How to Create Mixed Media Mail Art

It hurts my heart to throw away a large mailing envelope. Why buy new envelopes, when you can just reuse an old one and save a tree, right?

I wanted to create some mail art to send to my granddaughter. Her seventh birthday was coming up, and I wanted to send her some goodies.

Make These Impossible Paper Spheres {FREE Printable}!

While doing some random internet research, a few weeks ago, I found some gorgeous paper spheres at the lovely blog Hattifant.  The editor of Hattifant also found the form while searching the internet, and suspects it is of Scandinavian origin. I was immediately intrigued by the form, and decided to play around with some paper and figure out how to draft my own templates.

After some trial and error, I figured out the math to make these little paper spheres, first making them from vintage book pages. I shared them on my Instagram account, at the time, but I couldn't get the concept out of my mind. I decided to transfer the measurements into CAD, so that I could print out very accurate templates, and experiment with coloring designs.

Comparing Purchased and Homemade Gelatin Plates

Last week, I posted about making a permanent gelatin printing plate at home. The project was much easier than imagined.

Today, I'm sharing a comparison of how a homemade gelatin plate stacks up against purchased gel plates. I purchased three gel plates on Amazon to compare.

How to Make a Permanent Gelatin Plate

This is one of those projects that I procrastinated trying for several years. Then, I did it and realized how easy it was and felt silly for putting it off all this time.

Do you have projects like that? I love all the cool things folks are doing with gelatin plates, and I've had a small Gelli Arts plate for some time, but I wasn't exploring the gelatin printing process as much as a wanted, mostly because we go back and forth between three different homes, for my husband's job, and the place where we spent the most time was very small and I didn't have space to spread out big projects.

The Art of Meenakshi Temple {a tutorial}

On our recent trip to India, we visited Meenakshi Ammon Temple, in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. Meenakshi Temple is beautiful, with a central pool, intricate carvings, ceiling murals, and Kolam designs on the floor.

The temple is an amazing example of Dravidian architecture, with it's towers encrusted with carvings of gods and goddesses.

I was most enamored with the colorful ceiling medallions. Each medallion is unique and brightly painted.

You can't help but be cheered by the abundant use of joyous color at Meenakshi Temple.

Much as I would have loved to sit down with a sketchbook to record what I saw, I had to satisfy myself with snapping a few pictures at the time.

I've always enjoyed doodling medallions or mandalas, but after the Meenakshi Temple visit, these doodles bring fond memories of a very special time and remind me of the exuberantly painted ceilings we'd admired.

I like to start a doodle using a mechanical pencil with a white eraser. White erasers don't smudge like the red ones do. To create a medallion, I start by creating circles -- these can be freehand or made with templates like lids and cups and bowls. Next, I divide the circles into four segments, then eight segments, and so on. I don't worry about perfection, because, it's just a doodle. Doodling is a creative way to relax, and I don't find seeking perfection to be relaxing. I usually doodle medallions without a plan, making petals or leaves or feathers in concentric patterns.

After I've sketched the medallion with pencil, I go over my lines with a smear proof pen and erase the pencil lines (sometimes -- other times I leave the pencil lines, because of that perfection thing).

The piece is then colored in layers. In this case, I started out by lightly laying on a base of color with Spectrum Noir markers.

Then more layers were added, to build up color. I changed my mind about the color direction along the way, but didn't stress over it, since the point was to play.

Next, I added some colored pencil on top of the marker layers. That turned out pretty, but I didn't like the texture, so I took the Spectrum Noir blending pen and blended the color out. I was pleasantly surprised by how well this worked, as not all alcohol markers play well on top of colored pencil. My Chartpaks cause waxy colored pencil marks to get gummy and weird.

I hope you try your hand at doodling. I love it, because it's not intimidating -- you don't need any drawing skills or knowledge of perspective or shading (although you may want to try shading to add dimension to your pieces at some point). If you can trace around a bowl, you can draw a decorative medallion.

You might also enjoy this post about India's colorful trucks.

You might also enjoy this post about how to draw a spring tulip.

If you enjoyed this tutorial, please subscribe to House Revivals in the sidebar, so you won't miss the fun projects we have scheduled. Find us on Facebook, too, so you can catch all the "in between" stuff, and see what I'm working on daily on Instagram. Feel free to link today's post to your favorite social media sites.

Thanks so much for stopping by!
~Amanda

Make a Sweet Fairy Cutaway Card

My sweet granddaughter will be getting a new baby brother pretty soon, and I wanted to make her a card to remind her how special she is to us. She is still at the age where she adores anything with pink or with flowers or with ribbon.

She also loves the Rainbow Magic Fairy books. They are sweet little books at just the right reading level.

Make a Framed Filigree Card

The thing I love best about card making, is that you can create something beautiful in a short amount of time. We are all busy, but we want to be creative.

You can easily create this card while the kids are napping, or in the evening after work. To make this card, you will need a frame die, and a filigree die. You can see that my frame die had a fancy shape.

How to Create the Look of Delft Tile for Card Making

I love the look of deft tile. When my daughter was young, she had a piano teacher who had been a missionary and had traveled a great deal. Each time they flew one of the dutch airlines, they were each given a keepsake tile. 

With all their travel, they collected quite a stack of of these beautiful tiles, and when they settled into their retirement home, the used their delft tile for the fireplace surround.

El Nacimiento {the Creche} at Tucson Museum of Art

Around this time last year, my husband and I were on vacation in Arizona. We both love Arizona -- for it's incredible beauty and history, as well as for the lovely people who live there. We met and fell in love while attending college in Arizona, and it was really special to revisit some of the places that were important to us.

I love handmade, human scaled architecture, so we visited La Casa Cordova, part of the Tucson Museum of Art complex. What a delightful surprise to find El Nacimiento (the creche) on display in La Casa Cordova.