Steampunk Destinations

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

This month the team travels to various

 Steampunk Destinations 

and we are eager to learn about your favourite places or sights you love(d) or would like to visit!

Just hop over to our challenge to find out about my teamies' "hot spots"! Team B have prepared another bundle of inspiration for you and if you haven't seen the makes of team A yet, I highly recommend you do so too!

I found some old photographs from my ancestors which show a group of people hiking a glacier. I don't know who they are (or if they show some great-grand-uncle or -aunt or great-great-grand-parents) but I love the adventurous feel there is to these wonderful pictures!

I decided to make them the focal pieces of a kind of scrapbook-lay-out-journal-thingie and had a joyful play with various media like acrylic paint, distress inks, DecoArt white gesso, DecoArt Metallic Lustres, die cut cogs and gears and stamped ephemera.

I also used a portrait of my great-great-grandfather (left bottom corner) and a colour copy of my great-great-grandmother's old passport.

She was the beautiful lady whose photograph I used on this tag. (the portrait on the charm is an ancestor of mine too...possibly her mother or her mother-in-law...sadly most of the photographs of my ancestors do not say who is who).

But back to my actual project and some more close ups:

I smudged on the white Gesso with a palette knife. It always helps bring a lot of different elements together and gives designs a great time worn and weathered look.

The cogs and gears were die cut from heavy black card and coloured with DecoArt Metallic Lustres and other guilding waxes.

Distressing the edges of the glued on ephemera and the copies of the old photographs added to the weathered look just perfectly. Stamped texture with script and label stamps helped create more depth.

I hope you like my project and leave my place inspired to create something steampunk-ish - maybe even for our challenge...;)
 Thank you very much for stopping by! Hope to see you over at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges!

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

Our Creative Corner Spotlight Sneak Peek

Servus and welcome!

It is my turn today to invite you over to Our Creative Corner! I have prepared a crackin' tutorial with a lot of messy spookyness for you. If you are in the mood for a fun and messy Halloween project using Tim Holtz goodness and a lot of stuff to dip your fingers and brushes in, then hop over to Our Creative Corner to learn more about my project and this month's sponsor for the challenge!

Here's a little sneak peek to quicken your appetite ;)

See you over there!

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia xxx

Von Pappe Wednesday 2 - Sneak Peek

Time for another "Von Pappe Wednesday" over at the That Craft Place Challenge blog!

If you want to know how to create something like this, you should hop over (by clicking HERE) and have a closer look (yes, that's right - you've spotted some mistletoe there ;) :

There's a fun challenge you could join in as well ;) So check it out! I hope you will like my tutorial!

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia x