Tuesday, 20 November 2012

"The Storyteller"

This fortnight's FunwithATCs' challenge is "Faces".

I like faces that tell stories. Weathered faces. Faces with smile wrinkles. Faces that are like open books. Faces that take you on journeys to far off places.

To Arabian Nights for example.




For this ATC I used a black felt tip pen with a brush tip on white card,"black soot" Distress ink and  "jet black" archival ink from Ranger. Then I added some stamped script for a little depth. As a finish I added the scratched structure with my beloved "Cover A Card" stamp from Impression Obsession.
Hope, you like it and join our challenge at FwATCs.

Hugs,

die amelie x

Friday, 9 November 2012

Treasure Your Memories!

Try it on Tuesday 's actual challenge wants to see projects based on the theme "Memories".(And remember: their DT-call is still on until Nov. 20th!!)

Another challenge, I enter with this project, is Craft Room's "Time Keeping" challenge. 

The old photographs shown on the lovely projects of the DT at TioT and some of the entries too made me browse through my tin box containing old photographs of my ancestors.

I also thought this challenge theme would be a great opportunity to use my new stamp set from TJ Designs "Birds of a Feather - The Autobiography of a Bird", which I stumbled upon quite accidentally and fell in love with immediately. I also think, birds are a wonderful symbol for the time flying.

Having found some old photographs of some of my ancestors hiking a glacier, I thought, these were the perfect images to capture the meaning of precious moments in life. There's so much adventure-feel in that pictures, being mysty and whitened out at the edges! This finally settled the idea of creating a thin album to keep treasured memories in (with which I also enter TioTs challenge of course).



I chose a paper from the Tim Holtz "Lost and Found" paper stash, showing buttons. This one reminds me of hours spent as a child, going through the buttons box of my grandmother. These wonderful worn and old treasures, silvery or leather covered, some made of horn, some of mother of pearl, some being clear, others opaque.... they always made me wonder, whose garments they once had been on and which adventures they could tell about if they could only speak to me.


So this is all about memories. The clockface with the spinning hand, symbolizing the rush of time ... or it's slowly passing by. I often wonder, how different we feel about time, according to the actual situation and state of mind.

I glued the clear buttons onto some happy faces from a copy of another photograph, which showed a big bunch of happy people enjoying their summer vacation, posing on a weathered boardwalk - supposedly this was taken on the "Traunsee", one of our beautiful lakes in the "Salzkammergut".  After cutting them out, I fixed the buttons with some rough cord to the card, which I first stamped with the lovely bird frame and blended the edges with "walnut stain".


I also played around with lace and fabric this time, doing some layering with card and ribbons.

The hardest part was distressing all the edges of the cover, backing and pages and blending them with "walnut stain". I gave the inner pages some hard times, distressing, blending and sprinkeling with water, as I really wanted them to look worn and old.



The inner pages were also decorated by stamping bird images and cages in Versamark "brown" and "antique linen" Distress ink.

The right picture shows a sample of some of the pages' designs.






The back cover shows another picture of that hiking group on their glacier trip, showing some dramatical lighting. I love, how their silhouettes stand out against that foggy background. And they were posing soo proudly, don't you think? This is, why I also enter Our Creative Corner's "Silhouette Challenge" with this project.




Here also some close-ups as usual. Thanks for stopping by and having a look around. Hope, you enjoyed it!

Hugs,
die amelie xx







Tuesday, 6 November 2012

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

Friday, 2 November 2012

Masking - "A Halloween Farewell"

"Our Creative Corner" asks for Halloween Projects done using masking technique. As I love this one very much, I had to do a last-minute Halloween-tag for that challenge.


I started up with some light grey card, which I cut to tag format. Then I stamped all the images I wanted to use in my "single-layer-collage" on Post-it-sheets and cut them out.

Here's a look at the materials I used. Stamps are from Chocolate Baroque, Darcie's, RedLead and Unity Stamps.



Then I stamped the background, using the "halloween" word stamp from Chocolate Baroque's "halloween raven" stamp set and stamping it way down, covering the spaces of the images with the cut out post-it-pieces. 

After that I gave the tag some sprays of Glimmer Myst "Marmalade" and Mr. Hueys "Passport", to add at least a bit of colour.



The hardest part was stamping the images in the right order, to get the collage-image, I had planned, having the right ones covering the other images where they are overlapping each other.



For a finish I blended the edges with "black soot" distress ink and added an orange knitted ribbon.

Hope you like this one!

Monday, 29 October 2012

Countdown till Halloween....tic toc

I want to show you a tag I made some weeks ago for a dear scrap friend of mine (fabulous Sandra - yes, the goodies-fairy ;).




The background was cut out from an autumnal paper stash from Bringmann, distressed and blended with white chalk ink and Distress ink "black soot", using a rough kitchen sponge. Spider webs were stamped with white chalk ink too. For the skeletton from flonzcraft I used jet black archival ink from Ranger.

Heat embossing was done with black "Sternenstaub" embossing powder. I also added a self-adhesive black velvet ribbon and a wonderful flower from Prima. The eyes (watching YOU!) are from a postcard I found at a museum's fleamarket. I copied it and cut out three of the eyes, did some doodling with a black felt tip pen and glued them onto the tag.


To match the colour of the flower seeds, I stamped the tiny spider on top, using white stamping ink first and then stamping over this layer one more time using a light green.



For a finish I did some heat embossing with aged copper embossing enamel and chose a ribbon that should repeat the greens from the flower and the spider.

With this tag I enter Fashionable Stamping Challenges once more this fortnight.


Thanks for your visit!
Hugs,
die amelie xx