Wild Life in Rhineland

Good morning you all, Happy Easter Monday! Today I want to show you some feathered Moos I have made for the challenge  over at Moo-Mania. The pictures show  the feathered German Easter Bunny, a rare specimen found only in Rhineland. These are sometimes called cuckoo bunnies, as their mothers put them into egg shells and leave them to be brought up by chicks, who care for them devotedly. In the third picture you can see their typical head-feather still adhering to an egg shell. But back to the rabbits! Their Latin name is Hase Falsa Rhenania, and they unfortunately have a very short life, as they get hunted on Easter Sunday and mostly eaten because they taste just like chocolate.

This is one of the even rarer domesticated examples (Hase Falsa Rhenania Domesticata)....

Very few attain this age and are able to enter domestic service. Some restaurants even use human bunny-girls as a rather ridiculous and completely inadequate substitute!

And here a wild one.... 

A chick looking at her 'brother', who has just hatched. Unfortunately, he moo-ved so fast that I did not get him on the photo.

Have a good day you all, take care and thanks for coming by!

Faces

Hi you all, good morning from cold and frosty Rhineland - but at least there is no snow today.

I have an altered canvas to share today. It has been roughed up with structure paste and painted with gold metallic acrylics. I distressed it with some timber brown Stazon. The 'photo' has been stamped onto cream high gloss paper using a stamp from Scrollswork. The small pictures on the left side are images from CI, cut so that they fitted the tiny metal frames, and mounted onto inchies made from scraps of painted and stamped paper. The flower and leaves are from Prima.

I am linking to Out of a Hat challenges, where the theme this week is faces, and to Pan Pastels Challenge, anything goes.

Have a good Easter Sunday, don't eat too much chocolate - I'm just envious because I have no choccie in the house - and thanks a lot for visiting!

Craft Barn Alpha Challenge 'P'

Hi you all! Hope you are not snowed in! Here it snowed all day yesterday. Today we have had some sunshine, but it's getting dark again, so I fear the worst...

This is the photo I took yesterday!

Donna, please do NOT tell me how warm it is in Mexico, where you are sipping your sangria in the yard, surrounded by flowers, birds and butterflies!

For the alpha challenge I chose a long list of 'P' words, and couldn't decide which one to take. My pondering  was interrupted by the postman's ring, who left a parcel for a neighbour. 'Parcel' was not on my list of words, but I decided that fate had chosen for me! I thought this would be very quick and easy, I didn't realise that it was difficult to make a flat parcel that looks like a 3-dimensional one. My lines and angles are still not quite straight  so let's say that it got it bit battered in the post! 

Have a good day you all, take care, keep warm and have fun! And thanks for coming by!

Fun with lino cuts

Hi you all! Another week has raced by, and it's time for PPF already, hosted, as always, by Eva and Kristin. I have been playing around with an *ancient* lino cut from the 1990s.  I wanted to use the special paints I have for lino prints, but they have hidden themselves somewhere in the deepest recesses of my 'bottomless pit', AKA my hall closet. So I worked with acrylics and some sheets of coloured paper I had here. The lino-cut is 12X8"

The first one is red on red

Then I tried blue on red, but didn't really like it....

I think black on white looks okay....

And I like this green on green even if I did smudge it a bit....

And this is blue on red again, but it worked better this time

And lastly a collage I made and blogged at the beginning of the week:

That's all for today, have a great PPF, a lovely weekend and thanks a lot for coming by!

Me and my shadow

Hi you all! Hope you are managing to keep warm if it's still winter where you are. We have had sunshine for 2 days, but it is still extremely cold and windy. It was wonderful to see the sun, though! And this evening, as I write, the sky is cloudless and a large, full moon with an ice-halo is sailing over the sky.

My card today is for the challenge over at Simon Says Stamp and Show, where the DT wants to see something using a quote, or saying or something similar. I chose a line from a song which has been going round in my head for the past few days - me and my shadow. I have printed the song-text onto the card, and then added an umbrella man, cut from an old book cover, and his shadow, made using the waste as a template. I matted it onto some printed brown card that was part of some packaging, and tied it all together with some string. I added a TH token as embellishment.  I used vintage photo DI for the shading.

The light was on when I took the second pic, and it looks all washed out - sorry!

And I forgot to post my Tag Tuesday tag again, so here it is. We have arrived at 'L' in our ABC, and I chose ladders, so made my tag with a snakes and ladders game.

That's all for today! Take care, have a good day, and thanks a lot for coming by!

Boxing Day

Hi you all! In case you are wondering about my title today, I am not thinking of the day after Christmas. I am thinking of boxing in two senses of the word - firstly, to show some altered boxes I have made for various challenges, and secondly - ouch! - because I boxed myself under my chin while trying to pull a piece of sticky tape off the floorboards. I am always surprised that things which refuse firmly and persistently to stick to paper, develop such adhesive strength when they fall to the floor....

The first box I have altered is a Swarovski box with hinged lid which I rescued along with its whole family from an awful fate in the old paper box. I sprayed it with silver paint -not really to recommend when there are minus degrees and a gale force wind blowing, but it has to be done outside. After it had dried, and I had thawed out again, I decorated it with lots of bits from my bit boxes - flowers, a cameo, sequin flowers, lace and ribbon. I stamped around the sides using my fave love script stamp, but I could not get a good pic of it.

The second box is a little oval one which was filled with delicious chocolate covered coffee beans - yummy! It wasn't quite empty, so I had to eat the rest. If I can't sleep tonight I will at least know why!

I covered the box with scraps of Graphic45 paper. The strip I had over for the lid was not quite wide enough, so I mounted it onto a strip of brown paper first. I added some lace, a flower and a skeleton leaf, and it was finished. The box is now on the shelves in my hall, holding the 50 cent pieces I need to put into the communal washing machine downstairs.

I am linking to three challenges today:

Out of a Hat creations - who are, by the way, celebrating their first birthday this week - have a variety of things to choose from, so I took vintage.

Sugar Creek Hollow, who want to see an altered state and

Try it on Tuesday, where the challenge is to recycle.

It is still extremely cold and windy outside, so it was great to have a good excuse to stay home and play! Keep warm, take care and thanks a lot for coming by!

Happy Mail received and cards sent

Hi you all, hope those of you in the cold parts of this world are managing to keep warm. Here in Germany and the whole of Europe we are still in the grip of an icy winter. It was definitely warmer at Christmas than it is now! But I am not dreaming of a white Easter, so hope very much that it will get warmer.

I received 2 beautiful Easter cards from Donna and Yvonne.
The first one is from Donna, I love her very determined looking Easter bunny on his way to school! And the lovely rabbit charm on the card. Donna paints wonderful pictures, and if you haven't already visited her blog, please do so!

The second card is from Yvonne, who makes beautiful cards, mostly in vintage style, also well worth a visit if you don't know her blog yet! I love all the layers and delicate colours in this card.

Big thanks to both these lovely ladies!

And I have 2 cards which I have already sent off. The challenge over at  Vienna Impressions blog is to create a card using blue and green and an unusual shape. I have made 2 pyramid cards. The cards can be folded flat to send, and their is a sentiment inside. I stamped 'Gib jedemTag die Gelegenheit der schönste Deines Lebens zu werden' in each card. (Give every day the opportunity to become the best one of your life).

The first card has been made using double sided cardstock. After adding motives on the green and blue sides, I varnished the outside surfaces with clear glaze.

The second card has been made from a sheet of paper painted with green and blue, and stamped randomly with various background stamps. The outside surfaces have once again been glazed. All stamps used are from LaBlanche. The photos of the inside and the other sides have somehow disappeared from my computer, and as they are now winging their way to their destinations, I can't take any more pics, sorry!

That's all for today, take care, have a good day, and thanks a lot for visiting!