I believe everyone is creative! Free Your Creativity
Some of you have seen me doing this already on Facebook but now time to do it here too 
I am working on something and need your input – it might lead to answers for you 
Let’s say you want to know more about me…professional wise or also who I am or what I love – n*Studio related (keep it real though – LOL)…what would be questions you would ask me?
Happy day to you
Nat
Welcome to the PaperHaus Magazine Summer Delight Blog Hop!I am thrilled to be part of the new PaperHaus Issue as a featured Mixed Media Artist. Here is a sneak of one of my projects called “I Got Glasses” I created for the issue.
PaperHaus is celebrating the release of the Summer Issue of PaperHaus Magazine ! There is SO much inspiration, techniques, projects, and exclusive artist interviews inside! Not only that but it’s an issue filled with amazing Mixed Media projects from people from all over the world! Below is the link to the summer issue, simply click on the cover to go there .
And there is some more inspiration too! hop on over to the blogs listed below for more creative sparks, RAKs and giveaways. The PaperHaus Summer Delight event is all about fun summer days filled with scrapbooking and crafting! Every day on the PaperHaus Blog (www.thepaperhaus.com) there will be amazing inspiration and tutorials so be sure to stop on by everyday in June!
)thanks for your visit and have a wonderful and creative day
Huge hugs
Nat
 |
In-Person Workshops I teach in-person classes around the world on a variety of topics. Check out if I am near you. |
 |
Online Workshops – Über*Media My Über*Media series is dedicated to techniques with different media. |
If you haven’t seen me personally the last half-year, you do not know about my biggest “secret” ….but now finally after all paperwork being done and as of today my status is official, …I can tell you officially :
We are moving to the States in September. More specific we are moving to the East Coast to New Jersey where lot’s of our family and friends are located. I am super-duper excited. It will be an interesting ride for sure- LOL- because even though I probably traveled about 30 times or more to the States in the last 20 years, it will be different to actually live there. My husband is also excited as this means for him going home. We are already preparing things for months now and the biggest parts are yet still to come. I will for sure share here and there some of this new adventure – and I hope you wish me luck and enjoy reading how the Kraut goes U.S.
Huge hugs and have a wonderful day
Nat
As always I am a bit slow with the news, partly because I need to understand first what is going on – LOL- but nonetheless, as some of you might know Google Reader will close down in a couple weeks – and so I moved all my blogs over to bloglovin to read there from now on. And if you want …you can
or if you want to follow rather with other readers go here
or…if you want an email when I post (usually every second day) you can subscribe by signing up on the right in the sidebar “Get the n*Studio Blogposts via Email” That way you never miss a post at all.
Thank you for following my blog- I love to have you!!!
Huge hugs
Nat
Jessica Sporn asked me and some other artists to be part of her Stencil Test Drive featuring her amazing new stencils for Stencil Girl Products.
Today along with some others I will show you the use of the Cascading Leaves Stencil. I love this stencil. You can either use it as it is in whole or use little parts of it here and there or even make a frame.
In my art journal spread I used it for the background several times layered up with acrylic spray paints and I loved how beautifully the stencil created a deep dimensional feel. I touched it up with some letterpress images, oil based inks and markers. Then I used the stencil for framing the spread.
Have No Fear Of Perfection. You’ll Never Reach It
Salvador Dali.
Supplies: Stencil Girl Productions Cascading Leaves Stencil, Letterpress Blocks, Tissue Paper, Liquitex Acrylic Paint, Liquitex Professional Spray Paints, Liquitex Professional Paint Markers, Louise Nelson Feather Stamp, Speedball Oil Base Block Print Ink.
Don’t forget to check what all the other artists created with the stencil and also get the chance to win a giveaway on Jessica’s Blog.
Have a wonderful day
Nat
I am at my great-aunt today. I am looking forward seeing her and hug her big time. It is always also an emotionally sad time. Each day we talk on the phone is showing me the progress, of her forgetting. She starts thinking I am my mother, or forgets who visited her just half an hour ago. But she is happy that someone comes – and that is all that counts
I just saw this amazing video a couple of weeks ago and it touched my heart a lot – it made me cry and reminded me on my great-aunt and her reactions, the pictures of wrapping up the home, the photos, the reactions that remain characteristic ..even when they forgot. But foremost….it is such a wonderful and beautiful tribute to a grandfather by Lance Oppenheim.
Keep on playing! What a wonderful advice!
Huge hugs to you …Hope I didn’t make you teary…hope you see the beauty in this video too !
Nat
This letterpress cabinet makes me extremely happy. I found it…or let’s say it’s content at a flea market. I will show you more pictures soon…as it is right now a big task to clean this up and it also goes along with reorganizing my studio…I think my friend Julie might be very happy about this
So there… I put it out into the World Wide Web…now I really need to get going…It seems like such an enormous task right now- LOL.
Huge hugs
Nat
|
Über*Media is my series of online workshops that is dedicated to different kinds of media that cross a variety of materials. I also teach project based online workshops which you can find here. |
A couple months ago Dina and I had a fun conversation and she introduced me to Portlandia. She mentioned she had put a bird on something and just called it art. She explained to me that this is from Portlandia. Portlandia is a satirical sketch TV Series in the US playing in Portland, Oregon. It shows in a of course over-pointed way the life in some pockets that each city has – up and coming neighborhoods. places that no-one before wanted to live, and then kind of get artsy and fun….then popular.
Portlandia can be everywhere – it is actually right here, where I live in the Sternschanze in Hamburg- LOL. That is probably why I laugh so much about this series – It is hilarious. I love my neighborhood-I do …but I also love to make fun of myself and us the people who live here. It is colorful, different, provoking and inspiring…sometimes stupid, sometimes nerve wracking…sometimes just plain funny
When I watch this video about the “Dream of the 1890s” and I think of all my friends and people around here that have beards right now, wear suspenders, ride weird bicycles and …
Or when I walk somewhere to run errands in the morning and see some people “working” on their laptops out-side in front of a cafe, and when I go home later in the evening- they would be still there. EVERY day! We have more cafes when you can imagine. I guess this is “where young people go to retire”.
Or in Portlandia you see this video about the “2 Girls 2 Shirts” Store- and when my husband and I saw it we yelled out loud “1 Girl 1 Sweater” because that is pretty much the store right across of your house.
Point of this? No point…just showing you a little peek into my neighborhood and if you sometimes think I am weird – LOL- I am just the product of my environment –
Have a gorgeous day
hugs
Nat
It was always other people who called me weird.
said Frank Zappa…
…here is another one I love:
Wishing you a fun day
Nat
I wanted to write a little bit about some of my favorite apps and tools for traveling with my iPad. Two years I bought my iPad …and it is like my super friend ever since. Especially since I travel so much for workshops it became of a huge value. As you know luggage restrictions are tight and especially when you teach you have a lot of stuff in your suitcases: Kits, tools, supplies…if you ever saw my suitcase when I came teaching at your local store you saw it all. When I closed my accounting for 2012 I was shocked at the amount of costs of extra luggage and shipping I paid for last year to get my supplies and kits to workshop locations.
Before iPad or BiP I used to pack stacks of books and magazines in my suitcase because I love to read. BiP I had a travel journal and an idea journal. A book with stuff about the workshops. Pencils, a little bag with art supplies, my laptop for emails and if I needed to work on stuff, tickets, calendar, travel papers, maybe a dvd so I could watch a movie of my liking when on a longer journey…well you get the picture.
Nowadays I pack for all the mentioned above just my iPad. And since I know there must be people out there that love their tablet too- let me show you some of my faves. I will not state the “obvious” like the kindle reader, the magazine reader- although you might wanna know which magazines I heart – LOL – instagram etc.
I have a lot of creative or fun apps as you can see- I love them all- LetterMPress - if you love Letterpress- and that was actually btw how I created my logo for Creative Jumpstart 2012 and some other logos. ArtRage pretty cool- but also VERY intense. A nice app if you want to play with different brushes and paint media and with painting over photos and such. Zen Brush was one of my first apps- and I still like it a lot. Also awesome for just drawing and sketching thinks or doodling along while waiting for the journey to end or start…
but my favorite one is my Paper 53 App- which my husband showed me several months ago and which I bought every single update for it like a crazy chicken and I am probably the only one who is always hoping there might be an update for it when opening the update folder
With this app you can draw and sketch, do watercoloring etc.
I use it a lot to play when I travel and sketch down some ideas- you can even mix your own colors- which I think is brilliant and I love it sooo much.
(see the tool? The brush…I will talk about this in a second )
some of these ideas get more played with on real paper or in an art journal later
you can also create several journals and I often write into them too – with my sensu brush& stylus- which I will tell you in a second about
OK- now I told you several times I would tell you about this brush and the stylus…well here is my favorite tool right now for my iPad. It is called sensu and it is a brush and stylus in one.
From their website: “The rubber stylus is exposed when the brush is closed. This stylus is great for sketching and writing or as a general navigation tool. Grasp Sensu near the nib section and pull it out of the protective cap. You will reveal the capacitive bristles of the artist brush. Insert the rubber stylus into the cap and the cap becomes a handle for your brush.”
Brilliant! It really does give you the feel as if you handle a brush. Yes it is still digital what you do- but it feels way more natural. If you do some sketching and painting on your tablet - this is the best thing I have found so far! I love that it is so small and you have the protection too – I am just in Love! I saw at Paperworld that they will also bring out just the brush for the tablet - without the stylus which will be much cheaper then. But for me the point is actually having both because I write and sketch on my iPad too. I am very pleased with the stylus too. If you have a good stylus though you might want to wait till the sensu with just the brush is on the market.
Another one of my faves is Dropbox – might be boring for some of you- but oh I love dropbox. You can save files on dropbox, share folders with other etc. If you don’t know dropbox at all- you have to figure it out: But what I love about the app for the iPad is that I can upload files in my Dropbox folder- pdf, word documents - so I can for example upload the lists for the materials for my workshops etc. And once I have opened those documents while still online on my iPad…I can actually open them from now on even offline on my iPad. And that is pretty cool. I cannot tell you the times that this has saved me lot’s of problems and headaches when traveling and without my computer at home.
Oh and another tool -is my keyboard case for the iPad- I got it from my husband for christmas. It also serves as a closure and protection which is really good- but of course the best thing is that you have a keyboard when you write emails or text that is longer. Doing this on the iPad I find just hideous and annoying.
The only funny and weird thing is- that as soon as you see your iPad more in a usual Monitor way- you forget that you still need to touch it as there is no mouse. I cannot even tell you how often I have tried to find my mouse pad or the mouse next to it…ahem
oK- now – there is more apps I love – but I think that should do for now. I hope you found it a bit interesting
Have a gorgeous day
Nat
