Halloween Sisters

Halloween is not something we would naturally celebrate, and although quite a few children are living nearby, we had only once little visitors coming to our door within the last 7 years. Halloween approaching fast I thought I give it a go with a Halloween project. Always wanting to alter a book I combined Elina's Spring-themed Altered Book with Niche with Nancy's Altered Book Cover ... and could also not resist to use Ali's ribbon tabs.
The first step was to find a book which I would be willing to alter. I must admit I had never done it before because it feels almost like a sacrilege ... but I took the challenge and I loved the process! I found a little book in one of the charity shops which had just the right size and volume for this project. I turned the Spring theme into Halloween ... otherwise I tried to follow the excellent tutorials from Elina and Nancy
The inside pages are cut with circle cutters of various sizes from Creative Memories. This was an enjoyable process and I have now lots of printed circles for new projects (lol)
All images used are from the Graphics Fairy. Karen's Halloween images are amazing!
Thanks to Elina's and Nancy's clear descriptions the project was quite plain sailing apart from me being slightly impatient and removing the greaseproof paper too early from the book which unfortunately took off some of the glue
and the edges look a bit untidy. I now know for the next time! Happy crafting, Petra.

Memories

Gingersnap Creations Colour Challenge: Neutral Colours plus one bold .... I love colour challenges especially when based on neutral colours which are so versatile and can be used with any other colour combination. My choice for the bold colour: turquoise .... turquoise is a truly wonderful colour - so fresh and vibrant.
My wall hanging was created around the image of a young Jicarilla maiden. I saw the image in the Commons at Flickr (Smithsonian Institute) and was immediately drawn to it ... the combination of quiet intensity and concentration on her face
I used mainly scraps, recycled and natural materials. The back is corrugated card from packaging material painted 'randomly' with thinned white acrylic paint. I layered it with scraps of patterned paper from Papermania and K&Company. All these papers are torn and afterwards slightly distressed with VersaColor ink around the edges.
The image itself was covered with a thin layer of Decopatch glue to give it a bit of a shine and then covered with acetate. The finishing touches are feathers, gras remnants, bits of ribbons, some twine and turquoise beads.

The printed paper circle came from an old book which I prepared for a new project .... but this is another story and will be a new blog post (lol).

Just pop over to the Gingersnap Creations to see the amazing art work from all artists, to get more inspirations and to join in! Happy crafting, Petra.

Digital Halloween

I just realized I haven't posted anything for ages! Well, I was busy preparing my holidays ... yes, yippeeh we go on holidays tomorrow and I still need to do some packing but then I was busy playing with GIMP. (lol) All images I used are from the Graphics Fairy. Karen has such a huge collection ... the choice is always very difficult. I went with a halloween theme as I needed some images for one of my projects. This is how far I got:

This frame is a cabinet card frame ... I removed the writing at the bottom to be able to put my own title or some images or .....
As picture to be framed I used the old photo of two sisters. Ever since Karen mentioned in her description that this card screams 'Halloween' to her I wanted to use it. I removed the white frame from the photo, used the black one I created and titled the photo 'Halloween Sisters'
These were quite basic steps in the image manipulation and this image is what I used for my project but I wanted to go a bit further and started to add graphics to the original photo. A skeleton ... I increased the transparency of the photo so that the skeleton is visible from behind but if you do this you loose some of the vibrancy of the colours ... hmmm I need to work on this ...
The image still looked a bit empty ... a bird was needed and this is what I did
Please feel free to use any of the manipulated graphics but don't forget to pop in to have a look at the Graphics Fairy's amazing collection! Happy Monday, Petra.

Inchie Cube

A fantastic challenge from Gingersnap Creations: Inchies. Although working on quite a small scale with my art work at times, I have never created any inchies - till now. It was exciting and really forced me to see background and images in a very different way especially when using stamps. Most of the stamps I chose were too big ... so it was decision time which part of the stamped image to use ... and the size of the 'negativ' areas on the stamps needed to be considered ... at times the inked parts became too overwhelming for the inchie.
Following the September theme of Ancient Ages I found some very nice stamps from Non-Sequitur 'Greco-Roman Collage Elements' which fitted the bill nicely

Lucy, the most talented September Muse at Gingersnap Creations, has inspired me to use a new technique for creating the inchies: stamping on tissue. I loved it! The inchies were cut from watercolour card which I covered with vathe rious colours of Rangers Distress and VersaColor ink. The images are stamped on tissue. I covered the inked inchies with Decopatch Glue (use plenty!) and put the tissue onto the glued area smoothing it out quickly and carefully. Once the glue was dried I applied a second layer of Decopatch glue to harden the surface and to give it a little bit of shine.

The final part was to decide what to do with the inchies ... inchies are so versatile and can be used for so many projects ... my friend Jane mentioned the inchie cube in the Craft Stamper magazine and so it was decided (lol) ... a template for the cube is listed at Stamphenge

I printed the template on white card, coloured it with Ranger Distress ink and covered it with lots of pink Stickles. After forming the cube the inchies were attached. A metal wire goes through the top and bottom of the cube ... as embellishments I used beads and sequins and a little stamped and layered ornament to cover the top and bottom part around the wire.

I loved the whole process ... I want to make more inchies ... but I have to be careful they are addictive (lol). Have a go and check out the fabulous creations at Gingersnap Creations, Petra.

National Cupcake Week

I couldn't resist (lol) .....

Happy Cupcake-ing, Petra.xx

Paint Chip Scraplings

These scraplings are for the Gingersnap Creations 'Paint Chip Scraplings' exchange ... challenging and different.
The size of the scraplings is 3.8cm x 10.8cm for one half ... not so easy to choose a design and the stamps. The paint chips themselves were also a bit tricky ... the name of the colour and the colour code were printed in each of the white separator lines ... I only used the colour strips and not to worry about the characters. This way I was also able to mix and match. These strips were glued onto card ready to be stamped, embellished and eventually layered onto patterned papers or plain card

papers: cosmo cricket, the Background Fairy, black and white textured card, Basic Grey, Splendid Fiins office paper
stamps: Elzybells, Hein Design, Bettys Creations, Little-Z
ink: Brilliance, VersaColor, Ranger Distress ink
Stickles, Glossy Accents

Each scrapling has also an inside in case you would like to leave a little note, Petra.

Make a Splash

... the theme for August at Addicted to ATCs. It fitted so well into the summer holiday period

The ducks are free clip art, the children images from Magic Moonlight Free Images, Flickr photostreams from clotho98's and Suzee Que. The blue splashes are stamped with Darkroom Door stamps and VersaColor ink.
The next swap theme is schooldays. Why not hop over to 'Addicted to ATCs' and join the swap? It is always really great fun. Petra.

A Spot of Colour

Susan set the OLW challenge to: B&W with a Spot of Colour ... immediately a special stamp came to my mind - special because it was one which I bought during my first ever visit of a craft fair. It is a Penny Black stamp with five sitting little birdies ... one of them is the odd one out because its tail feathers are pointing into the air

I stamped the little one in light blue onto a scrapling but then couldn't resist to glitter it as well (lol), Petra.

Civilization and Punches

You might wonder what this has got to do with each other .... this is the new challenge Gingersnap Creations Spicy Supply challenge: Punches within the cycle of celebrating the Ancient Ages this month. Oh dear, this was a challenege because I do not really use punches, I only own a handful of them mainly edge punches. But I have a very good friend and colleague Jane who is the papercraft wizard in the office and she helped me. She came with a bag full of punches for me to choose ... thank you so much, Jane. Otherwise it would have been a real struggle ... well, it still was difficult.
This week all students went back to school in England. All dads and mums had been talking about this event for the whole of last week so I thought it would be an appropriate topic for my card
I chose one of the old greek scholars as focal point for the digital collage: Pythagoras. This reminds me very much of my schooltime struggling with geometry - it was not my favourite subject (lol). The card consists of various layers of kraftcard and patterned paper from Cosmo Cricket. All images are from educational web sites. I used edge, circle and a corner punch, a label punch in the inside of the card ... and, of course, the apple for the teacher which is a punch as well

If you like punches you will love this challenge and if you don't feel so comfortable with them, have a go anyway. I realised it is great fun and I maybe need to consider to get, well, some more punches (lol), happy Wednesday, Petra.

Tree Simplicity

I love trees and think we cannot have enough of them ... and to my delight Susan's OLW challenge features 'Trees' this week.

The tree stamp is from Hobby Art whereby I stamped the image using a tutorial from Susan: Stamping off the Edge ... otherwise the image would have been too big for the mini card. The leafs are coloured with colour pencils and the little flowers are set with Ranger liquid pearls.

This card is also for the Paper Players Challenge: Clean and Simple.

Happy Monday, Petra.

Miss Sunflower

Please, may I introduce you to Miss Sunflower? She is a tribute to all the amazing and wonderful sunflowers which grow around my allotment plot. I absolutely love all the varieties of sunflowers with their huge flower heads, their wonderful colours ... all the different tones of yellow and brown
I created the cotton reel doll for the Art 'n' Soul challenge on Flickr. The challenge was set by Viv ... she always has the most amazing and challenghng ideas! The challenge was based on the design and instructions from Sue Roddis and was featured in a recent issue of Craft Stamper Magazine and there were two MUSTs:
must be made from torn strips of card and her face must be a stamped image

I must admit the lady turned out to be quite chunky with a body made of watercolour card torn in strips and painted with thinned acrylic paint. I wiped of some of the paint to get a more uneven surface. The stamp for the face is from Heindesign stamped on Cosmo Cricket paper which I also used for the leaves ie arms (lol). The sunflower frame around the face is a free image from Arthur's Clip Art. The head and the arms together with the body looked quite plain at the time ... so embellishments were needed and I started to experiment with stamps and shrink plastic to make some buttons. This is such fun! I used the same stamp for the image on the pockets where some faux stitching appears ... and, of course, the pockets of a sunflower lady in a garden are always filled with some goodies ......
Enjoy the late summer days, Petra.

Time Travel

Back to Ancient Ages - for Gingersnap Creations and as Visiting Artist! I am so thrilled and I still cannot believe it! But I was more than happy to start the journey for the month of September with going on a trip back in time .... Egypt, land of pyramids, treasures, sand, pharaos and so much more. My little pyramid book will tell you a story about the journey, the sites to visit and the treasures to find. It all started with a map ....
... and the plan to follow the sun and the stream into a foreign land by means of boat, animals and on foot ....

... in the end to find a long lost treasure ....

To create this little book I used slightly textured 300gsm watercolour card and covered it inside and outside with Rayher patterned paper. The vintage images are from The Vintage Moth and Arthur's Clipart. I stamped the Egyptian images with Tanda stamps with brilliance and Elzybells hybrid ink onto the watercolour card. You will find quite a bit of embossing using papermania gold embossing powder because I eventually treated myself to a heatgun and need to practise a lot (lol) ... and lots of stickles and glitter. The little sarkophag is made of Fimo, the mould is from Lucy who kindly offered me the mould when she heard that I would travel to ancient Egypt. Lucy is a very talented lady and she is this month's muse over at Gingersnap Creations.

Now you know all about my travel, why don't you hop over to Gingersnap Creations to see for yourself all the amazing work from the DT, the visiting artists and Lucy and hopefully even take part yourself? Petra.

NB Somebody very close to my heart now pointed out that Ancient Ages is a whisky and was surprised that I had only thought of it in historical terms ... well, I suppose it is all about getting your priorities right (lol)