Mail Art 'Follow your heart'

 Hello Everyone !

I'm back today with a second Mail art. This one was done roughly like the first one shared in my previous post. 

I started by creating a quick and colourful background, and a bunch of postage stamps die cuts using  scraps of watercolor paper. I used the same spray Izink Inks than previous (Seth Apter colors), playing with different stencils to make a change. If you missed my post at that time, you may want to have a look on it here.

For this mail art, I decided to play at first with the wonderful Lid Lady. I love this stamp! I just stamped her on one of my postage inked die-cuts in black, and embossed her using clear embossing powder.

 

Next after glueing it, I stamped in black Versafine ink Banksy pulling back the Curtain over it, at the left side.

At this stage, I made some trials of EP colors, to combine the image of the lady and also my background with the stamp Banksy Follow your heart, to bring it to light. 

I finally chose a combination of orange EP over a blue turquoise painted postage die-cut.

At the right side I added the Running lady below Follow my heart, with my Versafine 'Medieval Blue' pad.

At the end, I simply added a few more stamping here and there to finish the scene (with 'destination unknow') and to add even more interest to my background.

Et voila! :)

I cut one side of my envelope to drag into it the leftovers of my trials and remaining postage stamps die-cuts. 

Below the two envelopes, with all my lovely VLVS images stamped and heat embossed on my forged stamps that remain unused. They will be ready-to-use for another mail art project! :D

Stamps used:

Lid Lady

Writing and Scribbles Collage

Round Brushstrokes Large

Destination unknown

Banksy Follow your heart

Writing Arrow

Banksy pulling back the Curtain

Running lady

Dream Big

Row of numbers

I hope you like this project as much as I do.

Until the next time!

Corinne

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 

Halloween tags with witch and death moth

Hey everyone,

just two days until Halloween, so of course I have another inspiration project for this. Today I want to share these two tags. I know, it might be a bit hard to see on the photo, but guess which material I used as a base?

... it's foil! Windmill foil to be exact.

I cut my two tags from the foil and colored them with alcohol inks and some blending solution. I worked on them as long as I was happy with the look.

 While they were drying, I stamped and cut two focal points - the witch with her broom and the death moth - on watercolor paper. I left a white boarder around both images. I usually don't do that, but I thought they needed a little more contrast to stand out against my colorful tags. Bonus: it made the cutting much easier. ;-)

To add more interest I chose a chipboard element for each tag and heatembossed it - my favorite thing to do with chipboard.

As my backgrounds have dried in the meantime, I could work a little more on them. I decided to turn the tag around and stamp on the smoother side without the alcohol ink. For stamping I used a white Stazeon ink which works really well on foil. I stamped the row of chakras as well as part of the tree stamp on the red tag and two different skulls and the branch antlers on the blue one. The tree and the antlers both create a similar look when you just stamp parts of it, but I wanted to give you double the inspiration. 

I finished the tags by glueing the chipboard pieces, the cutout images and a lot of thread on them and added one of the Tim Holtz stickers on each.

I haven't had my alcohol inks for a while now, but it was fun playing with them on the foil. And of course there are some cool possibilities of using foil tags for decoration such as placing them in front of an electric candle.

Stamps used:
Witch Holding Broom (19705)
Death Moth (20056)
Weathered Tree (19467)
Realistic Skull (19724)
Branch Antlers Set of 2 by Cat Kerr (20147)
The Head Figure by Cat Kerr (20138)
Chakras (20246)

Other material:
- windmill foil
- watercolor paper
- Versaclaire Ink (nocturne)
- Stazon ink (opaque cotton white)
- Ranger alcohol inks + blending solution
    red tag: sunset orange, purple twilight, wild plum
    blue tag: denim, turquoise, raspberry
    on both: pitch black
- Scrapiniec chipboard elements (spiderweb 4967, boarder 4614)
- Embossing powder (Lindy's Gang - chalk it up)
- black and white thread

See you soon & happy Halloween!

Mixed Media Tag - Boy on swing

Hey everyone,

Today I'm sharing this vintage mixed media tag and a super fun stamping technique with you.

 

I cut my tag from a piece of watercolor paper to a size of 6 x 3,5 inch and simply added some stamping. 

Next, I spread some texture paste with a palette knife in various spots of the tag. The paste I used is quite thick (an older one, already starting to dry in its container). I would recommend using a heavy body paste or gesso for this technique, but honestly I haven't tried out a thinner one. Now comes the fun part: I took a stamp and stamped right into the paste before it's dry. You will lose some detail, so the stamp shouldn't be too delicate, but even the numbers that I picked worked well.
Make sure to clean your stamp immediately with water. A stiff brush can also be helpful. You really don't want that texture paste to ruin your stamp, right?

After the paste was dry, I started building some layers of color with some Lindy's Gang Moonshadow Mists.

I added some more stamping with the numbers, but this time in a more common way. For a little color pop I sprinkled acrylic spray over the tag.

After browsing through my stamps I chose this guy on a swing as a focal image, stamped him dirctly on the tag (no fussy-cutting this time) and added a little color with some ZIG brush pens. I also darkened up the edges with some Oxide Ink and Archival Ink. 

I added the little die cut birds and a quote, embossed in gold onto black cardstock. To finalize my tag I adhered it to some cardstock and added a bow.

Stamps used:
Vintage Boy on Swing (19729)
Numbers Set (19659)
Writing Circles Background (19567)
Don't Waste A Moment (19786)

Other material:
- Canson watercolor paper
- Black cardstock
- Archival Ink (jet black, pebble beach, seafarer)
- Versafine Ink (onyx black)
- Versamark Ink
- Distress Oxide Ink (ground espresso)
- texture paste (heavy body)
- Lindy's Gang Moonshadow Mist (treasure island aqua, van dyke sepia, buccaneer bay blue)
- ZIG real brush pens
- embossing powder (Altenew - antique gold)
- die (Memory Box - small flock of doves #99015)
 

Hope you're giving this technique a try and that you found some inspiration here.

See you soon,

Procraftinate - Quick ATCs

 Hey everyone,

you don't always have to spend endless hours on the crafting table to create something beautiful. So, even if you are quite busy, just take yourself a little time, craft and relax. Today's project is a set of four artist trading cards that I created in less than an hour.

The base layer is just black cardstock. The middle layer is some old paper from my stash, torn to the size a little bit smaller than the base.

Anf for the top layer I mixed four colors of Brushos with water and added them to a piece of watercolor paper. I just used one color for each card, but you can achive some cool effects by just adding layers with that one color.

 
I added a bunch of mixed media stamps and used foam tape to adhere it to the card base.
Now I just needed to add a quote and chose the "procraftinate" definition, stamped on some of the old paper to coordinate with the middle layer. I also added some pieces of the black cardstock that I had left behind the quote.

Hope you found some inspiration with my ATCs.

Stamps used:
Scribble Circle (20166)
Punchinella/Sequin Waste Border (20161)
Row of Chevrons (19829)
Doodle Dots (19827)
Procraftinate (19638)

Other material:
- black cardstock
- vintage book and ledger paper
- Canson watercolor paper
- Brushos (turquoise, violet, lemon, emerald green)
- Versafine Ink Pad (onyx black)
- foam tape


See you soon!

 

Banksy: Cast of Characters

Hey everybody,

Today's project was a little time-consuming as it took me a whole weekend but it's also one of those that left a blissful feeling after finishing it. It's a little zigzag album with a whole lot of Banksy stamps. While working through the project I found this "Cast of characters" sticker that worked great as a title.

A few hours before I started my project, I took a mini online class about abstract paintings where a large sheet was painted and cut into smaller pieces. This was a great inspiration and I tried that myself. I used a large sheet of watercolor paper and added chalk paint, soft pastels, a Stabilo All pencil and Posca markers in black and white. I cut 12 pieces with a size of 5 x 2,5 inch and glued them to a zigzag album with some masking tape.

Using different mediums and mixed media techniques I worked my way through the album and added more and more stamps, most of them Banksy images. To make the back of the album appear a little neater, I glued strips of design paper to it.

For my covers (one for the front, one for the back), I used the same paper. I glued it onto chipboard and altered it with some Starburst sprays and Wow! embossing powder. I added the powder onto wet gesso that I applied through a stencil. This way I got a pretty nice texture. I also added some stamping to both covers and the sticker I already mentioned earlier to the front and adhered them to the rest of the album.

Here are a few detail photos of the project:

Stamps used:
Banksy Wall Lady (20459)
Banksy Minnie Mouse Rat (20400)
Banksy Sign Beggar (20304)
Banksy Keep Your Coins (20294)
Banksy No Future (20065)
Banksy Trash Can Periscope Guy (20072)
Banksy By Order/Graffiti Area (20067)
Banksy You Have 0 Friends Kid (20077)
Banksy Marionette Girl (19971)
Love Is The Answer (19945)
Banksy Child Fishing In Paper Boat (19939)
Banksy Einstein Protester (19936)
Banksy Small (19597)
Banksy Girl Watering TV Antennae (19603)
Banksy Rat Walking Chain (19426)
Banksy Achieve Greatness (19395)
Banksy Greatness Spray Painter (19394)
Banksy Painter (19402)
I See Humans (19962)
Businessman Silhouette (19418)
Writing Triangles (19571)
Tape X (19572)
Stop Me Before I Paint (19964)


Other materials:
- Canson Aquarelle paper
- Design Paper
- Chalk paint

- Acrylic paint

- Soft pastels
- Posca Paint Pens
- Gesso
- Embossing powder (WOW! Black Magic)
- Lindy's Gang starburst sprays (Opal Sea Oats, Midnight Rendezvous Black, Screamin' Banshee Black)
- Versafine Ink Onyx Black
- Hero Arts White Pigment Ink
- Archival Ink Vermillion
- Stencils
- Washi Tape
- Craft wire
- Stickers
- Brads
- Sewing machine


Hope you got some inspiration from this project. It was a really intuitive process and I had so much fun making this album.

See you!