It's Sneak Peek Time Again!

Servus, my dear and true readers and followers - old and anew!

I am happy to see you stop by again and would love to invite you over to Our Creative Corner where I have a short and easy tutorial for you that is meant to take you further into experimenting with die ink and trusting your own brushstrokes.
Also again I have been creating layers (as I always do) and am taking you through the single steps of the process.

Here's a little close up so you can get an idea (and hopefully decide to hop over and find out a bit more):

To get to the blog post click HERE. I would love to see you over there! Also make sure you don't miss the last few days to enter the fabulous "Gipsy Fayre" challenge hosted by lovely Candice!

Hugs and happy crafting!

Claudia 

xxx

RGD-Time over at OCC!

Which means that it is "Resident Guest Designer" time for me over at Our Creative Corner...lol.

I have prepared a project and tutorial for you over there that shows how I turned an unused (or partially used to be more precise) time planner from 2015 into an "experimenting journal".

Not much experimenting in it for now...but at least the cover is done and I am taking you through the single steps of that process. And this is the result:

I had to instantly use the awesome Brett Weldele "Creepy Trees" stencil which I finally managed to get without having to pay twice its price for shipping costs over to my place. Yay! 

So if you are curious now about how I made that cover, just hop over to Our Creative Corner and check out today's post. I would love to see you over there!

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia 

xxx

A Mixed Media Necklace for Our Creative Corner

Servus and happy new year to you, my dear old, new and true readers! It is my special honour today to kick off 2016's challenge galore for Our Creative Corner!

I have learned my lesson with new years resolutions and have narrowed mine down to just one promise I am making to myself each Silvester: to be as gentle and kind with myself as possible (as dealing with a chronic illness often makes you feel that you just have to try harder, be less slack...and therefore less forgiving towards yourself - which most of the time leads to the exact opposite from what was intended: more frustration and more anger) and to make more time for pressure-free me-time....without any goals - except this one: to enjoy myself!

So OCC's January challenge asks you exactly that: to enjoy yourselves by creating within your comfort zones...maybe challenge yourselves a little too if that is something you enjoy...but no pressure, no given direction, no precise theme - just a lovely moodboard palette and image to spark your imagination:

If you hop over to Our Creative Corner you will find a wonderful bundle of very different inspirational pieces done by the Design Team! I love and adore them all!!! (and I will love and adore our players' pieces too! Of that I am sure ;)

When looking at the colour palette and image I immediately thought of using metal and patina tones...something with circles...which led to jump rings...which led to the idea of creating a necklace from self made wire links, metal stamped pendants and found objects (as I discovered that hammering wire and bending it into shape is something very relaxing for me).

And here it is:

(Ignore the pastel blue pins - these were used to hold the necklace in place). Except from the little key and the idea-ology safety pin all parts of the necklace are handmade (of which I really am quite proud I have to admit as this is a result of my very first steps at metalsmithing and creating beautiful links from wire).

I especially love this wire link that is made from silver coated copper wire and darkened with black patina after some metal stamping.

 The "Live" pendant was made from a flat brass disc which I stamped and domed lightly. For the green patina touch I added a bit of turquoise gilding paste.

If you want to learn how to create the paper beads with wire you will find a full tutorial over HERE. 

The box for my necklace was made from an emptied chocoloate box into which I inserted a cut to size corrugated card panel. It was covered with some Tim Holtz "Eclectic Elements" fabric that matches my necklace's design perfectly!

The outside of my box was covered with some "Madame Payraud" designer paper and inked around the edges with Ranger "Sepia" archival ink.


The challenge over at Our Creative Corner is open until January 28th. This month's prize sponsor is Creative Embellishments - so don't miss the chance to win a $25 voucher for their store!

Hugs and happy crafting!

Claudia

xxx

Could This Be the Face of ...

...a housewife silently dreaming of a holiday in the Caribbean? A sleeping beauty? A chubby-cheeked girl that is just thinking of the boy she has madly fallen in love with?

To find out hop over to Our Creative Corner to check out the Christmas (hint! hint!) tutorial I have prepared for you. I hope you will like it!

Hugs and happy Christmas crafting! 

Claudia 

xxx

Let's Go Trick and Treating! Should we?...

Servus!

This year I have already had a lot of Halloween fun at my craft desk! Maybe you have already seen my "frightfully spooky" witch painting tutorial (over HERE) or the altered witches house (and tutorial) I made (over HERE) or my two (scared) little ghosts in the dark forest (over HERE)...

...and today I want to invite you over to Our Creative Corner where I am sharing the tutorial on how I created this little Halloween scene in my art journal:

I have used some of my Sizzix Halloween dies in a different way to create the scenery!

  To find out about the whole process just hop over to Our Creative Corner and have a closer look! Maybe you will also want to check out their actual challenge "Halloween Horror" - I promise it will be great fun!!!!

Some details before I say my good-bye for today:

Hugs and happy Halloween crafting,

Claudia 

Boo!

x

I enter this project to Eileen Hull's Art with Heart Challenge - Hauntings and Holidays.

Screw it! Let's do it!

Well, I hope this quote isn't too vulgar (as a non-native speaker you can never be sure even though you know the general meaning of a saying...lol)...but honestly - even if it is - I love the idea behind it as I believe that way too often we tend to think too much about all the possible (but rather unlikely) problems or reasons for not doing something that we totally ignore our personal urge and need to do it.

Sometimes - only sometimes - we are allowed to make ourselves happy in the first place and do whatever we feel we need to do to enjoy ourselves and feel "alive". So at least this is how I would interpret this saying. Please, native speakers, correct me if I am wrong. ;)

But enough of the personal blah blah....this is my Spotlight post for Our Creative Corner and we were given lovely products by our fabulous prize sponsor Tando Creative this month - so here I am to show you only one of the billions of possible projects to create from their stuff.

I had always wanted to try to imitate rust in its most colourful form (=when it meets up with old peeling lacquer) and when I stumbled upon this awesome photograph on pinterest I knew where I wanted to go with this.

image source: I Luv Cameras on flickr

If you want to know how I achieved the look of my two mixed media panels with the fab Tando Creative Screws on, just hop over to Our Creative Corner, where I am sharing a detailed step by step. 

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia xxx 

Mexico Moods - Summer Challenge at Our Creative Corner

Servus and welcome to the second package of inspiration for our special "Mexico Moods" summer challenge over at Our Creative Corner!

And along with a fabulous mood board that is meant to be your inspirational source and guideline for your projects come some more specials like our two fantastic prize sponsors, Stampington&Co and Tando Creative and two wonderful guest designers chosen by the OCC team.
Stampington are also generously offering a $2 voucher to everyone who enters our challenge!

Our Top3 will be a team vote this time instead of having a challenge host who chooses them. 

And this is the wonderful mood board that I fell in love with at first sight:

 

Grab any inspiration you like from these images - colours, shapes, themes, the whole bundle...

As I loved every single image of the mood board I decided to go for the colours mainly and so I took out my acrylic paints, a palette knife and some coloured canvas tags and started creating a happy mess - trying to mainly capture the vibrancy and joyful mood of the colour combos instead of having a finished project in mind when I started out. 

And this is the series of five vibrant tags I came up with:

 I simply scraped on various paints using a palette knife and saw to it that the tones formed the same colour combos which I so loved and adored with the mood board images. The already coloured background of the tags was very helpful as I didn't have to see that I covered up the whole area. 

I added some scribbling with a white Sharpie, a bit of adhesive fabric ribbon and washi tape and some stamping to add more detail to them. The finishing touch was done with my label maker. 

I had a great time messing with vibrant paints, scribbling, stamping and doodling.... hope you will have a great time when doing your "Mexico Moods" projects too! Can't wait to see them over at our Summer Challenge!

Hugs and happy crafting,
Claudia xxx

Struggling with a creative bloc?

We all have to go through these annoying times of a creative bloc every now and then and sometimes it really feels as if one might never come up with a new idea for a creative project again (which can be rather intimidating and frustrating).

Over at Our Creative Corner I offer a fun and playful way on how to overcome a creative bloc and create this art journal page:

Curious? Great! Just hop over to Our Creative Corner to find out about today's artful journey I am taking you on. Hope to see you soon! Maybe you will also decide to play along with our actual challenge ;) My teamies have created some fab inspirational projects for you. So make sure you check those out too!

Hugs and happy crafting,
Claudia xxx

Manly Metal Mission

Hello and servus!

My stave rhyme (I LOVE alliterations, you know? ;) post title already indicates what my new project as the RGD (Resident Guest Designer) at Our Creative Corner is all about: manly metal - in this case needed for a males birthday present wrap up.

Nothing too elaborate or complicated this time - just a short tutorial on how to create faux metal from nothing but card, paints and some painting techniques.

Sometimes I find it important to focus on the simpler techniques again instead of always chasing the next, even more elaborate and complicated mixed media technique. And to be honest: it isn't about the techniques in the first place - it is about what one creates with them and about enjoying some creative fun.

So get some card out, your most liked industrial embossing folders and metallic paints and create some manly metal makes! Hope to see you over at Our Creative Corner!

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia 

xxx

Stamp Carving with Our Creative Corner!

Servus and hello to today's invite for visiting Our Creative Corner where you will find my latest tutorial as their Resident Guest Designer.

Over there I am sharing with you a very easy (and safe) way to carve your own stamp designs quickly and successfully. So if you have already been thinking about giving it a try but haven't dared yet, this might be the right moment!

Below's an art journal card I used my selfmade stamp on for starters:

The stamped bird's image was first drawn freehand and then transferred to a carving bloc...but for the how to I recommend you hop over to Our Creative Corner as there are a lot of stepxstep images and hints on how to carve safely and properly.

Thank you for stopping by! I hope to see you over at OCC soon!

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia 

xxx

Our Creative Corner RGD - Sneak Peek

Servus and welcome to my first invitation to go visit

 Our Creative Corner 

 and find me doing my very first post as their Resident Guest Designer (RGD) today.

Lovely Laura gives me plenty of rope with this....so I can share any art projects and techniques with you that come to my mind. How lucky am I?!

For starters I want you to hop over and meet Umberto, the strongest man of Donaustadt (which is the district of Vienna I live in). Well, he actually was the strongest man back in the 20s as the condition of the photograph and the style of his moustache show ;)

I hope you will like him and have fun with the tutorial (which is in multi-color of course *lol)! As you can see from the sneak peek image there will be a lot of action and vintage moustache fun.

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia 

xxx

Our Creative Corner - Spotlight Sneak Peek for November

Hello and servus!

A new month has started and along with it a lot of new challenges....like the one over at Our Creative Corner, which you should check out if you haven't already done so. ;)

As the sneaky-peeky image above indicates, it's my turn today to share a sponsor spotlight and tutorial with you and this time I'll show you how to create something beautiful (and vintage and shabby and useful) using digital images from this month's prize sponsor

If you need some selfmade presents for X-mas, this might be the post to turn to! Just click HERE to get to it. ;)

See you over there! 

Hugs and happy crafting, 

Claudia xxx

A short trip into the realms of scrapbooking

Servus, dear crafty friends and followers!

Today sees a real "first timer" being presented to you by me due to the challenge we were given by lovely Kerstin from Scrapbook Dreams over at Our Creative Corner. 

She is hosting this month's challenge and has chosen a scrapbook oriented theme - which was a real challenge for me. There are other options than doing the usual scrapbook LO, but I always try to rise up to any challenges given...and I know two to three scrapbookers out there whom I really admire for what they are able to create with designer papers, colours, layers, arrangements, textures and pictures. So I visited their blogs and took some really close looks at their work (to find out how they do what they do...Boy! I can tell you: they definitely know what they're doing and there's so much more to it than meets the eye at first sight!)

So I ask you to be kind with me (and my try on doing a scrapbook lay out)...please???!!!! ;)

Kerstin's challenge description can be found over HERE (as can be found the inlinkz collection to enter this month's challenge by).

"Magical Nature Moments"

are what Kerstin wants to see. "For this challenge use a favourite photograph and add some special colours, moods and effects" she says. (hop over to OCC for all the exact details, as this is just a kind of "subtitle"...but I think it describes the nature of the process pretty well, so I borrowed this line from her ;)

The challenge is up until November 28th and this month's prize sponsor is Nicecrane Designs. So don't miss the chance to win some of their beautiful digital image bundles. 

But now on to my scrapbooking experiment:

I chose a close up image of a common wild flower as my focal image as I love taking close ups of almost anything there is in nature. The close ups always reveal a smaller universe within the large one. 

 You can see traces of white Gesso which I applied randomly to the background paper with a palette knife.

 I added some stamped stitching as well as some metal embellishments and loads of die cut elements to build up as many layers as I could to embed the image in. The gorgeous metal bumble bee is from Retro Kraft Shop and most of the dies used are Sizzix and X-cut. Designer papers are from 7Dots Studio and Tim Holtz stash. 

I finished my LO off with some chit chat stickers which I blended in around the edges using Distress markers. 

As I am definitely not the person to tell you about how to do a lay out, I just leave you with some more images and invite you to hop over to Our Creative Corner and find out how my wonderful teamies did. 
If you haven't seen my latest spotlight tutorial over at the OCC yet, you'll find it HERE. 

Hope to see you play along with us soon!

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia xxx