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!

The Cat's Meow! - Meesha appreciation post :)

It's a kitty cat special today on my blog and I wanted to share these pieces I made recently with this great cat stamp from Lost Coast Designs (at least I think it was, but I can't seem to find it on the site anymore....) The background is made with various paper scraps and I used a white, black and a copper paint marker to create some interest and outlines. The sentiment "oh what a day, what a lovely day" is from VLVS! and it's a lovely day indeed!

The ATC is made with similar technique as the postcard, but placed the scraps horizontally instead of vertically. The cat is stamped on black paper and then embossed with white. I could not resist adding "meow" with letter stickers on it :)

So today is a special day indeed, my little fur baby Meesha has turned 3 today! She is still ever so cute and I am so happy the little critter is on our lives. She shares her birthday with the King (it's king's day today in NL!) and she definitely behaves like the queen of the house :) Here are some pictures of her for you to enjoy!

Throwback thrusday- this was taken the first few days she was with us. A very curious and open hearted kitty we instantly fell in love with

Likes to try out all sorts of different sleeping positions in super small arias :)

She definitely likes to sit on my chair in my art room while I am working.... so difficult to move her off my chair when she is looking like that!

Little purrfull snuggles on the couch in the evening are the best!

And she is definitely the queen of the house... luxuriously living!

Now I'm off to give some well deserved treats to this little birthday girl!

Thanks for stopping by and have a lovely day!

MailART Monday: A little bit of Kindness

On today's Mail Art Monday I wanted to share a postcard I made from my large masterboard scrap collage. It's great fun to see how all these pieces come together as individual postcards. I adhered the cut up cardboard piece (2 of 13 pieces, see piece number 1 here) onto a tourist postcard with sturdy adhesive and washi tape. Also a great way to use up all your left over postcards you don't know what to do with :) On my desk I still had some stamped words and chose "kindness" and a butterfly to add the to the card. After I sealed it with Modge Podge gold shimmer varnish, I spattered some liquitex inks in magenta over it. Lastly I made "all we need is a little bit of" with my dymo label maker and stuck it to the card. I thought it definitely finishes the piece.

It kinda looked empty without it as you can see above. This card was sent for a swap on Swap-Bot and I hope the recipient will like it. It's good to send out a little kindness every day, don't you agree?

I would like to enter this piece in the following challenge:

STAMPlorations -things with wings

Hope you all are having a wonderful Easter Monday and thank for stopping by!

MailART Monday: Do you Snail Whale?

Last month I started to join in some mail art swaps over at Swap-Bot again and found this wonderful swap called Sticker Shock! So I got out my tin of stickers and went to town! I can't tell you HOW MUCH FUN it was doing this :) I used to collect kawaii stickers and stationery and I still have a ton of them, so it was great to get all those little sticker flakes and put them to good use. There was some placement coordination, like the title which I hope you can spot ;)  And take a good look around, there is so much to see! From a kitty knitting a sock on a bunny's ear to an angrier kitty trying to chomp on chocolates and a lazy bear trying to get the happy pick nick sandwiches into his tummy. This is totally going on my "need to do that again!" list! And if you have been saving up stickers like I have, definitely give it a go!

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

MailART Monday: Believe in hatching your dreams

Today I wanted to share a MailART collage postcard I made with the "create something in 30 minutes challenge" in mind which is held over at Country View challenges. This collage is made with scraps from my "junk paper box"  in which I keep all my left over scraps and pieces from other projects. I decided to grab a hand full of papers and see what I could make from it. It's very fun to see how all of this can just come together though serendipity :) The background is a sticker paper piece on postcard size that already had the diamond from Lost Coast Designs stamped on it. The cycling steampunk Lady is a LCD favorite of mine and I had stamped and cut her out for a few other  mail art projects as well. So that was very handy to use. The sentiment from Cat Kerr was a left over cut out from THIS ART journal page and the golden colored piece of paper over on the clock is actually a piece from THIS ATC. Pretty cool how the circle alignment worked out there. All the other scraps and pieces were added together as a frame and then covered the whole piece with a shimmery coat of modge podge. This was sent to my partner for a February sender's choice swap at Creative Collage over at Swap-Bot. Of course I was in such an inspired mood, I made a bunch of other collages which I will show you later this week.

Entering this card as the my 3rd and final entry for the Rubber Dance Layers theme in february



Also entering this in the Creative Artiste Mixed Media February Challenge

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Mailart Monday: an ode to coffee

Coffee, for me, is a necessity esp. in the mornings. I can't seem to function without it. I just love everything about it, the smell, taste, the heft of a good cuppa Joe in hand. These two ATC's are an ode to that delicious beverage. They were made for a coffee themed swap over at Swapbot this summer. I used real coffee to stain the backgrounds and stamped over it with Tim Holtz Freshly Brewed stamps and coffee ring stamp from Stampers Anonymous. I colored them in with tombows. The girl on the right is from Unity Stamps (I think... ) and I colored her in with derwent artist pencils. These were really fun to make and I received equally fun ATC's in return.

Full of beans... coffee beans!

The maker of the brilliant ATC above is SuMay on swapbot and I just totally love it. She also has an awesome flickr page of her mail art. 

A good idea definitely starts with great coffee! I'm getting some now ;) 

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

namasté

Mailart Monday: Nature's Beauty

For a swap on Swap-Bot I got out my Gelli Plate and stencils to play around with. This swap hosted was by Gina Visione at The Print Shop group and called "Nature's Beauty".  The goal was to "Send a Gelli-printed, hand-stenciled (or nature-stenciled :D!), hand carved Rubber stamp or Linocut mail art postcard representing something beautiful in nature." 

So I took one of my new nature themed stencils, Birds and tree by Clarity combined with encouraging scribbles from Stencilgirl Products and Stars from the 101 stencils by Ed Roth and made the above print with help of my Gelli plate. I printed it on vintage index paper which has a beige undertone and it's a great way to reuse some old papers I saved from the trash at work! It needed some more colors so I took out some fountain pen inks and added more color to the print.

I used some contrasting colors: yellow for the inner circle (Toucan Gold) and a teal/twilight color (Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo) for the outer edge of the print to give it a night sky feeling. I love how the tree just pops out from the print. I love how it turned out and am glad that my partner liked this print as well,

Looking forward to use more of my gelli printed pages in mail art and in my art journal :)

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

namasté

Mailart Monday: Masterboard Giveaway reminder

A reminder that you can still enter to win one of the below Masterboard Mailart Inspiration cards in the mail. Just go to this blogpost, leave a comment and your name will be entered.

Edgar Allen Poe

Salvador Dali

Next Monday I will announce the winners :)

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.

Namasté

Mailart Monday: Masterboard Inspiration (+giveaway!)

Last week I showed you a group shot of outgoing mail and I wanted to show you a closer look of the Masterboard Inspiration cards I made for this swap on swapbot.

First let me answer "what is a masterboard?" I think Ann in this blogpost on Wonderstange says it best "a masterboard is a great big multi-layered background that you cut up to make smaller pieces: postcards (4″x6″), ATCs (3.5″x2.5″), inchies (1″x1″), chunkies (4″x4″), and other forms of mailart with fun names." And that is exactly what I did when making the cards below.

I took an A4 page which was already party covered in ink residue and stamped with large back ground stamps, layered with stencils and paint and then cut them up into 4 pieces. I chose to pair the portrait stamps from Carmen's Veranda with Lost Coast Designs dictionary words and create 4 inspiration mail art cards. I stamped them all with Staz-On black but it wasn't black enough for my liking, so I traced the images with a sharpie to make it more pronounced black.

In the end I also spattered some liquid acrylics in gold, bronze, silver metallic and white onto the cards to make it more interesting. What I love about masterboards is that you cam make a lot of cards in a small amount of time.

The bottom two already were mailed out for the swap, but the top two I still have available and I decided to do a fun giveaway for them. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post and I'll pick two entries and mail out one card to each. I will pick the winners on Monday 22nd so in 2 weeks from now. If you have a preference of Poe or Dali, let me know that in the comments to and I might just grant your request :) 

Hope this inspired you to create some master board mail art cards yourself.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.

namasté

Mailart Monday: summer time mail

It's the heart of summer and things are slowing down everywhere. So will my mail output and updates on the blog. Usually we're in Sweden at this point, but this year we're actually staying in the country. We're going to spend more day trips to the beach and just enjoy some time off locally. Recommendation for art makers out there: if you haven't listened to these podcasts from the Art Supply Posse team, you really should subscribe! It's hosted by Ana from Wellappointeddesk and Heather Rivard. It's fun chatter about art supplies in general, how to use your own stash more and creating space for daily art making. Also be warned as they will enable you to try some more/other art supplies ;) As I have fallen for the latest episode Color me Pencil and got a bunch of Faber Castell Polychromos to play with. I'm looking forward to try these and some other new art supplies in my time off and tell you about them soon. But since it's mailart monday, let me show you what I recently sent out into the world via outbox shots.

A shot of some hand made postcards I made for swap bot swaps: create a masterboard, put a foreign text on it and TPS mail art July. The latter I used some left over prints from my first gelli print session, stamped various circles rubber stamps in blue toned ink pads and the Mona Lisa Stamp is from Carmen's Veranda. I sent this piece for the foreign text swap and next time I'll show you how I made those masterboard cards.

I'm still doing my hera studies and this piece was sent for the CC sender's choice july swap. The background was pieced together with left over papers and then I stamped some fun stamps over them. It was a base piece to layer hera whom was stamped on Canson tracing paper. She was then colored in with letraset promarkers. I wanted to try my new liquitex gloss varnish to adhere and seal the piece. It gave a crackle effect as you can see, but I quite like the result. So another transparency layer effect on my mail art :) I like doing these!

So as I said in the beginning, my updates will be less frequent in the month of august. 

Thanks for stopping by and hope you're all enjoying the summer as well :)

namasté

Mailart Monday: Transferring and Layering

A few weeks ago I told you that I hardly ever used transparency layers on my mail art. Well I later realized that that is not exactly true. I have used a few transfer techniques in my mail art, like the packing or clear tape transfer technique. You can get some really fun and multi-layered effects when you use this technique in your (mail) art. An example below:

This piece is made on a background of laid paper (Crown Mill) and fountain pen inks drippings. Then layered with a stencil and blue-green paint. When that was all dried I took an image out of a vintage fashion magazine and adhered it. I always love the contrast of the grey-scale tones to the colorful background. The theme for this postcard was for the Handmade travel postcard at Creative Collage group on Swap-Bot so I wanted it to have more themes layers and I took a page from a vintage atlast and made the packing tape transfers. The packing tape layers are somewhat transparent so the background does shine through. Before I glued it all down with my trusty UHU gluestick, I sealed the background with some gel medium. I used a credit card type card to smoothen it all out on the page and let it dry before adding more to the card.

I used a few rubber stamps in the travel theme from Tim Holtz and Paper Artsy Electica's and stamped it on with Staz-On Jet Black. The sentiment "many years later the only place from which to begin" is also stamped with Brilliance lavender ink. I love how all the layers came together and fit into the theme. Hope this inspired you to use some packing tape transfers in your mail art as well. 

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

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

Mailart Monday: Transparency Layers

Above is a shot of my recent sent mail art. The PC on the bottom is a postcard I made for the Transparency Layers Mail Art swap over at Super Mail Artists group on Swap-Bot. I like swaps like these, that challenge me to work outside my comfort zone and see what I can come up with. Let's take a closer look at it.

The idea of the swap was to have 3 transparent layers overlapping and ideally telling a story. I hardly ever use transparencies in my work, so this was definitely a fun challenge. The base is 1/4 of an A4 on which i used acrylic paints on, which I mounted on card stock. I added mesh, a strip of gelli print on tracing paper, rubber stamps, the fountain pen image from a Montblanc catalog and then came the transparencies. The Edgar Allen Poe image from Carmen's Veranda was stamped, as well as the word Daily and the hand holding the paper, on a transparency sheet and cut out and glued on with permanent glue strip roller from Pritt. The sheet on the left side with all the words came in last. I love the black and white contrast of the transparency layers used and the way the bright colors shines through them. I continued with the transparency theme on the back.

And added a pocket for a letter to my partner and included some fun confetti rounds for some cheerful color. I secured the pocket with glue on the back and masking tape around it. 

Then I inserted everything into a see through cellophane bag as an "envelope" to add an extra layer over the back with stickers and writing. Transparency layered to the max!! I was happy to hear my partner enjoyed receiving this in the mail!

Since this was such a fun thing to do, I might incorporate this to other pieces in my mail art as well :) 

Hope this inspired you to work with transparencies in your own work :) 

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

namasté

Mailart Monday: Star Man

On today's mailart monday I wanted to share a collage piece I made for a swap on Swap-Bot Mail Art Postcard Random hosted in the group Sealed with Love. What I literally did for this swap, I took a hand full of small paper scraps from my junk paper boxes and see what I could come up with collage wise. The card below is the result.

In the "lucky dip" of papers there were paper scraps from scrap book papers, left over pieces from gelli prints, postage stamp sheet left overs and a home made sticker from my David Bowie Print I made earlier this year. These were "faulty prints" as the print was on the cut line of the sticker sheet. But I'm glad I kept these none the less, as it's fun to use in projects such as this (plus you know I can't throw away anything, so yeah...) I stamped some stars on the card with Brilliance lavender ink and sealed the card with artists medium. Afterwards I decided to put some accents on the  lettering with a white gel pen.

And then the Star Man was ready to be mailed out! I'm happy to say that the recipient liked this card and the lyrics was stuck in my head for a week! Want to sing along?

All together now...

There's a starman waiting in the sky

He'd like to come and meet us

But he thinks he'd blow our minds

There's a starman waiting in the sky

He's told us not to blow it

'Cause he knows it's all worthwhile

He told me

Let the children lose it

Let the children use it

Let all the children boogie

This card is also suitable for #32 "use songtext/lyrics" of the craftorij summer challenge prompt :) 

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day! Shout out to all my USA friends, hope you all are having a great 4th of July celebration!

namasté

A note on planning: The administration of creation

Since I have been asked a few times, on how I plan my mail art mailings and swaps, I have been thinking about it and what the most effective way is to keep an administration of creation. At the moment (at it has been this way for a while) I have planning systems all over the place: in my midori passport and in the full size. I have stuff on my phone planner, on my swap-bot Dashboard, facebook event pages reminders, notes on my desk... and just trying to remember it all by heart. So in short, it's all over the place (and nowhere specifically). But I know (and have done so in the past) that there is a more efficient system to keep track of all these swaps/mailings. Let me share my past plannings first with you.

What I have done to keep track of my 365 Mail Art project in 2012/13 is getting an undated planner, a beautiful one above is with art from Gennine Zlatkis published by Chronicle books, to fit my needs for the administration log on  which mail art item number is sent to whom. I also took a photo of every mail art item I send out (I still do) and logged it in my photo albums and home and on flickr. It took me over a year but I did finish off the 365 project and also did a few Bonus numbers because I has 4 weeks left in the planner.

If you follow the above picture to my flickr album, you'll find a discussion on this very topic from a few years ago! On each piece I also stamped a journal stamp (from Artemio set) and wrote the number and year on it. For mail art sent in 2014 and 2015 I used the monthly pages in the beginning of the book to keep track or mail. And eventually filled the book up completely. So this systematic way of keeping track of sent mail art worked perfectly, as it was a project with my own time and deadlines and had a specific book to log it all in. 

But this year keeping track of things like this didn't work out as smoothly. I started to log it in my undated monthly MTN planner, but I also do my Monthly updates in there and I just forget to log my mail art in there as well. Also now I have a bit of a problem with keeping track of the serial number because I am making a bunch of mail art but sending them out later for swaps that fit the description. And my log numbers got a bit screwed up ...

Whoops! But I've started to get better at it again!

The fact that a monthly calendar system did help me out in the past, I decided to get the midori passport size monthly planner of this year (hey, it was on sale!) to fill in the daily prompts for the CZC. I then stamp a little mushroom in it to note which ones I have done. It works for me because it's an every day carry item for me and when I have some time to look over the prompts and get an idea, I just flip through my turquoise craft ideas book in the same midori to write down or sketch some specific ideas I have. And look, I'm nearly caught up with the CZC prompts!

This craft idea's book is used to note thoughts I have on certain swaps and quotes I find interesting etc. It's become my inspiration book for when I'm on the road and need to jot in some crafty thoughts. 

I am really interested to know; do you keep an administration of your creations? How do you log your mail out goings and what items do you use for it? I would definitely appreciate a comment below with your thoughts on the subject. It might be of help to my new set up and I will keep you all updated on my endeavors on this as well. 

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day! 

Namasté

Pens and Ink: Pelikan M250 Black Dark Green with Akkerman Bezuiderwoud Groen

Last week on Pens and Ink I posted about my recent Pelikan M2xx series finds. This week I'm highlighting a pen I mentioned in that post, the Pelikan M250 Black Dark Green fountain pen. And I paired it with a nice green ink from Akkerman's The Hague ink line; Bezuiderwoud Groen.

First let me start by telling you that the nib you see on the pen here is not the original nib. I replaced the original 14k gold M nib (which is the only difference between a Pelikan M200s and M250, the first has a steel nib and the latter a gold one) with an older nib from one of my vintage N400 Pelikans. Why? This nib just deserves to be in rotation more. I've seen David B. from Too Many Inks do this all the time with his Pelikans (Swap nibs between his pelikans) And I decided to give it a go myself. It did not disappoint :)

A closer shot of the vintage nib that came with my Pelikan N400 Tortoise, which I sadly can't properly use as the piston fill mechanism is broken. I love the engraving in the older nibs! The pen itself is one from before 1997 and there is a version from after 1997, which has a different cap and printed logo on it instead of engraved. More info on the difference between the M2xx's series, including this one you can find at The Pelikan's Perch and Reuttinger web site.

So I've chosen to pair the pen with an ink that would match the green cap and piston knob and since I decided to use more of my samples (and then decide if I want a full bottle of it ;) I went though my Akkerman samples and picked this one. I think if you translate "Bezuidenwoud Groen" from NL to ENG you would come up with "South Woodsy Green" ... Maybe? Just FYI, it's not a "real" word in Dutch either! Oh well, it doesn't matter, it definitely looks like a forest green to me! I think the nib also brings out great shading this ink has/ Another great green shading ink from their line is definitely the Groenmarkt Smaragd, which is more of a moss green. I own a bottle of that one, because it came with the pen I bought then. Even though I really like the color of this ink, I am not so sure I need this ink in a full bottle... yet.

In other fun news: as you may know I've been a Swap-Bot Ambassador for a while now and recently I have started blogging for Swap-Bot Blog as well. Rachel, the owner of Swap-Bot, and I discussed it when she was visiting Amsterdam last April and we met up for dinner (together with her husband Travis and their wee one Kenneth). She is such a super fun person, kind, energetic (she runs marathons!) and creative. I'm happy to be able to contribute and collaborate with her on this project. The first blog post is already up and you guessed it, it's about writing with fountain pens! I also am hosting a swap "Fountain Pen Pal Summer 2016 Edition" on the 'bot to help more people just get out their fountain pens and write with them more. Hop on over to the swap page to see more info on the swap and the sign up dates. You have to be a member of Swap-Bot to participate though, if you're not a member yet, it's super easy, just make a profile and read these FAQ's to get you started. And perhaps I'll see your in the mail?

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.

namasté