Mailart Monday - Don't be a square darling!

This week on mailart Monday I am sharing a collage piece I made for the SQUARED postcard swap for the Hand Made Postcard Club on Swapbot. It's was hosted by the lovely JuliaJae and the primary requirement was "Just make it SQUARE! A 6"x6" handmade postcard on heavy cardstock" And I was thinking, that it might be a good idea to use some of that of 6x6 scrapbook paper (it may have come up that I am a hoarder, so I'm sure you're not surprised that I have a ton of that paper too!) so I used one of those papers as my base.

For the base I used a scrapbook paper from Basic Grey with retro squares on it. I started with layering baby blue paint on it. I then applied some artist medium gel and when that dried I rubbed oil pastels purple and blue on some parts. When you apply a heat tool to the oil pastel on a smooth surface it liquefies, so you can blend the pastels together on the surface. That little trick I learned on Art Specially from Marieke Blokland's mixed media make and take. Now it needed some more squares! I took a few stencils with squared images, layered them on the PC with red and yellow paint. Lastly I took a few stamps from my Atomic Age graphic stamp set and stamped that on the sides with Staz-on Hydryngea Blue.

I found this wonderful image in one of the Beatrijs magazines I have. That look on her face, priceless!! I cut her out and adhered her with my trusty UHU glue stick. I just love the contrast of the colorful background with the grey-scale image.

Lastly I added the saying "don't be a square, darling!" with alphabet rubber stamps and yes, the joke is in the rectangle ;)  I adhered a layer of medium matte gel to seal it off and it was ready to mail. I think this is one of my fave of the vintage mail art series I made up to date. Sadly I am running low of these wonderful vintage images from the magazines I got from Miss Minoes shop All Fairness a while back. But I am getting another series of magazines from her with equally gorgeous prints in them, so I can't wait to create some mail art with those.

Hope this inspired you to layer paint and pastels over your scrapbook paper, to create some fun mixed media pieces.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

namasté