Mail Art

Quite some time ago I created some mail art to send to two lovely friends I had the great luck to find (and make) via crafty blogland.

Only today I found that I had completely forgotten to share them on my own blog. So let's now be the time for some mail art appearance ...

I created two envelopes using mainly scraps from old book pages and loads od different washi tapes alongside some rubber stamping and doodling.

As you can see I got completely lost in the process and covered up each and every tiny single spot (I really had to remind myself to leave some space for the labels...lol).

This guy is a torn colour copy from some flea market find photographs that I collaged onto the blank envelope.

And this is a colour copy of an old book about butterflies from a certain European region. Another find from a flea market.


Stacking and layering washi tape is one of my most favourite techniques as it creates depth as well as texture. You can also see one of my self-made circles I like to use on some of my projects.

I create them by collaging scraps from old book pages or stamping script to a sheet of watercolour paper. Then I apply various fluid acrylic paints (the DecoArt media line works best for this from my point of view) with a palette knife by "scraping" it on and seeing to it that I create a lot of overlaps. Then I randomly cut out circles freehand and store them for later use in one of my little treasure chests.

In this case I glued them on and then drew a rough circle around them with a watercolour pencil, so I could smudge the drawn outline with a fine tip brush that is loaded with water.

I also love to incorporate circles cut from old book pages or designer papers.

And as you can also see I often for a finishing touch scrape on some white Gesso once all my elements have been added. This helps blend them all in and adds additional texture.

I also love to add stamped on stitching patterns with a lot of my projects.

I loved the combination of the black and white and the floral design washi tapes!

And addings some doodling to stamped on images is great fun too!

The fab stamps from Stampendous are just perfect for this! There are quite some who have that brush-stroke like texture to them which I think fits perfectly.

I love the idea that the mailing process adds some uncontrollable visual elements to my creations!

I hope you enjoyed your visit! Thanks for popping by!!!
Writing up this post definitely reminded me of doing more mail art soon! ;)

Hugs and happy crafting,
Claudia x

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

"A House is Made of Walls and Beams...

....a Home is built with Love and Dreams."


Isn't that a lovely quote?
Hello and servus! There's not much going on over here on my blog - due to the heat wave that has hit Vienna last week and while it stayed on let evaporate most of my brain I'm afraid. ;)

Heat and mojo obviously don't go together too well - and a flare of arthrosis (or whatever it is that makes almost all of my joints - especially my fingers' joints - ache and do strange things....I will hopefully know more in about a week or so) doesn't help with this at all. But hey - it could be worse and here I am, trying to enjoy the good things and find my way around the things that might take me down if I waste too much time fighting them. (well....it took me ages and a lot of tears to get to that point honestly...just in case you think these are very wisely spoken words. lol)

So there's nothing new from my studio desk that I could share with you, but I found that I still had images of a project I did for DecoArt for CHA this winter and by now I am allowed to share it with you on my blog - so here it is:

It's an art journal page I did with DecoArt media fluid acrylics, white Crackle Paint, black and white Gesso and Misters.

I started out by applying tiny dots of various fluid acrylics tones directly from the bottles to a sheet of heavy white card (from an old notebook) and then scraping the paints on with an old credit card.

The secret with a satisfying result with this technique is to stop scraping and spreading the paints at the right point (otherwise they start to mix too much and become a mess).

But if you find you overdid your page you can still go in with some additional dots of paint and white (Gesso) after all has dried. You can repeat this step as long as you want or need to. But make sure you finish with the white Gesso.

Spread the Gesso the same way as you did with the paints. This will help brighten and blend in your scraped on paints and also add more depth.

Next I stamped on some small text, numbers and grunge circles in random places, using black archival ink. You can use any texture and text and numbers stamps you like. I used Kaisercraft, Andy Skinner and Red Lead stamps for this step. I also added a bit of doodling with a white Sharpie.

Then I cut out random circles of different sizes. I saw to it that they weren't perfect circles.

I then prepared my journal page by collaging on some torn pieces of old book pages with matte DecoArt Decou-page and stamping on some chicken wire texture in random spots.

After that I sprayed and sprinkled on some of the wonderfully vibrant DecoArt media Mister tones that either matched or contrasted the circles' colours. 

I glued some of the cut out circles to the page and drew an outline with a watersoluble black pencil. I spread the pigment of the drawn lines with a soft water loaded brush.

That creates this kind of "shading" around the circles but still leaves visible lines. I love that effect! On some of the circles I did some doodling with a white Sharpie.


While the page was set aside to dry I stamped the quote and some of the lovely houses from my Darkroom Door "Home Sweet Home" stamp set onto some white card, painted the houses with lightly diluted DecoArt media fluid acrylic paints and cut them out.

I glued them to some of the circles to make them look as if there were a lot of differently sized "floating" worlds or planets with little houses on them. (we all live in our own little worlds or universes somehow, don't we?)

The quote is from the same stamp set and was added the same way as the cut out circles.

To add some more texture I stencilled on the words "Create", "Inspire" and "Dream" using DecoArt media white Crackle Paint, a palette knife and a Red Lead stencil.

For a finishing touch and to fuse all the elements on the page I scraped on some white and black DecoArt media Gesso with a small palette knife, making sure that I also covered part of the circles.

Don't be afraid of loosing lovely detail by covering it up! I promise the more randomly you apply Gesso and paints to your pages and other creations, the more lively and interesting they become!

Our subconscious gets attracted by those spots where things are "in disorder", by everything that is NOT neatly done and NOT symmetrically or otherwise systematically arranged. But of course there has to be some visible order so the disorder becomes visible as a contrast. And contrasts (not only in colour but also in broken "rules" of composition for example) are what attracts our eyes and subconscious and what makes art interesting and "adventurous" and therefore appealing to us.

I hope you liked my journal page (and art theory lesson)! Thanks for stopping by!

Hugs and happy crafting, 

Claudia xxx

"Canvas" - the New Challenge at The Mirror Crack'd

Servus and welcome to the start of the new challenge over at The Mirror Crack'd mixed media challenge blog!

The theme for this month's challenge is "Canvas" and this time I created a little series of three mini canvasses for your inspiration.

 I started with creating a masterboard on some heavy card using old book pages, washi tape, stencils, DecoArt white modeling paste, white scraped on Gesso and Shimmer Misters and some rubber stamping.

The canvasses have about ATC size and I used matte DecoArt Decou-page to glue the cut to size pieces on. Then I smudged some DecoArt Traditions Carbon black acrylic paint around the edges using an old bristle brush to create the scratchy patterns and create a kind of "frame".

Next I glued all my chit chat stickers in place and shaded them in using my black soot distress marker on the still slightly wet Decou-page, smudging it with my finger.


For a finishing touch I sprinkled on some drops of gold spray paint.

The stencil I used is from Red Lead, the flowers stamp is an Indigo Blu design. The chevron pattern was stamped using a Carabelle Studio stamp. The small dots stencil is from memory box.

This month - instead of a physical prize - TMC offer the winner a guest designer spot for a future challenge. And I really would love to see your canvasses (as I am a curious girl and always love seeing art created by others)! So I hope to see you and your gorgeous projects over at The Mirror Crack'd soon!

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia xxx