Mail Art Monday: Received Swaps Feature VLVS!

Hey friends, on today's Mail Art Monday, I wanted to do something different. You have seen me reveal all the swaps I sent, but I am sure you are also wondering about the swaps I receive. Well I thought it would be fun to periodically show some fun envies I get in the mail from talented artists out there. Today I am featuring some envies I got in the mail from our Viva Las VegasGroupies swap on facebook from last month. It was a color these with grey and blue and you could only use VLVS! images.

This lovely envelope was made by my fellow DT member Shanna Shands.  I love the gorgeous airy feel it has and the quote stamp from Banksy is just fantastic! By the way, the fountain pen on this envelope which I used to cover my address is the Sailor Pro Gear Slim Four Seasons Haruzora Sky Blue.

This envelope is sent to me by Michele Kosciolek (also our swap host of the group) and I love the circular theme she used and that vintage image on the top left corner is beautifully placed. I actually ordered this stamp as well as it's such a great image. The fountain pen I used to cover my address here is the Edison Nouveau Premier Spring edition 2017 Seaglass from Goulet Pens Co. 

Thanks so much ladies fro your wonderful swaps :) Also be sure to check out our Mail Art Monday posts over at Viva Las VegaStamps! to see tutorials and join our groupies FB page to be notified for monthly swaps! 

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

MailART Monday: Springtime BIRDS

Today is the start of spring as marked in the calendar and I wanted to show you some happy bright springtime mixed media envelope on today's MailART Monday. I've only used Dylusions stamps for this piece together with my gelli plate, distress paints, embossing powders, sharpies and alcohol markers. It was really fun to do!

I started off by masking the round address circle on an envelope which already had some blue paint on it. Then I brayered on some orange and green colors. I made some texture by stamping on some bubble wrap with green paint directly on the envelope and also with use of my gelli plate.

Then I layered on the stamps with memento, dylusions and staz-on inks. I made the birds blacker with sharpies and used the text stamps over them and embossed those to finish it off as you can see in the first picture on the blogpost.

The back was also decorated the same way with brighter green and blue colors. I used a white gelpen to accentuate the outer lines. I loved using my Dylusions stamps again as I has them in my statsh for a good long while, at least over a year. 

Dylusions stamp sets used: 

Birds on a Wire 

Further around the Edge 

Write between the lines 

Clearly borders 

Entering this to the 

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge A bit of Green. 

Shopping our Stash Luck o'the Irish -

 also a great challenge to encourage people to use what they have in their stash already!

The Unicorn Challenge - Go Green 

Creative Artiste Challenge for march - Anything mixed media goes

And lastly
RubberDance Everything Spring challenge

Hopefully spring weather will arrive soon again here!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

MailART Monday: From the desk of Cheetarah

Last week on the VLVS! blog I shared a little tutorial for you to personalize your store bought postcards and I am sharing that with you here today. I love buying and sending postcards and have a stack of them to send out, but what really irks me a lot about postcards, sometimes there is no address placement lines or message box on the back.

As you can see with the Monet Art postcard here, the back is totally blank and boring. So what I did to help brighten these up is to decorate sheets of blank sticker paper that are already cut into 4 A5 (postcard) size in a mail art theme.

I used all these wonderful mail art related stamps from Viva LasVegaStamps! and Memento rubber stamp inks. I invite you to go to my blogpost over at VLVS! to see the whole tutorial.

There are more MailART Monday makes and tutorials every monday from my fellow DT members there!

Also our march challenge is up, so don't forget to link your makes inspired by the gorgeous inspiration board and words.

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

MailART Monday: Just be happy!

On this week's mail art monday a colorful explosion with Brusho's and combining some awesome stamps from Visible Image. Something happy and bright in anticipation to springtime!

The envelope I worked on already had a dotted background made with this Carabelle Studio's Stencil and some light and fluffy modeling paste. I stamped the jumping woman from Tomorrow Doesn't Exist stamp set with Colorbox navy blue and embossed with clear embossing powder. I did the same thing with the Just be Happy sentiment, though I used two colors ink. The embossed parts and modeling paste will work as a resist with the brusho.

Working with Brusho's is always such a happy fun messy time :) I had sprinkled some Rose, Gambodge and olive Brusho's on the envelope and spritzed water all over it. Dabbed some color/water away from the embossed and stencilled aria's and just let it dry. I repeated this process until I was satisfied with the color splash on the envelope. When you do this make sure you let previous layers dry well, as not to get the colors too muddy. When dried the colors are permanent, so no need for an extra sealer. 

By the way I had placed a address label between Just be and Happy to get the right placing of the words. I added a fresh label when the envelope dried and put some some masking tape around it. I also stamped some great Visometry stamps on the edges (also with colorbox and then just heat set) for a happy and vibrant look. And the envelope is now ready to mail!

Entering this mail art envelope in the following challenges
The Three Muses - Mail Art
Everybody Art - Envelope
As you like it - what do you make other than cards 
Well mail art has been my fave thing to make and love it more so than making cards :) 

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

MailART Monday: The Heart Collector

It's about that time of year where hearts are all over the place. Since it's always good to send out mail to loved ones and now it's a great excuse to use all those hearts stamps and a splash of red. I used a couple of my recent Stampotique Originals Stamps for this MailART monday.

My focal image is the Queen of Hearts by Janet Klein and the background is Daniel's Hearts by Daniel Torrente.

The process of these envelopes are actually quite simple, yet effective. I stamped the queen, masked her off with a space next to her for the address. Then stamped the hearts with Ladybug Red from Memento and colored them in with Caran d'Ache aquarelle pencils. The discovery set is from the december Art Snacks box.

Colored the queen in with alcohol markers, accents with a white gel pen and a bronze edding, chose some fun postage stamps to go with it and that's it!

These were sent to my partner's for last month's swap. Glad they got received well :)

I am entering this for the Love Bug SDC266 Challenge at the Stampotique Designer's Blog. My bug (besides using the Ladybug ink from memento ;) is Johnny Bravo! When he loves you, he bugs you, haha :)

Also entering this in the "30 minute or less"Challenge at Country View Challenges. These envelopes take less then 30 minutes to make and one you get going, you can make a whole lot of them ;) 

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day (and a wonderful valentine's day tomorrow!)

Mailart Monday: A High Tea Party

It's the second week of the mail art challenge at Stampotique and I was so pleasantly surprised I got chosen by Tera in her top 3 faves picks of last week :) Thanks so much dear! And it inspired me to make another mail art card for the challenge this week using these fun Alice in Wonderland stamps. I used the Mad Hatter and the Rabbit by Janet Klein. I love them so much and hopefully I will get the rest of the Alice series soon. 

I started by stamping them on sticker paper with memento black and coloring them in with letraset promarkers. The background is in fact a promotional card from a museum with an 18th century interior and I used that as the base of my High Tea Party card because it's so fitting! Altering postcards is a fun way to create some quick mail art as well! Because the card was too glossy I put on some clear gesso over it and added Modge Podge golden sheer and a bit of acrylic bronze paint around the edges and fading inwards to create a vintage effect. The speech bubble is a stamp from 7gypsies and I also stamped that on sticker paper. Wrote down the sentences with faber castell pitt markers (I am REALLY loving this pen! It is a lot more effective and black than my steadtler microns!) Then I cut everything out and stuck to the card. I sealed it off with a layer of medium gloss finish and it's ready to mail!

If you want to play along with the mail art theme you can until this Wednesday when the new challenge comes online. Looking forward to see what the next stampotique challenge is :)

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

namasté

Mailart Monday - Each day is a new opportunity

This rubber stamp from Zenspirations designed by Joanne Fink which I found at Posthumus store in Amsterdam have such wonderful positive affirmation that inspire me in making my mail art. The pieces above are a few examples I made for swaps on Swap-Bot. 
The top piece: The background is made with acrylic paint and stencils. Then added that sentiment rubber stamps from Zenspirations, the silhouette flowers from joy crafts and the circle stamps from indigo blu. I found a great picture in a vintage dutch magazine that fit the mood of the washi tape sentiment "hello shunshine" and the zenspirations stamp. 
The bottom piece is a collage made with various left over papers from my "junk paper box", stampotique and Tim Holtz stamps, and the flower overlay I made with my Making Memories slice machine. I'm loging for sunshine and this piece sorta depicts that. 
I love how these cards came together. 

Each day does bring the opportunity for a fresh start, hope you will find yours today :)

Thank you for stopping by and have a great day!

namasté

Mail Art Monday: Dorothy Rose

The mail delivery of this one had a bit of a hick-up, but it finally arrived so I can share it with you here. I sent this to my friend Tera a.k.a. the Crafty Sugar Addict for a personal mail art swap. She posts amazing Mail Art tutorials on her blog as well as on the Viva Las Vegas Stamps DT blog. I was in love with the Northeren Lights Mail Art she made for MAM and it is more stunning in person.

This is what I received from her. Look at the color tones and the card is fantastic too :) I love it!

I am glad she was happy to receive the envie I made for her too (even though it took quite some time to arrive...) This is how it looked pre-addressing. How I made it: I used Pilot Iroshizuku Kon Peki fountain pen ink to color the envelope blue (I added a few drops with a pipette on the envie then sprayed with water and dried it with my heat tool). Then placed Succulents Stencil from Stencil Girl Products over the envie and dabbed some copper paint with a round brush on the sides, fading out to the middle. Placed an address sticker a little to the right off the middle and colored the edges of the lable and the envelope with a Red Promarker. The Dorothy and Rose stamp are from the Octopode Factory (founded by late lily Chilvers). I stamped them on separate papers, colored them with promarkers and cut them with a small scissors then adhered them to the envelope.

I enjoyed coloring these images. The dress has so much detail and with the Letraset Tria Promarker super Fine tip, you can color in details like this without much trouble. I prefer those markers most when it comes to detail work. 

When I was done with the envie I sealed it with a bit of matte Modge Podge so the colors would hopefully not bleed through during transit. 

I definitely love doing Mail Art swaps and if you would like to do a swap with me you can find me on Swap-Bot (my preferred swap place). Or you can contact me through my Facebook page or just leave a comment on this blog post. 

Hope this inspires you to create some mail art :) Thanks for stopping by!

Namasté

Mail Art Monday - tribute to David Bowie

Exactly three weeks ago the news hit that David Bowie passed away. It really seemed like the whole world was grieving this loss. I sure was and I have shared my process of this grief with you here. A weekend later I made a limited edition run prints of 12 that I put up for sale on my personal FB page to share with friends. They were gone within a day. For the envelopes I made customized stickers and I sent 12 pieces of mail art the following monday.

Prints made with archival chalk versamark ink on A4 white matte sticker paper.

It was quite a process coloring and cutting them all out, but the result is very pretty, if I may say so myself.

All prints carefully packaged and ready to be mailed out. I love seeing the reactions of my friends when they get them in the mail. A few of them from instagram

My friend Tarah (@missthundercat) is talented stamp carver. 😻 She made this stamp last week, just for herself. But then kindly shared some prints among her friends.⚡❤ What a wonderful expression of emotions. #artwork #davidbowie #stampcarving

Een foto die is geplaatst door Ama (@missminoes) op 20 Jan 2016 om 8:54 PST

My friend @missthundercat is truly amazing, she hand carved this Bowie Ziggy stardust rubber stamp and create lovely A5 cards. I bought one of them, I just love it! Thank you Tarah!

Een foto die is geplaatst door R a q u e l (@marionbcn) op 21 Jan 2016 om 12:19 PST

Bowie sitting amongst my records. A beautiful print by my talented friend @missthundercat . Proud to have it ♡ #davidbowie #bowie #vinyl

Een foto die is geplaatst door Orit (@oritphoto) op 24 Jan 2016 om 10:53 PST

Due to requests from others whom missed out on the first run of the print, I might make more Limited Edition runs of this carving to sell in the near future. If you are interested in a print, please follow my facebook page for updates. 

Have a great week!

namasté