transfer

I know I'm late , but I'm not TOO late.
Here you see my transfer, made in structural gel. I let it dry completly, then rubbed of the back paper ( image from a magazine). Now i'm happy with it - in the beginning I thought it was to "milky".
The stamp is from paper-artsy. To distress I used the fired brick distress ink. Lovely combination, hey...!???

rainbow colours purple and blue

This stamp comes from "stampotique" and it arrived to me in one of the parcels that Jaine and I opened last friday. I just adore the stamps from "Jill Penney and Daniel Torrente". The bird-stamp is from "paper-artsy" and the background is from "artemio".
Hope you all like my arch - it was great fun doing it!

Christmas in march?

No, we didn't go to Dortmund this year - we stayed in my basement and opened parcels we had ordered. Concidering the high prices and the "buy - rush" on a craft fair, a couple of weeks ago we decided to stay at home instead. I took a day of work and told everybody that we would go to Dortmund. We felt really naughty hiding in the basement - but, my goodness, we sure had a good day.
SOOO, we had made different orders and opened the parcels this morning. X-MAS!!!




So, what did we do the whole day?
Jaine showed me different ways of doing transfers.
We made inchies, tried our new stamps and distress inks and really enjoyed ourselfes. For lunch, we had a chinese take-out so we could stay out of the kitchen the whole day. Above you can see some of the things we did...




My very first inchies put on a small canvas.



Another gothic arch in stunning colours and new images.
Thank you for a lovely day, Jaine!

Coconut rice with mangetout

Today my oldest daughter cooked her first meal for the family. It was so delicious that I have to share the recipe with you.
4 pers.

400 g mangetout(like a flat haricot vert)
1 bunch of spring onions
1 yellow pepper
1 onion
5 garlic cloves
5 cm ginger
2 tbsp oliveoil
300 g rice
ca 400 ml coconutmilk
250 ml veg stock
2 tbsp lemonjuice
2 ts currypowder
salt
1 bunch of basil

Wash the mangetout and cut all the vegetables. Heat up the oil in the wok and fry the vegetables for 2-3 min. Take the veggies out of the wok. Now you heat up the wok again and you add onion, ginger and garlic.
Add the rice.
Add the coconutmilk, lemonjuice and veg stock. Let it cook for 15 min.
Add the veggies again and let it all get warm.
Serv on plates and decorate with basilic.
Enjoy!

Bugs awakening Springtime

I was happy to be able to use my cuttlebug again.
The lovely lovebird is punched out of wallpaper from the local school(believe it or not, my daughter brought home many kilos of wall paper sampels).
Springtime for me is the return of colours, birds singing and the awakening of insects to feed these lovely, singing birds.
"Around the block" has got these wonderful sayings. Jaine brought me a sheet with sayings about bugs. Right then I didn't know what to do with it, but today is a perfect day to use at least one -

"Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother"

or two -

"Aerodynamically the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn't know it, so it goes on flying anyway.

or three -

"We hope that,
when the insects
take over the world,
they will remember
with gratitude
how we took them along
on all our picnics.

So from my lovebird to all of you out there

"Don't let things bug you... " Wish you all a lovely springtime sunday!

"Mother and child"

"Mother and child".
This weeks challenge was chosen by my good friend Jaine so this time I was prepared.
A child takes very much of your time and energy. Once you have a child you know you can't live without it. I remember that my first fear appeared with my first child. Before having a child I can't remember ever feeling fear for anything- but now- what if something happened to my little child? Suddenly I was vulnerable! I will never forget that feeling.

Phantasy

Phantasy " nâcken".
Haven't had time for myself lately so I am very, very late for this weeks challenge.
In my childhood in Sweden everybody spoke about "Nâcken", who was somebody playing wonderful music to get the children to come closer to the water. Listening to this music eventually the children would fall into the water and be gone forever.
" Nâcken" took them. As a child I loved all the horrible stories about this young man and still I have the deapest respect for water...

"hottie in blue"

My first skinny
Not "lady in red" but " hottie in blue"
A new stamp, bought in Creativa Metz(craft fair) a couple of weeks ago ( the ONLY one I bought because they simply didn't have much interesting). I payed 15 Euros for it and last week I checked Creavil( stamp shop) in Berlin and they only wanted 9,50 Euros. So MAYBE I shouldn't go to Dortmund (the biggest craftfair i have ever been to) this year. Maybe they ALL raise their prices because they KNOW we get crazy in there.
Anyway- I adore the colour blue... Did you ever notice how lovely blue goes with brown...?

The colour brown

I did have some good fun doing this book. The inspiration came during our holidays in South Africa. Everything was brown . After a while I had to try the colour in different combinations; gold, silver, pink, blue ...
I sewed the pages onto the paper bags and I like the effect of seams on paper.
The paper bag book is of course one of Jaines' design.
So this is just one out of many books I made, inspired by Africa.

" for your eyes only"

I do love the colour brown( even more in combination with pink). I like it so much that I even made a paper bag book with the colour brown.( maybe I can show it later....)
Yesterday I took my husband and some dear friends to "L'inoui" in Redange. A small place where you get some lovely, austrian inspired food while you listen to wonderful music.
It was a " rounder girl" named Tini Kainrath who played for us with her gorgeous band. I met them last year and totaly fell in love... Now it was my husband turn! The pianist ( Mario Pecoraro) plays the piano as noone else;;;--- You believe he will jump of his chair but somehow he still manages to stop from falling.
In each song he has got a solo where the whole audience feels closer to heaven.
The other two band members are excellent too, but I only have eyes for this pianist...
Tini herself is a very good singer who has put a program of "known music" together.

" Anyway, "I am what I am "and "I will survive", eventhough "this is a man's world" because "I've got a friend"!"

If one of you out there ever hears about this "gal comming to town"( Tini Kainrath) you have to promise me that you go there and you enjoy yourself... If you have just a little bit of feeling for music you will feel the beat and you will get blown away!!!

Back to the challenge...
Brown, beautiful eyes, asking for something. A lady is a lady- flower is the answer!
Pink is the colour!
Hope you all like it! Lena