Shadows of the Past and a challenge card

Hi you all, good morning from sunny Rhineland. It's been good weather all week, the birds are singing, the flowers are blooming and the trees are starting to get a whiff of green - spring! For the weekend we have been promised rain, but I suppose nature needs it, and we can be thankful for the lovely week we had after the long, hard winter.

Today I want to show you a small (6”x6”) canvas I made this week. After giving it a base coat of white gesso, I stamped TH’s *Countdown* onto some thin, hand made paper with clear ink and embossed it with copper.
I stuck it onto the canvas with mod podge and let it dry. Then I used Ranger Matte medium to transfer various vintage family photos onto the canvas. As I just use ordinary inkjet prints, they look faded and grungy, which is an effect I like. I placed some stamped script, also embossed with copper, on top of it, and went over the whole canvas with diluted gesso, which I then wiped off with a damp cloth so that it just gave a sort of foggy effect. Then I used some Inka gold & copper around the edges, and it was finished. I like the shadowy look of the finished canvas, and have called it *Shadows of the Past*.


The second piece is a card made for the *Try it on Tuesday* Inchy challenge. I have made a simple, one layer card, with three inchies – or rather one-and-a-half-inchies - printed in three shades of yellow and stamped with some fashion motives in archival black and clear embossed. I added a Bosskut sentiment and 4 gem stones. Finished!

Have a great day you all, take care, and thanks for looking!

Gingersnapper Spirit Colour Blog Hop

Hello everybody and welcome to the Gingersnapper Spirit Colour Blog Hop. *Ginger, copper or rust*

I have made three pieces for today.
The First one is an altered Notebook.

Here I used copper coloured structure paste around the edges of the covers, and some hand made paper with a copper metallic finish for the main part of the covers. I bought the paper at the CREATIVA on Sunday, at a stand where they had sooo many beautiful hand made papers that the choice was very difficult. The book plate has been cut from some dark brown paper bought at the same tempting place using a TH Alterations die. The title, *Geflügelte Worte* - literally *winged words*, is a German name for collections of sayings and quotes. The note book is a present for a friend who loves collecting sayings, and I thought this would be very appropriate for writing them down. The wings are from Melissa Francis, and have been painted with copper coloured paint and distressed with brushed corduroy.

The second item is a piece of altered jewellery. It shows a picture of a distant relation as a child, and the reverse shows a part of an old document pertaining to an ancestor.

The images have been sandwiched between two memory glasses with sepia accents. The glass on the reverse side cracked, but I decided not to change it, as it gives it a very vintage look, and it cannot fall out as it has been fixed with the sepia accents. I mounted the memory frame onto an old necklace which belonged to her, and it makes a nice addition to my collection of memory shrines and tins.



The third piece is a shadow box, or nicho, cut from copper coloured metal foil and embossed.

The box has been made from a large matchbox, painted with copper metallic paint, and backed with a vintage rose scrap. The head, made from a form and coloured with Inka gold in copper, has been surrounded with roses. I added some beads on a gold wire at the top, and an angel scrap, which has been coated with glossy accents.
All three items were fun to make, and it is great to take part in this Gingersnapper spirit blog event.
Thanks for looking, and have a great day!

More *less is more* and a Bird House

Yesterday was a busy day, preparing for an event that will take place tomorrow....But I found time to make three clean and simple cards.
The first one is my second entry for *Less is more* - Masculine:

The sentiment means *Everyone has stupid ideas; a wise man keeps quiet about them*
The other 2 cards were just for fun, still playing with my new stamps and colours....

I am starting to really enjoy *Less is more*, startling, but true!
But I still like messing around, and making things that nobody really needs - like this little bird house....once again, just for fun. I used paper from Graphics 45, and scraps of cardboard for the roof and perch. The bird and the *door* surrounding have been made from scraps of copper coloured metal foil, the flowers are from my stash.

Thanks for looking, and especially to all those who take time to leave a comment. Have a great day!

Less is more Challenge and just playing around.....

Yesterday I started playing with some of my new stamps. I loved the cube with geometric shapes and a gingko leaf that I got from Hein design, and combined it with another stamping-cube that I bought from them last year, and my new tiger and leopard stamps, and just played around, which is very therapeutic.
This card has been made for *Less is More* masculine cards.

I have kept the 6" square card very simple again, one layer, a coloured square and Mozart in profile, and instead of a sentiment some notes and his name.

The next piece is a contrast programme. I made it for *Try it on Tuesday* *Chocolate* theme, and then fell asleep on the couch last night and forgot to upload it. But as it as planned as a little present for a friend, it will not be wasted. I used the packaging of some very lush chocolate bars which were filled with mousse, cut the tag, heart and wings from it and took it from there. I added a vintage image, a sentiment made with my Brother p-touch, and a golden heart. I tied a chocolate stick into the ribbon instead of a charm, and stuck a small bar of chocolate onto the tag, so now I truly have a chocolate tag.

The little cards following are just try-outs, I used half postcard sized scraps to play with my new stamps.

GC Challenge95 *Typewriters*

Hi everybody! Another sunny but very cold day here. And just a short post today as I need to bake cakes for this afternoon, and get the shopping beforehand to have some goodies to bake cakes with....
This is my entry for the Gingersnaps 95 *Typewriter* Challenge.

This was my interpretation of strong types!
The typewriter images were freebies downloaded long ago and I don't know from where, the strong man on the left came from June at Dezinaworld, and the matting is white card stamped with a script stamp. Was a fun theme!

Have a great weekend, and take care. Thanks for looking, and extra thanks for those who leave a comment!
Tomorrow I am off to the CREATIVA, the biggest crafting Fair in Europe, so will be reporting about it on Monday.

Archaeological Findings in the Bottomless Pit

One of the themes over at Gingersnaps this month is Zentangle, a sort of repetitive doodling. I am not going to start doing this again, as I remember that I was addicted to these scribblings 20 years back, and filled several sketch books with them. I don’t think it was called anything then; people who saw it made comments like, *Well, if it helps….* So I decided to delve into the depths of the Hall Closet, AKA the Bottomless Pit, and look for them….
I found loads of forgotten treasures. Several new sketch books, canvases, paints, paper, ribbons galore, old photos, boxes and frames to alter and much more. But the sketch books I was looking for have not yet turned up, just a few pictures which were in a folder: a vase of flowers that I did when I was at school, some pictures painted at the beginning of the 1990s etc. So sooner or later I will have to climb onto my ladder and search the top compartment – help!
But something really sad happened while I was pushing and pulling to get at my things.
Really, really tragic.
Get your hankies ready, Ladies.
My iron (sorry to swear) fell from the top shelf and smashed onto the floor. I am thankful to say that it did not fall on me, but it broke into two parts, and as a little piece has broken off, I can’t fit them back together again.

And I can’t afford a new one just now, so – wait for it – now I really can’t do any i*****g any more! Do I hear you sobbing?? Or are you getting envious, ready to seize those irons and hurl them to the floor?
And the name of the manufacturer of the iron is *Hit Company*. Fitting!
It must have been my lucky day.
Anyway, here are some of the pics I discovered while excavating the dark depths:

The catty pictures have ben made using 2 different templates that I cut from card to mask the white areas, or, as in the seond picture, to mask the background.

This was a picture which I did on holiday at the North Sea, and tried to get the effects of the waves and stones and seaweed etc.

Well, that was it for today, more to follow, so watch this space! Thanks for looking and have a great day!

Gingersnap Challenge *Get to work* & some Black and White....

Yesterday I decided it was high time to start using all the bits and pieces I have been collecting for this month's them over at Gingersnaps. I have made a LO for GC93 *Get to Work*

The background paper is from K & Co, I had a whole stack of these lovely papers, and this is the last one, so it was hard for me to actually use it!
The main picture is from a Chicago office at the beginning of the last century.

I have added some vintage pics of a horse drawn bus in England, a gentleman on his way to work in a bowler hat, a man heaving sacks of coal,a man in a balloon - I think this image was a freebie from Dezina World - and on the right side, the elderly man with the stick is my great-great Uncle taken in Berlin in the 1920's. The telephone is a picture I printed, cut out, and glazed with glossy accents to make it nice and shiny. I used a crumpled up tag for the title, and that was it.

I won several auctions for stamps on EBAY last weekend, and one batch arrived yesterday - among them the 2 I have used here for these tags. I left them just black and white, as I thought this was most effective for the style of the stamps. The others will be shown bit by bit. I just don't know the manufacturer of the stamps, pity, as I like them very much.

The owl tag has some added hand doodling and a verse running round the edge . *A wise old owl sat on an oak, the more he heard, the less he spoke; the less he spoke, the more he heard - why can't we be like that wise old bird?*

The eagle was very appropriate for yesterday, as I spent most of the day watching eagles hatching out their eggs. The link for the web-cam was given to me by Jan - thanks a lot! It is so fascinating to be able to sit here and watch these wonderful birds in my own home, just great. And this tag is dedicated to them. I kept both the tags very simple ( still under the influence of *Less is more*!) and am entering them into the *Black and White* Challenge over on *Theme Thursday*

So, I'm off to watch those Eagles again....Have a great day, and thanks for looking!