Mothering Sunday

Hi everybody!

Happy Mothering Sunday to all Mothers, have a great day!

I have a collage made with photos of my Mother and our family. The photos were on 2 different Layouts, which were rather damaged, so I took them apart and put them back together again to make one. The background has been stencilled, sprayed and distressed. The stencils are from My tattered angels. The photo on the left was taken a few years before I was born, during WWII. My eldest sister (left) is still alive, the sister next to her died some years back, and I don't know if my brothers are still alive. The photo on the right shows my Mum with me when I was just under a year old. 

Yesterday evening we had some heavy storms here, with rain galore, thunder and lightning. Some trees came down near the Church, the path was cordoned off this morning while they were sawing up logs. Today was grey and cloudy, we just had a few peeps of blue sky for a few minutes this afternoon.

I love this rose arch:

I am glad I decided to wear my rubber boots this afternoon:

Thanks to all who left get well wishes, they are much appreciated. I feel a little better today, the nausea is a lot less, so I am hoping that I will soon be back to normal. Being able to be creative is also a big help.

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

Monsters, Circles, Mail-Art and More

Hi everybody!

The past few days have not been so easy here, as I have a flare-up of my auto-immune illness, and am being treated with a crunchy tablet cocktail every morning for breakfast, and on top of that some special injections into my neck to alleviate the pains there. The tablet cocktail always brings a lot of side effects, like dizziness, nausea, feeling 'strange' (yes, even stranger than usual!) and shaky fingers. The first days are always the worst, the medis are being reduced day by day, and I hope soon to feel more normal (?).

I have been trying to keep myself busy, and doing challenges although it is not really as easy as usual. At So Artful the theme is 'Friendly Monsters', and I suddenly thought of my lovely Mexican cotton scraps. I painted a piece or cardboard - what else - and glued the pieces on, and then did my best to sew it zig-zag on the machine. Not exactly well sewn, but sewn! They all look really friendly, and seem to be enjoying an outing with music and dance, so that's good.

At AJJ the theme is circles, and at Moo Mania and More 'Mail', so I have tried to combine the two. I am not really happy with this, I wanted to draw some little circles with gel-pen again, and to write my journaling on it, but I will have to add them when I am less shaky. It should have the message, 'Art, Mail and Music make the world go round'. 

I painted a music sheet from an old book with gesso, and drew the frame with pastel chalks. I made the collage with cut-outs, stamps, tissue-tape, a tissue-transfer bird (to sing the music) and some circles cut from a sheet of DP. I used some mail art stamps to add some more accents.
I am also linking to Artful Times, where the theme is 'mail-art'

I am also linking to Paint Party Friday and Manon's Paper Saturdays

Manu has a photo challenge on her blog Mikrokosmos. The theme this week is 'smell', taking notice of the smells - good and bad- around you. I have made a collage of photos showing sweetly perfumed flowers which I have photographed in the past weeks. In the middle is one of my angels, concentrating on a heart in his hand - the heart of the perfume?
There's a nice quote from Bernard Clive: 'Today, just take time to smell the roses, enjoy those little things about your life, your family, spouse, friends, job. Forget about the thorns - the pains and problems they cause you - and enjoy life'

The original collage:

And three versions digitally altered:

If you would like to copy and use the collage photos, please feel free to do so.

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

Memories and more

Hi everybody!

Here the weather has been very changeable, so walks just now have to be well planned to dodge the April showers which are coming a month late. But wet weather does allow more time at home for crafting!

Yesterday I made this little piece with my beloved cardboard. This was an especially nice, thick piece, which is great to paint on. I partly peeled and distressed it, glued a piece of felt and some scraps of netting onto it, and then gave it 2 coats of gesso before distressing the edges with DI vintage photo. Then I used embossing ink to add some Frantage EP in gold, white, and 'dirty mix' - various left-other colours scraped back into the same jar! I love the texture this EP gives.

Then I played around with  UFOs (untidy flying objects) from my desk, and arranged them till I liked the composition. I used some hessian (burlap), white flowers and some fibres. The little photo of the kids was already cut out. I don't know who they were, but I love the way they are looking so seriously at the camera, the little girl and her big brother both in their best clothes, waiting to see what life would bring to them.  I placed the photo on some ancient book scraps, and distressed them with antique linen and vintage photo before fitting them behind the frame, printed onto transparent foil. I mounted it onto a little tag made of some lined cardboard. The 'memories' tab was in my stash, and has been fixed with screw brads. Distressing cardboard, paper and photos to give them a vintage look is one of the things which I  like most by Tim Holtz, and which has inspired my work.  I am linking to 'Fond memories' at a Vintage Journey, a challenge led by a very dedicated and talented group of ladies. I kept the embellishments simple, with some white flowers, perhaps to remind of the simplicity of childhood.

This is a small canvas I made for one of my DT pieces at Gecko Galz.

It is a 4x4" block canvas, which I painted with acrylic colours to coordinate with the Gecko Galz image from the Nature's Bliss Jewel it sheet. I printed the image onto canvas. After painting the canvas I glittered and embossed it with various Frantage EPs to add texture. I framed the image with a fine gold border and some twine, and added some textile flowers.

(material list: canvas, image, textile flowers, EP and glitter, twine, acrylic paints in green, cream and terracotta.)

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

And last but not least, an image from a graffiti artist who uses garbage bins etc to place his works here. I don't always like graffiti, but I do like what this person makes, and am pleased that he never sprays on any of the monuments or old buildings, just using the mundane, everyday things and transforming them!

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

Coffee, Circles and a Historical Event.

Hi everybody!

The weather here was changeable today, but I am happy to say I still managed to get out for my walks and to do my errands.

At Mix it Monthly the theme is 'Coffee', and at AJJ, 'Circles'.

I have combined them both here, as I have a lot of circle stamps with coffee themes in my stash - and the big miracle is, that I actually found them!

I used a sheet of designer paper 12x12" for the background, and stenciled the ple of cups with blue metallic paint using a foam pouncer. The paint is just very difficult to photograph, and the colours change from image to image - sorry!

The round stamps were stamped onto some hand-painted paper and punched or cut out. I used my white gel-pen for the white circles, outlining and the text. The poem is one I wrote back in 2011, and for those of you who got a crick in their necks trying to read my round writing last time, here it is as NORMAL text - I am so good to you all!

Give me coffee, but no tea- Tea is not the drink for me!

Coffee, frothy, brown and hot . I can always drink a lot.

Coffee topped with whipped-up cream,

This with joy will make me scream.

Café au lait with chocolate sprinkles,

Makes me happy, stops my wrinkles.

And if the point you have not seen,

A day without COFFEE makes me mean!

And now to more serious matters!

Today I want to show some pictures of a place I pass by everyday, the Spee Epitaph by the Düsseldorfer artist Bert Gerresheim. It is a bronze relief on the East side of the Church, made in 1991 to celebrate the 400th birthday of  Friedrich Spee, who was born here in Kaiserswerth.  He was a Jesuit and a Catholic theologian, and wrote several books, the most famous of which was the *Cautio Criminalis* (Precautions for Prosecutors) against the persecution and torture of witches. He argued that one cannot obtain truth by torture.

He is shown here supporting one of the persecuted women with his right arm, and is holding a copy of his book in the left hand. He was a man who tried to end the awful treatment of those women who were suspected of being witches, and deserves to be remembered for this at a time when it was quite 'normal' to burn those who for some reason seemed to be suspicious. He died in 1635 while caring for soldiers who had plague.

Last year two women from Düsseldorf-Gerresheim,  Helena Kurtens and Agnes Olemanns, who were burnt as witches in 1738, were officially rehabilitated. The process was instigated by a citizen of the town, who wanted their names cleared. This couldn't change what happened, but it was a sign to give them back their good names.

I love the clarity of the faces, and the buildings, which can still be seen today.

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

Tag Tuesday and a Friendly Monster

Hi everybody!

Hope you are all enjoying sunshine as we are here. We had another cold and frosty night, and a cool start, but sunshine all day, and that's the way I like it.

Our theme at Tag Tuesday this week is 'dolls' - yikes. I only had one doll when I was 5, and took it apart as I didn't like it, so never got another one. At school we often used to make these little paper dolls, so I made a pair of them today. I cut them from scrap paper, and made them each a pinafore from other scraps. Just a very simple tag today.

  At So Artful the theme this time is 'friendly monsters', whatever that may be!

I decided to make some tigers into friendly monsters, as a tiger  limerick was swimming around in my head. I think it is rather unfair to call tigers 'monsters', as they are beautiful creatures, and probably not really friendly. But here they have eaten the silly lady and are smiling, happy and contented; have used her lipstick to doll themselves up, and so they do look friendly. But the lady, if she could give her opinion, would probably say they were monsters....

This little beetle (Alexander?) crossed my path this morning:

I enjoyed my walks, especially the wild flowers blooming everywhere; here is just a small selection:

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