A New Years Walk and a Canvas

Hi everybody!

Hope you all survived the celebrations on New Year's Eve, and that the hangovers are now cured....

I celebrated with a cup of cocoa and ginger biscuits, perhaps not really traditional, but I enjoyed it.

The first day of January dawned here bright and sunny., and after drinking my coffee I walked to Schloss Kalkum to visit the ducks.

The village street behind the castle is also very pretty:

 In the park I disovered more trees in bloom, a lovely sight for the beginning of January.

This doggy was busy pulling his 2 legged companion around:

And the ducks were all happy and busy with their usual ducky lives:

I painted a little canvas for one of my DT pieces at Gecko Galz. I used colours that are in the image to paint the background, and printed the image onto canvas. I used some twigs gathered on my walks as embellishments, after spraying them with some tinned 'snow'. The leaves and flowers were sprayed with silver. I used hot glue to fix them onto the canvas.

Material list:

Image from Collage Sheet Winter Garden2

Euro shop canvas

acrylic paints

twigs, textile flowers

Gecko Galz once again has a huge selection of new digi-stamps, papers and collage sheets, and some good freebies worth looking at!

I am linking to Paint Party Friday, hosted as always, by Eva and Kristin, and The Cheerful Stamp Pad, anything goes challenge.

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

Frosty weather and a winter landscape

Hi everybody!

This morning the fields were frosted white when I got up, and although it was a clear and sunny day, it was cold an windy. I walked to the sculpture park, and then down to the Rhine damn, and the wind in my back helped me walk quckly. I enjoyed it very much, sunny days are always such a wonderfl gift.

This sculpture is still frosted where the sun hasn't yet reached it:

I don't know what sort of tree this is, never seen one blooming in this weather:

The long and winding road was also frosted, with icy patches, so I had to 'walk circumspectly' so as not to land on my butt:

At Tag Tuesday the theme this week is a winter scene. Now, this is not really a scene, but I didn't feel like making a scene today.... The black tag has been cut from an old calendar, stamped,  and white embossed with my fave script stamp. The tree and fence have been cut from card painted white and glittered, and the bird and snowflake were in my stash.

 

And last but not least:

I wish you all good health, happiness and creativity  for 2014.

Thanks a lot for coming by so often and leaving nice comments; thanks for being there.

Time to say Thanks

Hi everybody!

Friday began here with a wonderful sunrise, which greeted me as I crawled out of my warm bed and enticed me onto the cold balcony to take some photos:

But the day soon grew wild, wet and windy, and I had to battle again the wind and rain to get my shopping, and arrived home soaked, in urgent need of hot coffee and a warm bath.

I was very happy to receive many cards and presents for my birthday and Christmas from blogging friends, which  really gave me a lot of joy. The generosity of fellow bloggers always astonishes me, especially when they show more kindness than family and neighbours. Some I have already shown, here are some more:

Yvonne (Meggymay), who always makes such wonderful, vintage cards, sent all these treasures. I love the stamps, especially the peacock on the left, and I am going to have fun decorating those totes. And what wonderful fibres!

Chrissie sent me this stylish card, some ATCs, which I already showed, and this pretty butterfly stencil. I have lots of stencils, but none with butterflies, so it is very welcome in my collection!

These beautiful cards and goodies came from Jeanette in Hamburg. I love those cute serviettes with owls, and all those pretty goodies. The little bag is also filled with pretty stash. The fizzy bath tablet was wonderful, and gave me a very enjoyable soak in my tub!

The cards with Zen-doodling came from Lonetta, who makes intricate and flowing designs which never fail to amaze me.

The cards and bookmark were made by Anja, who is justly famous for the amazing colours she uses and blends together so cleverly:

Diane made this beautiful card with birds, which she knows that I love. She always makes cards which are STYLISH with a capital 'S', and which always impress with the details, like matching envelope liners and stickers on the back of them. I love the lace and pearls, too!

These goodies all came from Sue (the Iron). I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw all those goodies in the box, and the beautiful stamp, with numbers - which I so love to use in my journal pages, and a wonderful stencil which was also missing in my collection:

These beautiful creations were also in the parcel - I think she knows that I love owls. The colours of the giant tag on the right are really glowing, it is so beautifully made- there are even Hebrew letters on it:

And that's not all - these gorgeous serviettes and the birthday hanging were alos n the treasure box:

And last but definitely not least, this fantastic birthday card, a double easel card was in the box:

Suze sent me beautiful cards for Chrsitmas and my birthday. I especially love the birthday one with the little 'quackers' on it, I wonder how she got the idea to do that....

This box was neatly wrapped and packaged when Suze sent it - Somebody, whose name I will not mention, couldn't wait to take a photo before digging in to that selection of English candy bars and Horlicks - YUMMY! I had Horlicks and maltesers one evening - paradise! Not to talk of the chocolate frogs and  buttons, Galaxy bars, Cadbury's flake and everything else that was in that box:

And believe it or not, I got a new cutter for my birthday from Alex. My old one has been cutting wonky edges since it fell onto the floor some time back, and this one is two machines in one - great!

A very big thank-you to all of you. Your gifts are all much appreciated, and the beautiful cards and hand-made creations will be treasured.

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

Happy Holidays

 

Hi everybody!

I wish you all a happy and peaceful Christmas.

Enjoy the time together with friends and family.

This is a picture which I have taken from a German Women's Magazine from 1899, and digitally altered.

Have fun, take care, and thanks for coming by!

Journal Pages, light and shadow

Hi everybody,

hope you are not all worn out from holiday preparations!

I made these journal pages for the light/shadow theme at Art Journal Journey last week. It was rather difficult to take the photos today, I had to use flash as it was so dark all the time.

The background was my brush-wipe paper, to which I added some sprays, gold ink and lots of stamping and stenciling, and pastels to highten the colours.I used my stencils again for the figures, and used a white pen to outline the figures and do the text. 'Live' is a sizzx die-cut which I used here as a template, and wish has been die-cut and glued on. The quote is from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, spoken by Dumbledore in the film version.

Today I had to dodge the rain to take my walk, but yesterday there was some blue sky here and there:

 

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

Another year older but not wiser

Hi everybody!

First of all I would like to thank all those who left birthday greetings on my blog, or mailed, or sent nice cards and presents - thanks a lot, you lovely people! I will show pictures next week of all the nice stuff I received.

I made myself an apple pie with caramelised apples instead of a birthday cake.

Help yourselves to a slice....

Perhaps with a cup of special cappuccino....

I made a little card for the snowflakes challenge at Moo-Mania, where it is now allowed to make other things, and not just Moos. I am also linking to Artful times - fave Christmas card. The background cardboard has been peeled, painted and glittered. The image was a present last year, and I mounted it onto black card. I kept the embellishments simple, probably because I have already packed the Christmas stuff away, and want to keep my table tidy for a few days!

Here I saw someone trying to break in to one of the houses today....

At Halloween someone put a Jack O'Lantern pumpkin on the art work at the roundabout. I wonder if it was the same person who has now decorated it for Christmas?

Have a great day you all, tke care, and thanks a lot for coming by!