What happened?

Seems like nothing happened as it is more than 2 years (!) since I last posted. Well that is not true.
i was not able to communicate much and had some health issues, like eye operations, bone cancer therapies, all very energy-sapping. There is a feeling of emptiness and I thought I was not able to create. But I did some art in a slower pace.
Some examples here of a subject I like very much: animals. I think I will have to make some more of these…

It started with this little guy, a blind owl named Zeus.
Then came these 3 creatures …

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It was so much fun I created some pages in a journal

No, it wasn‘t nothing. I was just too exhausted to share in my blog.

Thanks a lot for visiting!

Hope to see you soon dear creative friend!

Gabriele

I want spring – now

February is the month I like least of all. I feel that spring is just around the corner but the weather is miserable and cold…

So I had to follow my desire and manifest it in some small creations. Well, it worked for me and brightened my day!

These wonderful stamps from Rubber Dance were just perfect for the tag and card to meet my spring feeling. For the tag I used the sheets „Weed Love“, „I Heart Art“ and „Affirmations“ and the card also „Affirmations“ and „Da Vinci“.

These two creations will enter the Rubber Dance  colour challenge February. They would make a nice Valentine gift also!

Happy creating!

Gabriele

 

WOYWW 302

Today I am not going to talk about time that flies by, I am going to show you that I did not have any to do art the last 2 days.

But I would not let you go without showing you some. Art I mean. Do you remember the canvas on my desk a few weeks ago? I made some changes and here it is:

 

If you wonder about a cow dancing around – here is the explanation: Monikka, The Black Swan. Have fun reading the story, I am off in the garden again, Luna, the garden inspector is waiting! She just saw an easter bunny, isn´t she silly?

Have a nice day and thank you for your visit!

Gabriele

 

envelopes, envelopes and cards

Hi dear WOYWW friends! Welcome to my place! As we all realize time flies by and it is Wednesday again.

Last week I had a, Art Journal on my desk and tataaaa it is finished. You can read all about it on the last post: Autumn – a one word poem

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One project still keeps me busy: printed envelopes with matching cards. Here you can see some examples, just printed, no stamping or decoration, just to give you an idea of the possible varieties.

 

I finished 2 envelopes with some Rubber Dance stamps. The complete workaround you can see over on my Rubber Dance blog: Make it easy: envelope and matching card

 

I wish you some nice, warm and sunny autumn days. Hope to see you next week again!

Cheers

Gabriele

ICAD Completed With Vibrant Grunge

I made it!!! I completed the ICAD 2014 challenge hosted by Daisy Yellow aka Tammy Garcia. It feels really great.

I got a big boost from my new toys – stencils from Seth Apter. I bought them all, because I live in Germany and Stencil Girl products are hard to get over here. So I scratched together my money and made myself a nice present with a load of stencils. This made it so easy finishing challenge, because it was just playing and trying out new things.

I got the feeling Seth designed the stencils just for me 🙂 – they are just my cup of tea! Just trying out the stencils gave me such a super base for my work I am sure, I will be using them a lot in the future.

I will post 3 cards now and some more in the next post as I created them also with the wonderful stamps from Rubber Dance. I mentioned in the previous post, that I am a member of the Rubber Dance design team (YAY!!) and I will show you, what a Mixed Media artist can do with stamps. So here are the first 3 cards – thanks a lot for your „help“ Seth Apter! I got so nice comments on the cards like: „Love your vibrant, grungy card!!!“ or „Love your vibrant, grungy card!!!“ I can only say – you are right!

Thanks for visiting and taking your time to read my blog! Pop in any time, you are welcomed!

 

Time is Flying

I cannot believe, it is already June and I haven´t posted for almost 5 months. The reason is I had very much to do with a loss in the family, also I lost my dog Chiara. She is the tricolour on the left side. I miss her so much…

All this made me unable to do art as much as I wanted. At the same time I had a lot of classes (still have) and challenges going on. So I started posting a lot more on Pinterest and Facebook. If you are interested – Pinterest address is http://www.pinterest.com/artatag/ and FB: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Artatag/303197663141100?fref=ts

I started a series of smaller canvases 30×40 cm. At the moment, they are in a smaller exhibition in Haus der Ge(h)zeiten in Buchenau (Germany).

Here are some paintings resulting from the classes I took, most of them are on Pinterest.

Last but not least is the ICAD 2014 challenge still running. I am way behind. I will be posting my cards here on this blog: https://artatag.wordpress.com/galerie-2/icads-2014/

Now enough talking, I must go and work to keep track!

How I conquered the fog

In the last days we had a streak of very foggy weather. That fog can easily drive you into depressions, or make you eat and drink stuff you should stay away from – because you want to loose weight. Ha!

So I thought I best paint myself a nice picture with a positive person and a positive quote on it and feel better. This usually helps, believe me.

So I got a printed background, glued some newspaper clips on it and some self printed paper, used some stamps and waited for the inspiration to come. And waited, and waited. 3 cups of tea later I got bored of waiting and took a closer look at my background, which now just called for some finishing ink drips, more stamps, some more snippets and tataaaa, my background turned into a picture!!

Are these the right words?

Hello dear WOYWW friends!

In my last post I was talking about having difficulties finding the right words.

For me it is easier to act freely with my text and relate it to the pictures, either painting or collage. When a photo speaks to me it is easier for me to find the right words.

In my stash I found these 3 magazine prints and I liked them, as they are. This dog with wings gave me a dreamy impression of a land, where every being can fly. Even the dogs and of course myself. Seemed like a nice place to me :-). So the quote is „Take me to a place where even dogs can fly and sing their yearning songs“. All my words and that seems to work with me.

The terrible news from the Phillipines make me want to find this land even more than before. What is going to happen to our world? How shall we overcome all these problems?

We have a challenge in our German speaking group „Traummalzeit“. It started this week and it is all about colours. We use recycled cardboard for the cards, it works wonderful!

If you are interested in this challenge, just look at https://artatag.wordpress.com/traumkarten/

Sorry for being a bit short today, but I visited my dentist yesterday and donated 1 tooth.

Hopefully see you next week with more results from our new challenge.

WOYWW 231

Hi WOYWW friends!

Long time no see! At least I have that feeling, as I was not able to post much during the last weeks du to some minor surgeries and things like that, which nobody needs.

Now I am back with loads of projects. I started working on tags for the coming seasons. That is why my workspace looks so messy (NO my workspace always looks that messy)! I mostly paint my works as you can see, so I can never tell what it will look like. I plan some red/green patterns for christmas and I end up with blue and gold. I also made some new stamps, which come in quite handy for my new tags. Here you go:

Then I finished an art journal page which sat on my desk and waited for some important words to be said, but I could not think of any. So here is my outcoming: „Sometimes I cannot find the right words“.

If you look close, you see, that the words hide behind flowers. I admit, I have problems, just using all these wonderful words (you know – love, peace, faith, trust, you probably know many more). Just like that. I need a little story behind the words, but some stories make me speechless.

When I was a child we had little friendship books where we our friends wrote little poems or just these wonderful words combined with flowers, angels, birdies etc. You know these little cut out pictures with mostly glitter on them. Well, when someone wanted me to write into her book, I always panicked. I DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO WRITE! There seemed to be some rules, we had to follow (I was never fond of rules), it was not possible to write in your own words, no it had to be the right words. Well some things never change – I am still searching…..

Let us help Marit in WOYWW

Dear WOYWW friends,

this time I am not going to show my workspace, I am asking you to help Marit Barentsen with her wonderful magazine FEATURING:

You all know it, because there is this great article about Julia Dunnit and her successful WOYWW blog in issue 4. I blogged about that already, because my workspace was mentioned in that article.

It is unbelievable, this unique magazine is in danger and needs our support. Nobody can explain it better that Marit, so here is an excerpt of an email I received from her:

„FEATURING magazine released four issues now and the respons is very positive, but we notice that still a lot of people haven’t heard of our magazine… in order to keep my baby – this awesome art publication – alive and going, we have to spread the word and get more brand awareness so we can reach more customers. The release of the next issue depends on that.

Therefore, I decided to set up a special promoting CAMPAIGN, starting on October 21 with a big BANG. The team and I hope we can make some noise and we can do that with your help! We’ve partnered with Thunderclap to promote the magazine and we ask all our friends and fans to help promote the magazine.

Thunderclap is an app where you can donate a tweet or Facebook status update to support. When we reach our goal – 250 supporters on October 21 – a message will go out via facebook and twitter updates. It will only happen once and the app won’t spam your friends. The end result is massive amounts of people are reached and the name of FEATURING magazine will be heard. If we do not reach the 250 supporters, nothing will happen. We have only one week left…

So now I am emailing all contributors, friends, followers and fans to ask them to please visit the FEATURING Thunderclap page and donate a tweet or Facebook status update to help me promote the magazine. http://thndr.it/15OjQip

I hope you are willing to do that too…

Thank you so very much, and a big hug from Holland,

Marit Barentsen (editor-in-chief)“

FEATURING really impressed me, because this magazine is different and touched my nerve. There are many great magazines on the market about crafting and painting. But this one is made by Marit who is an art friend of us and a very talented artist herself, who knows all about Art Journaling and the special art scene in the internet. At least, she knows, what I want to read. And this magazine is not clustered with tons of advertisements. So please help Marit to keep this wonderful magazine alive. Thank you, my friends.