Stars and Stripes and Happy July 4th!

Hi you all!

Today is the beginning of a new challenge over at Out of a Hat Creations, and I am joining in this month as guest designer. The challenge runs for a week, so you have time to join in with your patriotic creations.

First of all I would like to wish all friends on the other side of the Big Pond a very happy July 4th. The card I made for OOAH is a 3-D pop-up card using images from Gecko Galz, and a stamped and fussy cut Miss Liberty.

 

I am also linking to Simon Says Stamp and Show - anything goes.

And this is this weeks tag for Tag Tuesday. We have reached the end of the ABC, and my 'Z' tag is for Zons, a little town near here. It is a small, walled town, directly at the Rhine, and dating back to the middle of the 8th century. It is full of narrow lanes, ancient houses and towers, and lots to see. I used a picture of the 'Krötschen' Tower (no. 3 in the plan below), cut it out, and placed it onto a stamped and painted background, and added some bunting just for fun.

  

 I made the collage using photos I took when I visited there with a friend some time back.

(Street Plan courtesy of Wikipedia)

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

Try it on Tuesday - new challenge - 'Show us your metal'

Hi Everybody!

It's time for another challenge over at TIOT - 'Show us your metal'.

I altered a mirror from IKEA - I like to have things like this at home to alter.

I painted the wooden frame with silver metallic acrylic, sanded it off a bit, and then went over it with Inka Gold in gunmetal grey to tone it down. The 'metal' objects - some plastic flowers, a grunge-paper flourish, some shells and an angel soap left over from Xmas - were sprayed with  silver metallic, and then polished with the Inka gunmetal stuff to make them match. I fixed it all on with a hot glue gun - look, no blisters this time! The clear glass dewdrops were added as a finishing touch. I covered the mirror part to take the photos as I didn't want my face to ruin it. I just took the cover  off for the last photo to prove it is a mirror!

 

I am also linking to Simon says Stamp and Show, anything goes.

You have 2 weeks to enter the challenge, plenty of time to think up something metallic!

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

Art Journal Journey - Architecture

The new challenge over at Art Journal Journey is architecture. My first thoughts when I heard this were Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. They were perhaps more famous for other things they created, but both were very involved with the architecture of their day. These pages are perhaps more a hommage to them than pure architecture.
I started by gluing part of a serviette with Michelangelo's famous hands of God and man, and gave the rest of the pages some matching colours, before building them up with various layers using stamping, tissue transfers. stencils etc. The quote is one from Leonardo. I did my best to copy the signatures of the two artists. I am not really satisfied with the end results, some parts turned out as I wanted, others not, but that's life. That just inspires to try again!

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

(Bad) Dream Journal pages

Hi everybody, hope you are enjoying your weekend! I had a strange dream last week - I was in a room, which had a strange, greeny tint to it, like it was underwater, and there were some strange people in there. Nobody was looking at each other or talking, just looking straight ahead. There were also various odd bits of furniture there, a big gramophone, and a deer's head on the wall. It reminded me of my family - although the people didn't look like them - perhaps because nobody ever tried to talk to anyone there, either. Anyway, I tried to recreate this creepy dream using images I had flying about in my bit-boxes, as my printer is still on strike. I used  some green and purple pages which I had started for SOC last week as background, but didn't like them, so painted and sprayed over them. There is even an elephant hidden in the background, which adds for me to the feeling in the dream of lots of hidden currents being there. The isolated words flying around are perhaps some that they weren't speaking. I distressed all the images with shabby shutters DI to make them look like they were under water, and edged them with a green gel-pen. The shadowy floating ladies were made with a stencil, as were the sea-horses.

Sorry about the shine on the photos, I used metallic paints for the background, and it was very hard to get good pics.

Well, if any of you get the idea that I come from a strange family - well, yes, you might be right!

Have a good day you all, take care, sweet dreams when you go to bed, and thanks for coming by.

Paper Saturday, Happy Mail and a Challenge

Hi everybody! It's been a cold and wet week here, but the weather men have promised us that we will have some summer next week. I wonder....

I was lucky to get happy mail twice this week. The first mail came from my good friend Diane in Michigan, who sent me a packet full of lovely papers and images she  printed out for me, as my printer is not behaving itself at all. Of course, I could hardly wait to get my fingers on the papers and start making something with them! Aren't they gorgeous?

This lovely card from Diane came too. Thanks a lot Diane, it is so good to have friends who help! 

The ladies over at Out of a Hat Creations have chosen  'Inspired by a song with a flower in the title' as their theme.  After doing some research in internet, I cam across a song from 1939 called 'Lilacs in the rain', written to an Irish folk-melody. You can hear Bing Crosby singing it here.

I made a Double Z-fold card, and used the lovely papers from Diane. I didn't have any lilacs in my stash, so I sorted out all the mini-lilac coloured flowers I had, and put them together to look like lilacs and glued them on, using seed beads for the centres. I added a butterfly on one side, and that was that.

I am linking to Manon's Paper Saturdays

The second happy mail that arrived this week was from Alex , who sent me a beautiful painting which she made. It  now has pride of place in my arty kitchen where I sit and create, on the wall opposite my place. I love the soft shades and speckled background. Isn't it beautiful? Thanks Alex, I will treasure it, and let it inspire me!

Once again I have to say what a caring and generous community bloggers are!

Have a great weekend you all, take care, and thanks a lot for dropping in!

Summer of Colour, and Paint Party Friday

Hi everybody. The week is flying by again, there never seems to be enough time to do everything I would like to. So I saved time on the H*******K and made more time for playing. I don't want to say this too loudly, but today the sun is showing itself here and there fir a few seconds - progress!

I was rather stumped about what to make for SOC, hosted by our lovely Kristin, where the colours this week are purple and lime green. Then I remembered making a canvas in these colours some time back. I gave it away as a present, but had photos, so was able to more or less re-create it. In the end, I think I like this one better than the other one, so that's something! The canvas is a re-purposed one, for which I used acrylic paints in several layers, Adirondack colour wash sprays, Stickles, some punchinella, and some bits and bobs from my stash - the parrot, flowers, ric-rac ribbon, heart etc.  I got the hearts from a florist that was closing down a year or 2 back, it's always good to have things like this in reserve. I think it took more time to FIND the things in my bottomless pit than it did to paint and assemble the canvas!

I am not as happy with the journal pages as I was last week, but they are more or less the right colours, so that's something. The camel and tree is an illustration I found in a magazine, scanned, digitally altered, and printed onto book paper. I made a nasty boo-boo on the left side, and managed to put a book on it while it was still wet, which messed up the paint, so I had to patch it, but I did not have the energy to start all over again. The girls have been made with a home-made cut out, which I used on the left to stick on to the page and on the right as a template to sponge the colour on.

I am linking to Paint Party Friday, hosted as always by Eva and Kristin.