Swallows, swirls and vintage paper

Some impressions of cards and wrappings, of tags and comissions I made before and especially because of christmas :)

Just pages of an old book, one of my hand carved swallow stamps, swirl stamps (I used them from viva  decor) and a stamping pad with silver ink...

...oh... and of course a scissor and glue ^^

Advent calendar - 18th

Not made by me ^^ I found these little owl paper clips in a book store. They just made me smile and I already bought them several times for different people!

Bird ornament card

I cut some card board elements to create ornaments... and thought I should draw myself a template for the future. Like the one I used for my felt birds (have a look here and more birds here). 

But then I thought... mh... looks cute as it is, why not make a postcard out of it? So here is my bird ornament card! To make your own little bird ornament ^^

My will go on its way tomorrow!

If you want to make your ow: Feel free to print my bird :) 

Advent calendar 2012 - ongoing process

For a long time now I make advent calendars. It started with my sister and my brother when they were really small and I just a teenager... and I just added people which are dear to me on the list. Our parents get one together and a friend of mine gets a special advent calendar with the one and only theme in all the years: pink! 

While collecting stuff and sweets, stamping and glueing the tags... I realized that one person is missing on my list: Rumpel. We started our relationship in january this year, so this is really a first one ^^ (the one above is the one for him! Already hanging at the wall in the kitchen)

Old book pages (the colour is due to real age! No way to get this by any painting!) glued on card board, stamped card board...

You see the beautiful silver in the black? First I put a little bit of silver ink on the stamp and then went over with black ink.

I also stamped black on pink cardboard or silver on the old book pages. I like the vintage look. 

For my brother (tophino) and our parents I made little paper packages with old music sheets from rumpel. He had some printed on white paper and some on recycled paper.... I hung them at the key just to keep them out of the way and safe. Now they are already in the kitchen at my parents home! Just forgot to take pictures...

...more tags...

...music sheets...

...you see how great the silver ink is? It really reflects the light!

I also packed the advent calendar for my sister Lachafa. From five advent calendars for six people... four are finished! 

Wrapping is really time consuming!

Stamping - Use what you can find!

I love background stamps. Especially the ones using dots. But most of the time I think them way too expensive. Hey, we are talking about some rubber and dots! 

I just used some foamed rubber stickers (I got a big package in an euro store but you can get cheap foamed rubber stamps nearly everywhere!). I glued them on some wood (0,5 cm between every dot, I drew the lines with a ruler on the wood before).

I also made some tiny stamp...

Or you would rather like some distressed dots as background? Use some bubble plastic!

See the effect?

Love it!

Or cut some foamed rubber...

Use the foamed rubber stickers itself as stamps!

If you don't like there shape, just cut them in the desired shape (I also added an eye!)

Oh, and another hand carved stamps which I made after a paper cut out design...

(but to be honest, my knife was not sharp enough anymore)

As you see, I use just some wood leftovers to mount the stamp!

Bigger dots!

To clean them I use some baby oil wipes / towels.

And my stamp trials :)

Inside your cell

Okay, it seems that I am a little bit slow sometimes. I mean: Hey, I just realized that I still don't have a cell stamp. And I am a biologist! Without a (an eukaryotic) cell stamp!

I was a little bit shocked by myself. Really! So I had to change that...

...and carved an eukaryotic cell stamp ^^

I just stamped with lino print colours (it is a big stamp) on water colours like here.

Mh... and I think I need another one, this time more detailed or "stuffed"? Or just a beautiful neuron? 

PS: Who can name all the structures inside the cell? ;)

Print on water colours - tree stencil

I used my tree stamp with lino print colour and made a print on top of the pink circle. The circle is just artistic water colours (you know how I love them!). 

To get a little bit more of a structured / strange patterned colour I added some salt cristals on the still wet surface. The salt cristals will start to soak the water inside and create this little patterns. 

I just use normal salt from the kitchen for this effect. 

If you want to see transfered the stencil / image of the tree silhouette onto a rubber stamp carving plate - just have a look here [How to transfer pictures for stamp carving...]

Or have a look how I created the tree silhouette from a foto [Tree stencils]

My vintage eastern critter - playing with the rabbit

This is the leftover of a rabbit I cut out of an old book page. It was just per accident that I laid it on my "try-it-all" book cover. Doens't it look great? I took a picture and again: I played with all the photo editing features of picasa. Oh.... and no... I can't decide which one would be my favorite! I love them all! A little bit to late for eastern this year... but next year I will print some of the pictures in a high quality to make some cards out of them!