Ancient and Modern

Hi you all. It's time for Paint Party Friday already, time flies! PPF is hosted, as always, by Eva and Kristin.

I have been rummaging in my bottomless pit, AKA hall closet again. I still haven't found what I was looking for, but I did find a bundle of water-colours from the year 1995. I was at a clinic in Bad Saulgau in the south of Germany after breaking my arm in several places, and painting was a good therapy to strengthen it again. I spent a lot of time wandering around, and painting - mostly in the rain! Nothing exciting, but I was pleased to see them again!

And this is not quite finished. I am calling it 'Blind mirror'. I have used gouache. At the moment I can't stop using green and blue, I think I am longing for green leaves and blue skies - spring!

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

Happy Mail and my Tag Tuesday Tag

Hi you all, hope you are all well and fit. I received some happy mail today, and one was also a yummy mail!

I won a giveaway over at Linda K's blog, and she sent me three beautiful ATCs from faraway America, with stitching, and beautiful colours and images that make me yearn for spring! And they were packed into this wonderful envelope made from a gelli-plate print. What a lovely idea! Thanks a lot Linda.

And from Suze Bain in not so faraway Bonnie Scotland I got a bonnie wee parcel, with yummy contents. Suze knows how I love  chocolate and Horlicks, especially when it is one of the brands I so enjoyed in my youth! It was packed into two pretty packages, dolled up with ribbon and an Easter card.

Yummy - Cadbury's chocolate bunnies filled with caramel - and a Malteser bunny - and Horlicks!

And the first bunny has already been eaten....soooo yummy!

Thanks a lot, Suze!

For Tag Tuesday I chose the word  Mezuzah, the little box affixed to the door in a Jewish home, containing the words of the 'Shema Israel' beginning with the phrase: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One" , taken from the book of Deuteronomy. The parchment, written by hand from a trained scribe (Hebrew -'Sofer Stam' ) in indelible ink is rolled to fit into the casing. which is mostly decorated.

The Hebrew letters on the casing – spell “Shaddai” – the Almighty.

I have made a 3-dimensional tag. I made a little paper mezuzah case, and glued it together after colouring and decorating the outside. I put a copy of the Hebrew parchment into it, and mounted it with screw brads onto my tag. The mezuzah is always mounted at an angle on the right side of the door post.

That's all for today! Be back soon for Paint Party Friday, this week is flying by!

Take care and thanks for visiting.

Paper Piecing card

Hi you all! The theme at Fashionable Stamping Challenges is paper-piecing. Not something I am really fond of, but challenges are always good for trying things out. For my card I used stamps from Chocolate Baroque, except for the small millinery ad which is from TH. The background has been shaded with antique linen, Victorian velvet and vintage photo DI. I randomly stamped various images with vintage photo. The focal images have been stamped with Adirondack espresso. For the paper piecing I stamped the two corsets onto scraps of DP, embossed them with white EP and mounted them over the 'normal' stamped images. After a lot of fussy cutting I pushed all the images around till I liked it, and added some pins to the pincushion and yarn to the rolls. To finish it I added some paper lace, ribbon and some buttons.

I am not really fond of corsets either -  as someone whose waist has long wasted and morphed into a convex form, they are not really my thing. Those were the days!

I am also linking to the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp and Show - anything goes 'Strict' challenge

Pan Pastels - anything goes

Crafty emblies - anything goes

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!