Hair New Era

A week ago I opened my Etsy shop. That was a really big leap for me, something I was scared of and excited about at the same time.

I had been dreaming about my Etsy shop for quite some time - way too long, actually, before I finally started to make it happen. Even before Kelly Rae's "Flying Lessons" did I know that I wanted my shop, my own little space where I hoped to sell the pieces I created.

Why did it take so long? In the end, it certainly was fear. But I think it also was being sick for such a long time without knowing it. When your body isn't healthy, it lets you feel that without you realizing it. You're tired all the time. Your energy level is extremely low. Your optimism shrinks quite a bit. There are times, sometimes several days in a row that you feel downright depressed. You're the worst company you can imagine.

Since my surgery almost three months ago I do feel like a new person - just as my surgeon had promised. I feel healthy, energetic, optimistic. These days I have more energy than I had for a very long time - I've almost forgotten what it feels like to be healthy. I will never ever again take that for granted.

With this new energetic me I've felt confident enough to deal with my fears and see them as a challenge. I told myself that opening my own Etsy shop really does not carry a big risk - I can't lose anything, but I can gain a lot instead. So why not try it? In the worst case I am not selling anything. That would hurt, of course, but it is nothing that would ruin me. And I can tell myself that I tried and it didn't work out. Still better than not trying at all because I'm scared.

With these thoughts on my mind I set up my shop and finally opened it last week. I only told a handful of people. Of course I feel like a complete newbie which I am, but everyone at Etsy once was a newbie. I'm slowly making my way, finding connections, building up my "circle" and just getting familiar with the Etsy environment.

Yes, it is scary. It is also exciting and exhilarating. It's discovering new things every day.

It makes me feel ALIVE !!!

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So far, Inspiration Avenue's challenges often were a real challenge for me or at least quite a stretch. This week I thought "I can't do it".

The theme is "Breathe". Oh jeez. No idea, my mind went blank, and I already thought that I'll miss this challenge. But somehow my subconscious wouldn't let go, and I remembered a picture of my daughter I had taken when she was only two and we were visiting the Garden Exhibition in Graz, Austria. Fortunately I had scanned all those slides and it didn't take long until I found it.

However, the picture was crap. Real honest crap.

But... hadn't I just taken an excellent Photoshop class with Kim Klassen? Hello?? Now was the time to see what I could do with that crappy photo.

The first day was just frustrating and I decided to give up. Did I mention my subconscious? That little bugger was not in any mood close to giving up but kept haunting me at night. When I remembered that Kim had talked about vignettes... So today I grabbed my notes and started anew, played with hue and saturation and those fantastic blending modes and finally added my vignette - of course it took forever, but I was so so happy when I was done, and also a little bit proud.

Over at Kard Krazy the challenge for this week is to create just the background of a tag because often a background is beautiful in itself. So true. I've chosen a snowy background - I'm really getting in the Christmas groove. I guess it's about time.

I just discovered Inspiration Avenue less than 24 hours ago. They have weekly challenges that sound tempting and so I decided to join. Since they close on Sundays at 12:00 EST I knew that I have to post by tonight - and my design is clean and simple, the way I like it best. It's a card I think cat lovers would like.

It's been some time since I participated in any challenges. But when Louise at Kard Krazy's newest Tag Tuesday challenge was "black and orange" I knew that I had to make a tag. I got the idea for the shape from Lou and Mel at Scrap-ology.


I had so much fun with this tag that I decided to make more and give them to my guests at our upcoming Halloween party. Here's an entire coffin full of bats and skulls.

Today I want to share some exciting news with you. Recently I was invited to join Vision and Verb, one of my very favorite blogs. It is a collaboration of "women of a certain age" and its collaborators are a pretty international crowd. Back in September I wrote my very first guest post for V&V. Shortly after that Marcie Scudder sent me an email asking me whether I'd like to join.

This was the first time that my reaction was not "I can't do that" but instead a loud and clear "Yes, I want to do that!". Yes, it is a challenge for me and I'm a little bit scared, but at the same time I'm mighty excited.

One thing is sure: Your support has helped me a lot to get here. I was pretty intimidated when I started the whole blogging thing (thanks Kelly Rae!) back in July (only three and a half months ago, can you believe it?) and you came along with your openness, kindness and friendship.

My hope is that you will visit me at V&V (I'll be there every other week or so, starting this coming Saturday) and love that blog just as much as I do. And of course you will always find me here at my own blog.

The Tuesday challenges are still pretty new to me. They tend to turn into end-of-the-week challenges because I never succeed in finishing anything before Thursday. I have no clue how the other artists create all these wonderful tags and cards in such little time. I am a little bit envious... but I also like the process, and that just takes time.

So, the first challenge is for Tuesday Taggers. This week's theme is "It takes all sorts".


This project shows what I really like to do - use my photos to create cards. It is so much fun, the possibilities are endless and I just love to play around and see what I can create. I love to surround my photos with some artsy stuff.

The second challenge is for Tag Tuesday at Kard Krazy. The theme is "Banners". This is what I came up with:


Funny that both challenges resulted in an ocean theme for me. I do love the ocean, so it seems only right.

If you want to see the fantastic projects of the other wonderful artists, just stop by Tuesday Taggers and Kard Krazy.

I do love tag challenges - tags are so much fun to experiment and play around with. Louise's Tag Tuesday Weekly Challenge on her blog Kard Krazy features a different theme every week. This week's challenge is "school days". You can hop over to her blog to see more beautiful tags.

It seems that I'm sticking to the "Halloween Cats" theme this week since I'm currently designing my card-making class of the same name that will run in October.

When I checked what this week's challenge at the Tuesday Taggers will be, I found out its theme is "Diamonds are Forever". Now - how well do diamond shapes work with Halloween? They seem to be made for each other.

This is my contribution to the challenge:

Stamps I used are by Cherry Pie Art Stamps and Rusty Pickle.

I absolutely love the cat with a hat stamp by Rusty Pickle. Years ago they also had scrapbook paper with the same cat - you can see it here. I bought tons of it that time and saved it over the years. I'm still not very generous with it! Do you happen to have art supplies that you only use VERY sparingly, like favorite papers?

I was looking for a new crafty challenge in blogworld, and finally found Louise's Tag Tuesday Weekly Challenges on her blog Kard Krazy. I've been rather late, but it seems to fit.

This week's theme is "butterflies". I sprayed a tag with Glimmer Mist while masking some butterflies that I had punched out. Three of those butterflies I also sprayed with Glimmer Mist, adhered them to the tag when they had dried and bend their wings to give them a 3-D look.

It's another Wednesday - well, Tuesday evening - so it's time for WOYWW.


As you can see, it's all turquoise - I'm currently working on this week's color for the Creative Color Challenge. Turquoise is a relative new color for me, I haven't worked with that very often (I used "laguna" often or teal), and first I felt a little bit lost. I didn't have any turquoise paint, so I headed to the craft store only to realize that there is no acrylic paint called turquoise, but several different ones, some more blue, others more green. I finally went with "Desert Turquoise" which reminds me of the sea as well as of Santa Fe. Sounds good to me.

I'm in the middle of the challenge and still don't really know where it will take me. But that is the fun of it. I'm sure that it will be some sea theme, I already have stamped some shells and mermaids, they will be used in the collage, I just don't know yet in what way.

If anyone wants to join in the "What's on your work desk? Wednesday" you can stop by Julia at Stamping Ground to get more information.

Earlier this week I told you that I decided to participate in Louise Gale's Creative Color Challenge. This week's color was raspberry red and this is what I created:


I first painted the canvas with berry red acrylic paint, glued some scrapbook papers onto it, adhered the photo that I wrote about here and finally stamped shapes and letters using shades of the same acrylic paint. For painting the lighter colors on the bottom and in the upper right corner I used for the first time the paper towel technique that Kelly Rae talks about in her book "Taking Flight" (at least I think she mentions it there). I love this technique!

This was a very interesting challenge since I was only allowed to use one color including its shades and only add black and white. I loved it and I really enjoyed the process. I hadn't been creative for quite some time (pretty much the whole of summer break), so this was just wonderful. It took a few days and occupied my mind a lot, I loved mixing colors, going through my stash of papers and the stamps. I liked it more and more whenever I came back to my work table.

Yesterday I decided to join Louise Gale's Creative Color Challenge. Every week in the month of August we're creating with just one color (plus black and white) in all its shades. It sounds really interesting and after I had looked at all the wonderful art work of the "Sunflower Yellow" challenge I decided to join.

I haven't done a creative challenge for a very long time. There was always this "I'm not good enough" feeling that stopped me from joining any kind of challenge. But yesterday I thought "what the heck can I lose?" This is supposed to be fun!

This week's color is Raspberry Red - a great color, and one that I love on top of that. My mind is busy with exploring the possibilities. Since I couldn't stop thinking of it I tried something new yesterday evening.

I started out with a photo of my daughter that I took a few weeks ago.


And then I converted it into black and white.


In a final step, the word "Love" turned into (raspberry) red.


No idea yet whether I will use this photo for the challenge, but it was a lot of fun to work with Photoshop. The Geek is a Photoshop expert and walked me through every single step of the process. I'm not sure I could repeat it right now, but I'm going to practice this with more of my pictures. I really like the result!