear friend and Steampunk soulmate SanDee1899 and our special guest Candy Colwell (YESSS, THE Candy Colwell ;) have prepared for your inspiration! I thank you for staying with me this far (as it was a quite picture heavy post again), wish you a happy crafting time and look forward to seeing your matchbox creations soon entered with our challenge at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk challenges. You always enter such a lot of creative awesome stuff - I can hardly wait to see what you come up with next!

I join the challenges over at SimonSaysStamp - "Anything Goes", Fashionalbe Stamping Challenges - "Script/Books/Pages/Print" , Divas by Design - "Favourite Color Combo" (I LOVE black and white combined with browns!), Out of a Hat Creations - "Numbers" (my lucky number 7 appears two times on my project) and Lady Anne's Challenges - "Monochrome" with this project.


Hugs,

die amelie x

Poor lonesome friend! - Melt Art Mania

has taken over here too, I am afraid.

I have been hoarding some UTEE for quite some time now but never had the guts to use it with all those awesome techniques like stamping in UTEE or creating high gloss embellishments with UTEE... but this has changed since I read Candy Colwell's "Ranger Melt Art Mania" post over here. Her project is sooo awesome and her stepxstep really gave me the feeling that I could not go wrong. So I tried and this is what I came up with:

Yes, you are right: I had some put aside backgrounds from my various tries to create a yellow background tag for the DDTIO "Yellow, lightbulbs and wire" - challenge.  They were too dark to fit what I wanted with the lightbulb theme, but for using my brand new Stampotique stamps they were just perfect!!!! They are sooo cool - I haven't bought any Stampotique stamps until now, but when I saw these I just had to have them. NOW! *lol

The "melt art" techniques I used were: covering the die cut bat with some layers of clear UTEE, which was a lot of fun to do.

Then I stamped the frame image from IndigoBlu partially on top of the tag and covered the image with black embossing powder for heat embossing.

Next I experimented on stamping into UTEE - which was my very first time (I always was afraid of breaking my stamps by getting them stuck forever in UTEE or something like that ;).

For a first try I was quite content with the outcome. (So, please, be gentle with me *lol).

I also used melt art as a resist by stamping the Tim Holtz barbed wire image and covering with Ranger Ultra Fine Detail clear embossing powder for heat embossing. Afterwards I blended the area carefully with "black soot" Distress ink, trying to create a kind of border.

The eyes of the poor lonesome friend were heat embossed using black embossing powder too to make them look more intense.

The Stampotique Owl Tree image was the perfect background image for the sad scenery.

The tag's background texture was added by using a LaBlanche "burlap" stencil, DI "pumice stone" and a blending tool. I masked the spot, where I later stamped our "friend" on by covering this area with a cut out shape of the image.

Then, by pure accident, I stumbled upon a really cool "technique" while pimping up the ribbon I wanted to use with this tag:

as the ribbon was originally bright white with only the barb wire image printed on it, I first blended it with DI "black soot" to match the dark look of the tag. As the ribbon was a rather shiny material and less absorbent than cotton or linen for example, the DI stayed very much on top, which I only realized when I stained the ribbon using Distress paint "wild honey", dapping dots directly onto the ribbon... which caused the ink to build black edges around the yellow stains...which looked more than just perfect for the tag's theme!!!!

Cool, huh? I heat dried the ribbon and adhered it to my tag after I had distressed the edges and blended them with DI "pumice stone".

Now let's hope someone soon will find the courage to play with our sad friend! ;)

Most images were stamped with my favourite two inks: black jet archival ink from Ranger and Distress ink "black soot", so I enter Simon Says Stamp and Show's "Favorite Ink" challenge with this tag.

Hope you like my tag! Thanks for stopping by again!

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

Words and Phrases

is the theme of IndigoBlu's most recent challenge. As they want people to use IndigoBlu stamps only I once more had to use my (momentarily only) stamp set: "Sarah's Choice", which I love the most as you can use it in so many different ways (to create texture for example).

This time I used the single words coming from the dictionary explanations for the words ART, DREAM, INSPIRE and VINTAGE to form some sentences.

As I love Shakespeare's works I was very happy to find his name with the stamped dictionary images! The rest of the work consisted in fiddling and puzzeling. My husband saw me doing this and wanted to know if I was doing some blackmail message *lol. But the "message" reads like this:

For the background of the tag I used the script stamp and some heat embossing, blending with ink afterwards and spritzing and stamping to create some depth. Then I glued the sayings onto it and embellished with a philosopy tag and ribbon. Done.

As I think every form of ART (and especially writing) is in one way or another expressed emotion I thought the sentence to be very much up my alley as I write poems or short prose from time to time (trying to do exactly that).

I also enter SSSS's "quotable" challenge  and The Artistic Stamper's "tag" challenge with this tag.

Thank you for visiting!!!

Hugs,
die amelie x

"the big quest"

IndigoBlu have started their very first challenge and that's not only a cool thing to do but the first challenge theme is really well chosen - even though it was quite predictable - "Blue"!

So here comes my take on "Blue" - a booklet showing some of my ancestors (mainly from my father's line) asking the big questions upon life.

I used the awesome "Sarah's Choice" stamp set from IndigoBlu to create a lot of texture on the single pages. The pages were die cut using the Alterations "mini cabinet card" die - I only cut off the lower part to get a straight border.



The background was made by applying Distress inks onto the craft sheet, spritzing these with water and drawing and dipping the card through the colour puddles and smears.



I wrote the questions by hand onto torn paper scraps, which I blended with vintage photo and chipped saphire DIs afterwards.

The edges of the pages were distressed using a carpet knife and blended with DIs too. For the book ring I bent some wire, using a bottle cap of according size to form a proper circle. The two swirls were made using round pliers.

Here come the single pages:

and a view at the backsides, which I stamped with the lovely script stamp from the IndigoBlu set.

As always I hope that you like my project and have enjoyed your visit! Thanks for stopping by! :)

Hugs,

die amelie xx