/* */ Beulah Bee: mail art
Showing posts with label mail art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mail art. Show all posts

April 23, 2021

Postcard

 

A postcard (from the edge?).... Expressing my feelings about events of the world we find ourselves in makes me appreciate the motivation behind artworks from other tumultuous times.

I took the back of a vintage postcard, added image transfers (window, birds), clipped Found Relatives, stamping (Tim Holtz Mail Art and Correspondence), tinting with markers and typewritten text.


 

If you're not familiar with my image transfer technique, here's a step-out I posted for your reference.

As always, I hope this post finds you well and happy and I appreciate your visit.

Until next time, take care.

February 21, 2021

Non-Zoonotic

Postcard

This image of a cactus was altered after printing by outlining the stems with a black ink marker and adding hints of yellow-green before it was fussy-cut. Then it was pasted over a thinned-out page of Abandoned paper stash and mounted on one-half of a vintage portrait folder.

The edges were distressed and it includes stamped text and postmark (Correspondence), a vintage postage stamp and typewriter text.

I'm linking up with Simon's Monday challenge "Add Some Texture." Nothing has more texture than a gigantic cactus--am I right!?

As always, I hope this post finds you well and happy and I appreciate your visit.

Until next time, take care.

February 07, 2021

True Love

Greeting Card

A week away from Valentine's Day and a milestone wedding anniversary for yours truly, doesn't mean big preparations are underway at my house (just having each other is more than enough) but it does signal the sharing of a card made for the occasion.

This one embraces a mixed media feel starting with a book page tinted with Distress ink and white-washed a bit. The heart was cut from a business envelope and I originally planned to use the other side. But after tinting, I liked the back better and made the printing part of the design (even though it's slightly askew).

I stamped the words "Special Delivery" (Tim Holtz Correspondence) and "True Love" is an older Remnant Rub.

The flowers and postage stamp were fussy-cut from Authentique scrapbook paper after using a bit of water and my fingers to rub off the backside to make the paper thinner (easier to cut and pastes down nice and flat). I always encase delicate pieces like this with clear medium to protect them for handling.

Greeting Card


I darkened the border with more Distress and drew lines with a fine-tip marker. I was lucky to have a piece of paper that matched my heart to frame it with. It's "dollar-store" variety children's construction paper, it's super thin (which for me is an asset) and I use this stuff all the time--it's perfect for collage.

Finally, it was mounted on black card stock and I'll insert a lighter page on the inside for personalizing.

I'm linking to Simon's Monday challenge this week, the theme is Love and/or Hearts.

As always, I hope this post finds you well and happy and I appreciate your visit.

Until next time, take care.

October 01, 2019

Happy Birthday Thelma


Thelma (my good friend who got me started stamping) has a BIG milestone birthday coming up and this is the card I made for her.

Nothing ground-breaking to talk about technique-wise but I would like to mention the flower garland because it was hand-drawn by me after a few simple lessons from the queen of coloring books--Johanna Basford. She has a new book coming out this month that teaches her drawing methods.

I gave the garland some color with my Polychromos then cut it out and pasted it onto scrapbook paper.


The cardstock I mounted it on couldn't be a standard card size so I found some really great instructions here for how to make an envelope in ONE MINUTE. Really!

Then I decorated the envelope using inspiration from Kristina Werner and realize I need more interesting postage stamps for the next time I do this. (No pics for privacy reasons.)

I wonder if the post office would mind if I used a real stamp along with some fake ones like these? I'll have to try it and then let you know.

August 19, 2019

Most Noble


I discovered some wonderful paper over the weekend made by Stamperia called Oriental Garden. I found an image of a woman to transfer with gel medium (thanks, British Library), then stamped postal and architectural images onto tissue paper and pasted together a collage tag.

I'm excited to see what other things I can make using this paper!

January 11, 2018

Raised by Wolves

Photo is by Bernd Heyden

Collage is an interesting art form. Disparate images pieced together that hopefully, speak to the viewer in some way. Sometimes, the hardest part for me is knowing when to quit so I just go with my gut. I guess that's what everyone does.

A lot of my collages are dependent on what I have lying around at the moment that I grab and decide to include. It is a game of sorts and play has a lot to do with it. "I wonder what this will look like if I put it here?" is the ongoing conversation I have with myself.

So today, may I share another journal page/collage that started from a photo by Bernd Heyden that I was compelled to use. Raised by wolves? You may guess what band I was listening to while making it.

I'm linking to Simon's Monday Challenge Blog, this week's theme is "Winter Blues."

July 24, 2017

Philately



Simon's Monday challenge this week is "You've Got the Edge."

And what has a more distinctive edge than a postage stamp?

Philatelists (people who collect stamps) use magnifying glasses and special gauges (like the one pictured below) to count the number of perforations for correct classification.


So, for my spotlight this week, I decided to make a postage stamp album using an Idea-ology Worn Binder (Notebook) and filled it with pages of postage stamps. See if you can spot the real ones!




The binder was stained with Distress, stamped (Correspondence and Legacy Lower Case), taped (Journey and Aristocrat) and collaged using a real postage stamp and ephemera (Snippets).

A wide variety of products were used to make the stamps including stamp punches (Uchi's Design Stamp Embossing Punch), rubber stamps (Tiny Things), paper stash (Dapper, Correspondence), Ranger archival inks, Versafine pigment ink, Prismacolor pencils, off-white acrylic paint and micro-fine pens (Sakura).

I printed a border on multiple sheets of off-white paper made to fit the binder to give the appearance of vintage postage stamp album pages. I used my trusty old Smith Corona typewriter to document my collection (adding a fair-share of tongue-in-cheek in the process).






Some of the stamp shapes were made from real postage that I covered with off-white paint--it's amazing how tough the paper is. Did you know that to remove the vintage gummed postage from an envelope you only have to soak it in water and it comes right off? Once dry, it's ready to mount in your album (or artwork?) with no harm done.

My stamps were mounted on dark gray construction paper to mimic the mounting squares (which highlight the perforated edges) in real stamp albums. I used a glue stick for all my pasting.

I have extra blank pages and expect to add to my collection in the future especially when I have interesting left-over snippets from other projects. It's a bit like journaling but on really tiny paper. So fun!!
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Please join us for this week's challenge!

If you upload your creation to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog you'll have a chance to win a $50 voucher at the Simon Says Stamp store!



Here's a list of most of the products I used for this challenge:


September 19, 2015

Artvue

Click to Enlarge
I'm still rather confused as to what constitutes a piece of "mail art." According to Wiki, it's centered on sending small works through the postal service and that at it's core, it's about interpersonal communication, exchange and the creation of a virtual community of participants. Huh?

I thought it was just about using postal ephemera in collages!

So, while I work on my understanding of this art form, I'll share my latest attempt (interpersonal communication) with my blog readers (virtual community). Gee, maybe this is mail art after all?


Beginning with a virgin postcard (never been mailed), I used an image transfer technique to add the newpaper print. I used a distressed Idea-ology frame sticker and stamped a bird on tinted watercolor paper for the center.


The red and green postage stamps are real, the cat stamp is homemade. The address label is from the Tim Holtz Correspondence stamp set. I applied it to paper then used a typewriter to fill in the address before pasting it on. The postmark in the top left corner and the words Par Avion are also from this set.

With a bit more stamping, tinting, dotting and a strip of washi tape (white strip near the center), I considered it complete.

Now all I have to do is mail it!

September 13, 2015

Zulu


I've made lots of tags over the past few years but little in the way of postcard/mail art which is funny since, size-wise, they have a lot in common.

So, channeling my inner Nick Bantock, I went way out on a limb with this creation. Yes, it's still a tag but with credit for pasting on a postcard, I think it could be called mail art.


The bird is a hand-carved stamp and the image transfer is from the British Library. I was attracted to the postcard because the handwriting was in red ink and also for the blue circles and text. I used a Tim Holtz Correspondence stamp (247) over the postage mark and there's a bit of Postale tissue paper at the top.

Why I chose this image will remain a mystery, even to me.

September 05, 2015

Note to Self

Click to Enlarge

This week's theme at Simon's Monday blog challenge is to create using only three colors and, while this tag may look like I left them out, my trio is off-white, green and sepia.

According to Google, black is not a color; a black object absorbs all the colors of the visible spectrum and reflects none of them to the eyes (in case you were wondering).☺


I used a Found Relative photo which I cut-out and pasted to the edge of a postcard and then attached to a manila tag tinted to match the postage stamp.

The backside of these photos have pretty patterned paper which I peel off (to make cutting easier) and I decided to use it to make the postcard background more interesting.

I just cut away some of the pattern, flipped it over, pasted it down then peeled away parts of it (like on the lady's face).

I added some Remnant Rubs and emphasized the shadow near the lady's feet.

(Note to self--dream big AND dream in color!)

(Another note to self--the postmark on this card is 1915 which means I used a 100-year old post card to make this tag.)