Superhero B-Day

Last year was a busy and crafty year. And one of the crafty highlights was - of course - the birthday of my son.

This time the theme was SUPERHEROES.

Besides some little and big POWs and BANGs around the garden and around the cake the kids got some paper masks to first cut out and then wear. But some of them were already prepared for the the theme. Probably because of the invitation cards we sent beforehand.

For them I went on uTube, learned how to draw little guys and girls called "Chibis" and voilà: Little Superheroes for a very personal comic invitation.

Since I am still struggling with killing information out of pictures I only show the Chibis here. Will deliver the finished invitation once I won the fight.

And now: Guess the heroes! ;)

Edit: The last one I made a second time since the first one really was the first one and did not look quite as good as the others in the end.

Other crafts

Today I want to show some more stuff I tried during the last months...

This is a very small part of what I made during my first workshop at the potter wheel. I wanted to do this for ages and finally got around to do it. What can I say? I am hooked and will go again in February….

This was something that came to my mind when looking for a suitable pressie for my neighbour. Looked pretty with a single flower in it (plus some green) although it is not something I will do much more often. Other things are much more fun! 

And last but not least… This is the castle tower I built around the bed of my son. It is not perfect but non the less: My son loves it and I am very proud to have built it with my own hands.

Wool in work

I also do knitting and crocheting again. Why again? I learned it as a child, did all from the usual oven cloth up to own pullovers. But at some point I just knitted socks every now and then, not much more.

Through a good friend I got into a group that decorates the city I live in with crocheted stuff at special events - and I got to find out what else you can do with these kind of crafts. And got hooked again...

These two are made to sit on waterliliy-leaves (of isolating board) that were fixed on the bottom of the little river which flows through town. Sadly the anchors did not hold through a heavier rain and all I have left are these pictures:

Meet Kurt, the Frog:

And I also found out, that socks cannot only be knitted but crocheted too. My first try on that was very colourful and perfect for my little boys feet:

I am always happy about comments, so feel free to leave them. Every critic is welcome as long as it is nicely meant. :)

Old stuff

A few things that are a bit older but still too nice to NOT been shown.

Acrylic painting from 2009 at the East Sea

 One of my first cards… ever! Made for Mother's Day.

 My first wedding card - for a friend.

 The card for my boy's 5th birthday. To be opened between ship and number.

And my all-time-favourite Halloween-Card. Only as big as the palm of my hand. Small but "oho"! ;)

10 months later...

I have been absent for quite a while. But that only concerns the world wide web, not my "crafty corner" at home. And before I start in a new Christmas season I thought I show you some of the things I put my time and heart into.

This was an order by my Mom for a little girls first day at school. Mom wanted to give some money into the envelope so I left the cone open to put a folded banknote inside...

Advent calendar matchbox style

Little introduction for those of you who don't know how an advent calendar works:

People (mostly kids) get these before December 1st coz that's when you start opening it. It's got 24 little doors, pockets or alike (little drawers in this case), one for each day until Christmas. So at the 24th you open the last one.

In Germany every kid has at least one - it goes from simple bought ones with chocolate inside up to big (and expensive) ones from Lego, Playmobil, Barbie... whatever you can imagine. Of course - as it is with everything: Selfmade is the best!

Since I've seen lots of these matchbox drawer advent calendars in blogs and you tube videos I decided to try and make one. My son already had a bought one from his Grandma so I thought it would be only fair if this Grandma (aka my Mom) gets one too.

It was a big project - as it always is - coz I went far too much into detail again (like embossing the numbers on the drawers for example). But the outcome is pretty nice for a first... See for yourselves:

The drawers are pretty small of course so I had a hard time finding lots of different stuff to put in. For example: The only selfmade Christmas cookies that fit in were the little stars. I found some small chocolate Santas for 6th December (our "Nikolaustag") and the final 24th. I put in some jelly beans, some "Merci" chocolates and every of the sides also inherited a lottery scratch ticket.

Thankfully this one is not for the bin, it can be used again. But next time Moms boyfriend has to find stuff to fill it with, not me! ;)

Chrissycards

Of course I also made some Christmas cards this last year. Took a sketch, a Christmas paper set I bought (but didn't use) the year before, three Spellbinders die cuts, eyelets (although I needed two different eyelet-setter because one of the eyelets was too far in the middle for the Crop-o-dile), glue, the distresser and distress inks.

Oh, of course I used the little die cuts to create the sentiment which I attached with a bracelet.

This are almost half the amount I made. Took up quite some time... ;)

Christmas - crafty time

This year lots of my Christmas gifts to friends and family came directly out of my crafty corner. Here are a few of them.

After the woman in my fav crafty shop promised me that they really do their job well - and lasting - I bought a few of the porcellan pens and had to try them right away. First I prettified a mug for my (almost) sis-in-law, the girlfriend of the guy some call "Batman"... ;)

And I got the hang of it so I made some Cappuccino cups for one of my best friends and her boyfriend:

For my godchild I went back to the usual "paperwork" and made a cooking recipe book with her fav colours violet and green.

I obviously filled some pages with some recipes the girl likes... But those are family secrets... ;)

Pressie-Wrap

Another birthday, another crafty challenge. In my cupboard was only kiddy and Christmas wrapping-paper left so I had to think of a different way to wrap this box with lots of books in it:

Resolution: Take some thick white A3 paper (three in my case) and start stamping. One stamp up to 4 times on each paper - disarranged and criss-cross - cover those prints with paper or post-its, take another stamp and do the same thing... keep doing this until the pages look like this:

The rest is just boring business of covering the box with these papers and the edges with plain black cardbord stripes. I then made a simple closure out of black and white card stock which I attached with a sticky hook-and-loop fastener (Klettverschluss for the Germans ;)).

This is the outcome:

I think it was worth the effort - and looks like the b-day girl thinks so too! :)

Back in business... ;)

Did not post much lately and do not even have a good excuse for it. Just needed a blogging-break for some reason. But even if I do not like new years resolutions - it obviously also works without having one! ;)

So I decided to post some pictures of the many things that kept me busy in my little workshop-corner during my silent months. Starting with the most recent things, which would be some birthday pressies. I was invited to the unbelievable amount of three birthdays this weekend and two of the pressies were my duty.

Although - the first pressie is a two-in-one because this is a couple who's b-days are just a week apart. Since I was not there for the first one I brought both pressies to the second:

They got a bookmark each. For that I used the big Ranger-Tags, distress inks, masks and lots of stamps.

I also tried the Ranger crackle paint bronze with this but I don't think I am really getting the hang of that one. If anyone has got lots of experience with those inks and some tipps for me, how to use it better or on which projects I should use it - please let me know! I am happy for every hint. Thx a mil! :D

Girly B-Day

Another little girls birthday is coming up so I spent an afternoon with some more pink... It actually came out quite nice (my godchild - age 15 - loves it) although I did the "quicky" one and just cut out some bunny print on an old and neglected design paper I bought ages ago in Dublin.

Here it is:

The sketch I used is from Sketch N Stash (my stash is the design paper mentioned above that also provided the ribbon style horizontal line and the tag).
Stempelsonne does the "Birthday" theme with #60 (suits me) - and also wants some die cuts (which I used with the circle).
Also in there is Kartenallerlei with challenge #51 and that's "Animals".
And Stempelträume #128 does the same, just they call it "Pets". Guess my littly bunny counts for both.

Eastering

Still some cards to be done and Easter comes closer and closer! So I sat at my crafting table tonight and here is what happened:

I want to combine quite a few challenges with it:
The great sketch (always the first thing to choose) is by Stempeleinmaleins- it's on for the whole month, might even use it again...
Then I tried the Bingo by Stamps & Fun = Creativity - this is supposed to be the monochrome / lace / bow diagonal one. Hope that the thing on the left counts as a bow since the string wasn't long enough anymore to really make one (need new supplies... still...).
Then there are a few Easter themes around so this goes into the pot of Take time for you, Everybody Art and Totally Papercrafts.
Another common theme is "Anything goes" and here we jump into Papertake weekly (with - how convenient - option of "monochrome") and Simon Says Stamp (hope it's not too late for that one).

And now let's see if I get another one done before the holiday knocks at the door...

Interlude

Birthday invitation on short notice - had to quickly make a card. Did not come out as colourful as a two year old would like most but had to combine my papers with my ideas ... and my challenges. With more time I would probably make another one and keep this for an older birthday girl, but the big day is tomorrow...

So here is the card:

And the involved challenges are first of all the lovely sketch of Mojo Monday plus the recipe of Paperminutes (2 design papers, 2 colours, 2 flowers - hope it's allright that I have one more design paper than requested - the girl is stamped in brown!) and I would also like to join the challenge of Simon says Stamp with "Anything goes".

Experimental Card

I am not that much of a colour-mix person, more the monochorme type really. So choosing a challenge that mixes 4 colours is some sort of experiment for me.

Soooo, I found that challenge of Colour Create with the (for me) strange colour combination of pink (so not me), blue, sage (which aparently is some sort of green) and white/cream. I did some distressing, not sure if that counts for ripped/torn, but that's optional anyway.

I chose the sketch of Sunday Sketch & Stamp for it, although I wanted it in egg-form so hope the changes I made still make it count for the challenge. Putting some more dots/perls/flowers in it would have been just too much for me... ;)

Since the big egg is stripey and the dominant one, I also want to join the challenge of Fun with Shapes & more with this card.

And now - here it is, the card with the colours that are so not me:

Green spring - the final one

Okay, with this one I am done with the over-green I guess. Just found a colour challenge with blue and - hold on - PINK! - and decided to try it. Maybe I'll manage today.

But first is my remaining card from this weekends crafting attack:

The sketch is from Sunday Sketch & Stamp, slightly changed it, hope that's ok. And to match it we have the theme "Friendship" from Everybody Art - which finally allowed me to use that great square text stamp that was still slumbering in my folder.

Just found out (again) that I do not have enough sentiment-stamps. Need to go shopping...

Edit says: Guess what? I missed the Sunday Sketch & Stamp one coz - surprise - it is Sunday! So only one challenge for this card then. Will still set the link of coure since they povided the great sketch!

Springcard-Mania

As promised - I did more cards and want to show those too. And of course I used some challenges as inspiration and will join them now. Not that many this time though, I used most of them on the other card. But I so liked the colour combination that I kept using it, trying out different sketches on them.

(You could also say that I am a bit short on springlike colours that do not involve pink, but who would want to tell...? ;))

And the outcome is:

The sketch - the most important thing when I do a card - is by Mojo Monday (who rarely have a sketch I do not like) and I tried to match it with the "Bingo - 3 in a row"-challenge of Papertake weekly. So in here you can find the middle row: Ribbon + free + punched shapes. I also used a button but the gems finally did not really match the optics of that card. But my clovers did (which is a punch I got for my birthday last year so you could also say I got it "for free" ;)).

Well, anyway, there are no more challenges involved here. Hope you like it - and that whoever gets it will like it too.

About (spring)time

The cold winter is finally over. First of all time to go outside and get some warmth by sunlight into the system. But then there is this big weekend coming up, involving eggs and rabbits, and that screams for new home decorations (once the chaotic basement reveals its hiding place...) AND for some cards of course.

So I was busy getting the first one's together, of course using sketches and themes of challenges for inspiration. Here is No. 1:

So the sketch is from Karteneinerlei and Take time for you asks for "Butterflies" (clearly in use here). There are also three sites with the same theme "springime", which are Kreative Stempelfreunde, Stamps & Fun = Creativity and finally my chance to join the Irishteddy's challenge with "Awakening spring" (not sure if that is the right translation to be honest...). Creative Inspirations thinks that "Anything goes" - so this does also, I guess. ;)

So hope you like it as much as I do - but stay tuned, there is more to come...

Birthday times

They just keep happening at the moment so I am trying to keep up with it (which I don't - so much for my New Years resolutions). This time it is a little boy that will turn four in a few days. And these are the challenges I took for inspiration:

Charisma Cardz Challenge wants it clean and simple so I tried my best to do that (not easy for Mrs. Distressing). I chose the sketch of Simon Says Stamp for it. Since it does have a button, I will also take part in the Papertake Weekly Challenge. And since "Anything goes" with Paperminutes I will jump in there as well.

And that's the result of this evenings work:

EDIT wants to say something too (Challenge teams please read):

Blogspot has a problem with the comments so I had a hard time putting my comments down on the sites or sometimes even open the special challenge posts. Since everything kept freezing I stopped trying and linked to the main blogpage only.

There is a bug and it's being worked on I read but in the meantime use the workaround: Change your comment settings (design-settings-posts&comments) to either fullscreen or pop-up. It'll work fine then - at least it did with my blog.

Inbetweens

Had to make some things since right before Christmas that was just for fun (no challenges involved) - like these:

For the kids of a friend - nice bookmarks too

 or I took the sketch, made a card - and did not get around to post and participate - like these:

For my Godchild (she's 15)

For a friend - certain size for holding a voucher

But even though, they do belong to my little collection here...

But as I write that, the last one is just over a week old and it's got the Carisma Cardz Challenge theme (without the 3 as a number though) and so I might just as well jump in there with it.

Special Birthday

My friend turned 30 on Friday 13th... uuuh, scary. And a reason to make a special card (as she is into witches and stuff anyway).

So I took the sketch of Kartenallerlei, chose the colours of Night-Shift-Stamping and the theme of Charisma Cardz Challenge (plus a few "3"s as this is part of the date AND the age) - et voilà there it is:

Sadly my normal glue was empty so I took the kids one - and it got messy... Uhu and I are just not made for each other...