misc mail art

I'm a slug about blogging lately. Not sure what the problem is but I'll try to get back to it more regularly!

Been making postcards lately from the plethora of magazines I've accumulated recently. A big stash of Nat'l Geo and Bon Apetit from a yard sale. A stack of Minerva, an antiquities journal full of ancient statues, coins, etc, from the library. And a big pile of Oprahs which I think I've mentioned before.

I go thru them while watching the tube in the evening, tearing out pages with images that appeal to me, then cutting them out when I've got a good pile. Even the most fascinating program rarely completely holds my attention so I like to have something else going on - crocheting, paging thru art books, whatever - I can't just sit and stare at the screen.

Anyway, I had a box full of images and all day Monday to play with them since my poor husband had to work on one of his days off. I made a big pot of rustic cabbage soup in between postcards, to use up the last cabbage from my rapidly declining garden.

Now that I see these on the screen, a few of them need some doodling or something. 

When (finally) done, these'll go out to various mail art pals, and eventually something fun from them will show up in my mail box. If you're not currently doing mail art, you should give it a try. So much fun to get something neat in the mail.

bird postcards!

I like birds. I like tame ones (I own a parrot) and wild ones (my entire back patio is a bird feeder), birds in books and on mugs, and I especially like them in art. When Karen at MMSA announced a bird theme postcard swap, I stood up and cheered.

Our store is closed Sunday and Monday so those are usually my days off but today I went in at 7am so the sprinkler repair guy could do his thing without people in the way. I took a bunch of supplies and made bird postcards while I was there. Best day at work I've ever had!

The first two have vintage paper backgrounds with graphics from some collage sheets by Tangie Baxter. I didn't buy the pack shown at the link but picked up some when I was in AZ a couple weeks ago. Added some appropriate book text, a little shadowing, and was done.

The third is a gelli print back ground on which I drew one of my world famous birds (the *only* thing I can draw), some washi tape, a strip of text from a magazine, and some edge shading with gel sticks which isn't showing up in this scan at all. The coloring on the bird was done with Copic markers.

Hope I get some good ones back!

AZ workshop journal (lots of pics!)

Front cover

The mariner's compass is actually glued to the page two images down.
You're seeing thru a hole cut into this page.

Click (or maybe double-click) on the pics to embiggen them. There are a ton of techniques on all these pages but I simply don't have the energy to caption them one by one and call out what's on them. I'll caption a couple that have something really interesting but otherwise there's scraped paint, sprayed ink, stencils, stamps, gel medium transfers, Neo Color IIs, gel sticks (gelatos), marker, pen, collage, cutouts (holes cut into the page).  If you have a question about something in particular, ask away. 

All these pages are from a journal made of just three pieces of paper. The outside piece has a short foldout at each end. The second piece has a full foldout on the right. The third (inner) piece has a full foldout on the left. Very cool design and fun to work on. Tangie's husband Dave makes them for her classes and for sale.

Lots of masking tape put onto page before scraping 2 colors of paint across it.
Makes a very cool background.

Took one of Tangie's cool journal pages (printed out that you can buy
altho this one came with the class) just torn up with no thought
to what would end up on each piece, then glued down, also pretty randomly,
altho I did place the girl and the word 'found'. Love this look.

The little pocket at bottom right holds a Fugi Instax Mini pic
that Tangie took of each of us. 

Another hole cut in the page to view the sunburst on the following page.

Looking thru the hole from the back of the page.

And here's the sunburst from two images up.

The girl at bottom left is a gel medium transfer done directly onto the page.

This image and the one below are the front and back of a short foldout.
Some of the other pages are foldouts too but full size.

The back.
I very carefully decided where I wanted to stamp my hand carved 'dream' stamp,
then proceeded to stamp the damn thing upside down. 

go fish MMSA swap

(Wrote this post weeks ago but never posted it for some now-forgotten reason.)

As of mailing these off this morning, I'm completely caught up on outgoing swaps. Well, MMSA swaps, I should clarify. Need to get a bunch of private swap cards finished and mailed. Maybe tonight while DH is stuck at work doing month end.

Put A Fish On It was fun. I didn't wanna just go find some pics of fish in a magazine and cut them out. But I can't really draw or paint well enough to do fish that way. I was flipping thru a brochure for European river cruises, which sounds like a blast, and waiting for inspiration to strike when I decided to cut fish shapes from the pretty images and maps.

So we have here city fish and map fish.

Plus one belligerent actual fish in with some wrapping paper catalog fish.

A couple gelli print backgrounds, a shiny pink card, and a NeocolorII watercolor paper card. Some gel pen doodling, and we're done.

Artspirations Studio workshop

There's me - Leslie52 - along the left side.

Last weekend I spent 17 wonderful hours art journaling with a bunch of other women at Tangie Baxter's Artspirations Studio in Mesa AZ. Those 17 hours happened in a 28 hour period - 5 hours Friday night (6pm-11pm) and 12 hours Saturday (10am-10pm). I've never in my life done something for 12 hours straight. It's a long time, even for something I like a lot and I got a little light headed around 5pm but a slice of pizza fixed me right up.

Gorgeous old turquoise lockers and the bird wall.

The studio exists because Tangie ran a Kickstarter campaign, hit her goal, and then worked her butt off putting it all together! I was a contributor so my name is up on the wall along with everyone else who chipped in, and it was cool to look up and see it there - kinda like having your star on Broadway!

The studio is a wonderful place, full of every art supply known to woman, tables to work at, chairs to sit and look at books in, stuff to buy, art on the walls.

One side of the paint station and the circus wall.

The workshop was good. Tangie demoed a lot of techniques and we all thrashed away on the journals her husband made for the class. I'll show mine in another post after I get it all scanned.

Tangie showing us how to do gel transfers.

The rest of the paint station.

Tangie talking to all of us sitting at tables
along the left wall, just out of sight.

painting papers...

...with gelli plate and credit card. 

The first 3 are acrylic paint scraped onto the paper with a credit card. The rest are all gelli plate using masks and the end of a paint brush to dab paint on. 

Substrate is scrap paper from work - heavy white paper dividers and used file folders. 

This batch all started cause I was trying to fit the paints I'd just bought into the paint holding crate and it wasn't working too well. So I decided I'd use up a batch of Liquitex bottles that took up too much space.

Well, it's amazing how much paint is actually in a bottle that feels practically empty. I kept rolling on, printing off, but still the paint kept coming. I did manage to use of 2 of the 5, so that helped some.

These are most likely destined for postcard backgrounds.

These are scanned at 300 dpi so feel free to download them for digi use, regular paper collage, whatever. Just don't claim them as your own or sell them, please.

digital collage - ciao

Haven't done a digital collage in ages. Months. Just got caught up in paper, I guess, but tonite I was in the mood and made this one. 

All the elements are from the AJC 2013 September kit which was Italy. I think I'd really like Italy if I ever got there. But that's prolly not gonna happen so I'll make collages instead.