A Mail Art

 Hi Everyone! 

Corinne with you today. For my first project as guest DT for a few months, I had fun creating a first Mail Art, at the moment I love creating such decorated envelopes, it's so fun. 

Of course as mixed media offers such a variety of possible supports, it will change in the future, no worries ;-)

So let's start... I used recycled envelopes.

Then I simply played on separate papers by sprintzing several vibrant Izink liquid inks on two sheets of smooth watercolor paper. My goas was to use it for my background, for collaging some parts of it on a really poor paper envelope used as my support.

To add texture, next I sprayed some more colors on top of it, over some beautiful masks and stencils. But I forgot to take a picture of the process at this stage, sorry. 

In a second step, I took another sheet of watercolor paper, used some postage dies I have in my stash to create some false postal stamps, and also quickly sprayed inks over all the die-cuts. 

This is the result after drying all the elements. 

Time to play with them and add some stamping! 

On a piece of rhodoid, I drawed several squares fitting the size of my postage die-cuts, then cut the inside. By this way, I have a stencil ready to go, to help masking the outside parts of my desired stamped images if needed. 

You can see how I used it below. I created two fake postal stamps with brown and black permanent inks by stamping only some parts of the wonderful large Bug Specimens. The result is beautiful, isn't it? 

After cutting to the size of my envelope a central part of my A4 sheet background, I started to assemble and glue my prepared elements. 

I stamped either directly or on scraps of gelliprint papers some words and mixed media symbols and marks. You will find the full list at the end. 

The text over the three lines embossed initially in white was not enough visible and realistic for me, so I decided to recover it with black Versafine ink. As the stamping can not be adjusted perfectly (I didn't use a stamping platform), it just added some nice black shades to the text, and that's just what I wanted. So perfect! :)   

I also stamped on separate pieces of tissue paper the words Mail Art, and Deliver to, then collaged them with also little pieces of contrasted paper to add some interest. 

I decorated also the back side, using simply the leftovers.

And here the final result, after a few splatters of white paint added. 

At first, the front cover of my mail art:

... And the back. I really love it too!!

I hope you like this mail art. 

I don't know yet if I will keep it for myself as I love it, or send it to a dear friend! Anyway, a thing is sure, it made me smile and spend a great time doing it!!

Until the next time, I wish you a very happy Easter! 

Corinne (aka ~Cocofolies)

Stamps used:

Bug Specimens

Deliver to

Mail Art

Create art every day

Assemic Stripes

Writing Circles Background

Carved Xs

Writing and Scribbles Collage

Other items used:

Stencils 'Art Nouveau' and 'Tribal Frenzy', by GiogioCraft

Seth Apter Izink inks in various colors 

Versafine Clair inks (I used mainly Fantasia, Nocture and Pinecone) 

Sizzix and other postage dies

200g/m2 watercolor paper

old envelopes

washi tape

Versamark + white / clear embossing powders

gel medium + scotch glue 

I'm not insane...by Elisa Ablett

Hi everyone,

Elisa here from the design team with the first of my creations for March, a colourful card/journal page with some interesting mixed media techniques!

Let's take a closer look before we start the step by step tutorial..

Here are some of the great stamps I used to create my project by Viva Las VegaStamps:

 

https://vlvstamps.com/i-m-not-insane-1-3-4-x-1-1-2.html

https://vlvstamps.com/musical-note-calligraphy-1-1-4-x-1-1-4.html

https://vlvstamps.com/crackle-background-4-3-4-x-5-3-4.html

https://vlvstamps.com/banksy-wall-singer-2-3-4-x-3-3-4.html

Step by Step Tutorial:

First step is stamping onto a sheet of Acetate, I use Staz on black ink and I tap the ink over and onto the large background stamp and not the other way around. I ease the stamp over the top of the Acetate and press gently, you don't want to press down to hard onto the Acetate.

The next few steps cover making your background with Alcohol inks and pure Alcohol of 96% or more which I purchased from the Pharmacy and distilled into a Fineline Applicator bottle. 

Using a paint palette, squeeze a few drops of your desired Alcohol ink colours into your palette, then squeeze a fine line of your pure alcohol onto your yupo paper down the bottom like the first photo. The add your colour using a paint brush. Repeat with your different colours, you can also add more 'cells' to the background by squirting with your pure alcohol. Work in a ventilated area!

If you want to blend the straight lines a bit, while you have the alcohol on the page tip the paper up and back to make the colours blend a bit.

Using a distress tool and once your background is dry, ink gently around the edges of your background. Stamp your musical notes and title onto cardstock.

Using distress oxide ink pads, smoosh your favourite colours onto a craft messy mat and spritz with water and dip your white cardstock into the different colours spritzing the cardstock as well to create the oxidising effect on the paper. 

Once dry, stamp your Banksy Wall Singer stamp using Black Archival ink over the top of your background. Also stamp your stamp onto white cardstock. 

Fussy cut your two Banksy Wall Singer stamped images, then cut a few pieces off the coloured stamped image and using 3d foam mounting tape, stick them over the top (don't forget to line them up).

Attach your stamped acetate, I used staples and then adhere your black and white stamped image on the left hand side of your card/journal page. I then also cut a few of the coloured off cuts and adhered them so they continued up above the stamped image.

Then adhere your fussy cut musical notes and title to your page and some last minute edging with a fine black marker and you are done!

Thanks for stopping by the blog today, make sure you leave some love in the comments.

Hugs 

Elisa x