A match anyone?

Today's post is from Claudia, aka die amelie of Von Pappe II, who is making a guest appearance to share this fabulous make with us. Claudia was the winner of our DTM's Special Mention badge in January:

"Servus, my name is Claudia - also known as "die amelie". I live in Vienna with my son, my husband, my dog Bluna, a little budgie family and some fish in a tank.

I have been drawing and crafting since I can remember and I have worked as an arts and crafts teacher for almost twenty years before I became a full time mom and houswife. Now I enjoy a lot of spare time to follow my creative hobbies which are mainly creating with stamps and/or mixed media of all kinds, reading thrillers, watching good TV series and movies with my husband, photography, dancing and being outdoors with my dog in the lovely Vienna Woods. I stumbled upon crafty blogland about two years ago and have been learning so much since that day. I love the inspiration I get from visiting other creative people's blogs and enjoy the massive load of online tutorials. Having finally found crafty blogland a whole new world of possibilities for being creative has opened up to me and there's so much still waiting for me to be explored."

"As I love small notebooks, everything vintage and especially old photographs I decided to do a little vintage style notebook using the Sizzix "Matchbook" die I only recently bought at a sale.

I die cut the matchbook and four tags from white manila card and blended all with DI "pumice stone". I did the same with a cut to size spine that is to hold the four tags. I gave it all some spritzes of water to create a stained and aged look. Some scraps were torn from an old book page  and glued to the tags and the booklet with matte "Decou-page" glue and seal. To add some more texture I used a chicken wire stamp from BoBunny and Ranger black jet archival ink. Using the "Tiny Tags and Tabs" Sizzix die I randomly cut some out and glued them to the prepared tags to add some space for handwritten notes that should be well visible. Once the tags were finished I glued them onto the spine and then glued the whole signature into the matchbook.

The main focus lies on the two lovely photograph stamps from The Artistic Outpost and the Tim Holtz idea-ology hinge clip that holds the matchbook closed. The woman's image also has a layer of rough burlap ribbon underneath and is fixed to that with four tiny brads before I glued the whole panel onto the back cover of the matchbook. The "notes" words were finally added to front and back using my favourite Hero Arts letter stamps. Done!"

This is stunning Claudia - thank you!

There are so many beautiful things to create using paper, whether you prefer to stamp, like diecutting, draw your own sketches - whatever your passion is we'd like to see it please! We have almost another two weeks so there's plenty of time to get your project made, or perhaps a second entry.....?

More from our own DT in a few days. xxx