Mail Art Monday: Sail Your Ship

It's definitely been a while but here I am with another Mail Art Monday post. I made this one a while back and recently found the recording of it and sharing the process video below. It is made inspired by the postage stamps and I found rubber stamps and stencils to fit with the theme.

You can see the process here:

Products used:

Distress Oxides, Viva Decor and Arte Mio Clear stamps, Staz-on ink pads, faber castell pitt artist pens, StencilGirl® Doodle it Tornado stencil

Hope you liked seeing the process of this MAM - I'm not sure if I'll be doing the weekly posts, but am thinking about doing them monthly. Let me know in the comments here or in the YT video if you would like seeing more of this Mail Art Tutorial video's.

Thanks so much for stopping by and have an awesome day!

Back to work, but first... coffee!

Stickers illustrated by Nikki Smits

It's been a little quiet on my blog, as you might have noticed. That is because I took a much needed break from the virtual world and was on vacation in beautiful Sweden to visit my in-laws. I could have left some scheduled posts, but decided not to because I didn't want to worry about it... and it felt sooooo good not to worry about it :) I would highly recommend that to everyone, just to take a (little) online break. So I am getting back into the groove of things, taking it slow and steady with stuff to share on the blog. And I'm starting off by telling you a little about my time away.

This was my view and we walked in the forest almost daily... and I didn't want to leave it! See HERE for more pictures. Leaving was hard but it was good to come home to my Meesha cat, as she really missed us (and we her!)

While I was away, I did make some things with a huge stash of postage stamps found in a thrift store.

Made this journal for my MIL with French postage stamps.

The back has different portraits on it. 

My in laws have the most loveliest wooden desk, but I forgot to photograph it in its entirety. It was great to have a desk to work at while away. 

This is a small Muji notebook and made for the neighbor there. It's the size of a traveler's notebook.

The postage stamp art is inspired by my good friend Sue of TangleCrafts. She sells her gorgeous collage works HERE. BONUS her books are also fountain pen ink friendly :)

Fall came to greet us while we are there and in two more days, fall will arrive here too... according to the calendar. Cozy jumpers, scarves and beautiful autumn colored (falling) leaves... I feel like I am ready for it!

Sharing this over at Julia, for WOYWW this week - hope you all are doing well and are looking forward to embrace fall as well :) 

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

MailArt Monday: Re-Purposed Postcards

A two-for-one on today's Mail Art Monday! I am sharing a couple of postcards I sent out for some swaps on Swap-bot.

As many of you do, I am sure, I collect vintage postage stamps as well with the means to re-purpose them in my art work. This was made using ONLY postage stamps and postage "salvage" (the material around the postage sheets). This was made for a swap on Swap-Bot in which you were asked to use postage stamps only. These are all vintage postage stamps from the Netherlands. Definitely love the queen portrait stamps and managed to have a little flow/design going on as well.

In the vertical view you can see the "movement" on the right side better.

And here it is on its way to its destination. The card on the right is made with stickers alone. A closer look below:

For this swap you were asked to use stickers only and I have made a circular theme using stickers from Flow Magazine and a few art stickers I had lying about. The bottom is a cityscape silhouette decorative tape which I thought tied the design together. 

It's always so fun to encounter swaps which inspire you to get out your stash you rarely use and play with them. Glad to say these arrived well and the recipients liked them.

Thank you for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

Art Journal: Fragile

This week has been filled with springtime inspired projects. When the weather changes to brighter days so does my mood and you can really notice that in my work. I would like to share this art journal page with you I made recently and it's inspired by the prompts over at Rubber Dance blog. The theme challenge now is everything spring which is their Mid month challenge. 

Earlier this month they also had a color challenge based on the below color scheme.

And isn't it just gorgeous? Absolutely wonderful spring time colors! Due to time constraints and a holiday in the first weeks of march I wasn't able to participate, but I'm happily combining the two of these challenges together which resulted in the art journal page I am showing you today.

Let me tell you how I made the base. I started off by spraying some magenta, yellow and turquoise dylusions spray on a piece of A5 paper. The yellow and turquoise blended to a bit of green here and there which I loved. I then took a script and postage stamp and stamped with corresponding Staz-On colors. I placed a script stencil over it and then dabbed some Paper Artsy Fresco paint hint of mint through it. I built up everything else from here.

The Birds stamp is from Studio light and the flowers from Artemio. The postage border around the birds is also from Artemio. I accentuated the birds with a mint colored gelpen to have then stand out more.The Fragile stamp is from paper Artsy and I also colored it in with the mint gel pen.

The flowers are stamped with midnight blue & dove gray Staz-On and then overplayed with versamark and violet interference embossing powder. These wonderful flower postage stamps, also in corresponding colors, have a great pop up effect on the over all lay out.

I splattered some Hint of Mint paint and a bit of Liquitex Gold INK on the page, colored the border with Chipped Sapphire distress crayon and matted it onto a light blue card stock before adhering it to my black spiral bound journal. A light, happy, colorful page to ring in the first weekend of spring :)

I'm also entering this art journal page in the following challenges:

Creative Artiste Mixed Media #24 anything mixed media goes 

HeARTful stamping Spring + Stamp 

STAMPlorations Mixed Media Challenge March 

the Stamps and Stencils March Birds challenge

AND as invited to the Art Journal Journey Out and About challenge

I digitally altered the page to add the words to it and to use as my FB banner for the coming weeks. 

Happy spring to you all!

Have a wonderful weekend and thanks so much for stopping by!

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!

Thriftfinds Thursdays - The philatelist edition

In a little quaint town called Orvelte, they had a fun market around pentecost. And the towns people also sold some vintage stuff. I came accross a huge suitcase of glassine bags and upon further inspection, the glassine bags contained a lot of vintage stamps! I was in heaven! Took my fine time deciding which stamps I wanted to take home with me and kept it at a modest 10 bags.

I got home and started sorting them. It's always such a nice and relaxing task. I'm not a collector in the sence that I keep them in albums, I use them for my mail art mostly. So I got myself some glassine bags to store the stamps in.

Some of the mail art I make with postage stamps:

Are you a stamp collector? Do you use postage stamps in your art?

Thanks for stopping by!

Namaste