Stamp people, mail art, this and that.

Hi everybody!
Hope you have all had a good week.
Today we had sunshine. There were a few clouds, but no rain, and it was good to walk around without being buttoned up and booted!

At the moment there are a lot of challenges with the theme mail art or stamps. At Try it on Tuesday, the theme is 'In the mail', and runs till the 26th May. At Moo Mania and More the challenge is mail art, and at AJJ, circles. And last but not least, the challenge at the Three Muses is Stamp People.

My first piece has been made for the Stamp People challenge, but also fits nicely to mail art and to circles. I used 2 stamps from a series of Liberian stamps with US presidents. I cut off the heads of my umbrella men (sorry, sounds soooo brutal!) and swapped them for the presidential heads. I used a page from an ancient Sears and Roebuck catalogue as background paper. It is very brittle and frail, and all I can do is to use it. I thought the buggy makes a wonderful setting for my presidential gentlemen! I mounted it onto some aqua cardstock to match the stamps. I love that you can see the reverse of the page at the same time! And I like the sentence 'We have embodied.....' fits well to the theme!

The second piece is a mail art envelope. I used a manila A5 one, and some background paper from Gecko Galz (Vintage by me). Once again I used my wonderful Mr UM. I glued stamps onto a piece of scrap paper and then die cut Mr UM twice. The rest of the envelope has been decorated with TH tissue tape, stamps with a postal them and some mail-art stamps stamped in black Archival.

This was a fun and easy make.

I am also linking to Manon's Paper Saturdays and Simons Monday Blog (M = mail art)

On my walk yesterday I once again admired this lovely, old brickwall, held together by a few pieces of rusty iron.

I walked through the sculpture park, and admired the gardens. The gardeners were busy cutting the grass, but left islands of longer grass here and there, which gave a very pretty effect.

The old chapel, which was in a bad state, has now been repaired, and the scaffolding removed, so it is looking beautiful again.

And on the way home along the Rhine I enjoyed the varieties of wild flowers and grass waving in the wind.

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

A Matchbox, a WIP and some little quackers.

Hi everybody!

I am happy to say that the sun came out for a few hours yesterday. We still had a lot of rain, but nothing to compare with the days before, and in the evening we had pink clouds in the sky and could even see the moon.

Today I am showing a (large) altered matchbox which I made as one of my DT pieces for Gecko Galz.  This is the piece I swapped with Marji for the pay it forward project. I used the image 664-1 from the Vintage for me image sheet. I printed the image onto canvas. I painted a large matchbox  inside and out with blue metallic paint. I used a diamond stencil to add the texture, and embossed some of the diamonds and the edge of the image with Frantage old gold EP. The back of the box was made similarly but without the image. The tray inside has been lined with a rose, which I covered with crackle varnish. The fastener is from TH.
(Material list: matchbox, image, paint, stencil, embossing paste, EP, rose rub-on, crackle varnish.)

This is a new piece I started this week, it still needs a lot of work, I hope it will be finished next week.

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

The little goslings are now really big, but still look very fluffy and downy. They still run around in their family group, and seem to do everything together.

And the wild geese have new goslings. I couldn't get a better picture, the littluns  wouldn't keep still, and Mum and Dad were a trifle aggressive....

And it was nice to see a pretty sky again in the evening:

Thanks to all who sent get well messages, they are much appreciated, and I am slowly feeling better, and hopeful that I will soon be back to normal.

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

Raindrops and circles

Hi you all!

We had another very rainy day here, I think I will soon have webbed feet like the ducks. But this evening the sky is clear, so perhaps the good weather we have been promised will be coming nearer! I still enjoyed walking about in the rain, having the world around me just for me, and enjoying the beauty of the raindrops.

This journal page is not quite finished, as once again I could not do the journaling on it as my fingers are still too shaky for tidy writing. I made it for the circles challenge at AJJ and for the 'circle the globe' challenge at FSC. This piece of shaped cardboard was part of some packaging, so I left it as it was to fit the theme. I sprayed the background, and stamped the sun with my Hein-design block stamp, using pigment ink.  I stamped the squares using the ink-pads directly onto the paper, and then stamped the dragonfly from Lawrence and Morgan over them using archival ink. I coloured the wings with Stickles. The water lilies and irises are also stamps from L and M., coloured with gel-pens. I drew round the edge of the circle using a lid and a fine liner, and drew in a few little circles round the splashes from the spray. The text  will be written round the inside of the circle sooner or later, and is a quote from the Lion King - 

'And so we are all connected in the great circle of life' (Mufasa)

And here are some of the raindrops from today's walk:

I love this view of the Church seen from the tow-path:

All the benches were empty, and not even the ducks showed their little beaks....

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

Double Tuesday, Wind and Rain

Hi everybody!

The day started out damp and windy, but I still got out for my walk along the Rhine, and enjoyed looking at the stones, shells and other things on the beach. I got home just on time to save getting soaked, then it rained non-stop for 2 hours. After the rain had stopped I was able to do another round of puddle hopping - everything is really wet. But I'm hopeful that the weather will soon get better as 'they' have promised us!

Today is time for a new tag at Tag Tuesday, and a new challenge at Try it on Tuesday. At TT our theme this week is metal. I had fun playing with cardboard and trying to make it look like metal. I embossed a tag cut from corrugated cardboard in a TH embossing folder, then rubbed it with Inka gold in gold and gun-metal. Then I used embossing ink to add some metallic EPs and Perfect Pearls in gold, copper and metallic blue. The key has also been cut from the same cardboard using an ancient sizzix die, the first one I ever had. The heart and anchor were plastic embellies from my button box.  They got the same treatment with Inka gold as the tag, and were then embossed with EPs and Perfect Pearls. The plastic did not smell good when I heated it, but at least it stayed in form! The eyelet and chain are actually made of metal....

 I am also linking to the Craftroom Challenge, recycling, using recycled cardboard, chain and buttons.

At Try it on Tuesday the new challenge is 'It's in the mail', which gives lots of scope for mail art envelopes or mail themed tags and cards etc. You have, as always, 2 weeks to join in, so hope to see lots of you over there!

I made an airmail-envelope. I gave the paper a coat of gesso, and when it was dry, decorated with stamps - which all have a mail theme here - an owl (Hogwarts post), a little boy going to school, tissue tape, and some stamped images .

The reverse has been decorated with my fave stamp - 'art is not a thing, it is a way', and more stamped images and tissue tape. I will use this as a voucher pocket sooner or later.

I am also linking to  Moo Mania (mail) and Artful Times (mail).

I always find it very calming and relaxing to walk along the beach, and every time I am there some of those stones and shells seem to find their way into my pockets.

I always see faces or other things in the stones, here I can see several faces and a stone that looks like a chopped off finger compete with finger-nail! What can you see?

I really had to paddle through the puddles along the wall this afternoon, thank goodness for Wellies!

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