Handpainted Tulip - Altered Envie

My altered envie partner for July has received the envelope I sent her, so I can share it with you here.

My partner lives in The Netherlands, which is famous for its tulips.  Since my signature flower is the tulip, I decided that would be my theme.  I started by creating my own envelope using a monoprint I made with a Gelli Plate.  I used acrylics to paint my tulip, and let me tell you, that right leaf took a looooong time to get right!  Thank goodness acrylics are very forgiving.

On the back, I wrote a quote by Anaïs Nin:  "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

Thanks for stopping in!  Take a risk and blossom.

Giveaway Winner

The winner of the mail art giveaway is...Gemini Norn!

Gemini Norn said:
Welcome „back to Life“ of art and blogs. I love that you used car images from an outdated wall calendar, it made me eye my own current wall calendar with greedy eyes. Thank you for being an inspiration for me today ;-)

Congratulations, my zodiac sister!  And thank you so much for your lovely comment.

If You're Lucky Enough to Be Different - Greeting Card

Do you ever sit down to make something and end up making something else?  (All the time, right?)  Well, that's what happened with this card.  I was trying to make a couple of cards using some monoprints I created (I'll talk about them in a different post), and they just weren't coming together.  So I switched gears and made this card which I plan to send to a friend.  She loves the color purple and I know she will get a kick out of the little girl on the front.  I've nicknamed her Celie, after the character in The Color Purple.

The background started with my monoprint.  To that I added a strip of vintage sheet music (my friend is a classically-trained vocalist) and a circular graph cut from a vintage engine manual (just guessing here, but my friend probably knows little about vintage engines, or modern engines, for that matter).  The sentiment and the Celie "paper doll" are Tim Holtz products.  The butterfly is a rub-on by 7 Gypsies.  To age the papers, I sponged distress inks around the edges.  A dark charcoal pencil was used to outline the sentiment and Celie; a blending stump and my fingers helped to smudge the charcoal.  Because of the charcoal, this card got a quick spritz of acrylic sealant as a final layer.

Thanks for stopping by!  If you haven't already done so, hop over to this blog post and enter to win an original piece of mail art.  You have until July 13, 2018, to enter.  (That's Friday the 13th.  Ooooooh...)

Supplies:
Purple and white cardstock by Bazzill; monoprint on Strathmore bristol vellum paper using purple acrylic paint; vintage sheet music and graphic illustration from my stash; sentiment and paper doll by Tim Holtz; butterfly rub-on by 7 Gypsies; mustard seed and walnut stain distress ink; dark charcoal pencil.

Calendar Cars Mail Art and...a Giveaway!

Hello there!   After a long (unplanned) break from blogging, I decided it was high-time for me to get back into the habit of documenting the things I've been making.  Not that I've been making a lot, mind you, but I have created a few things since I last blogged and I don't want to lose track of them.  So I'm going to jump right in and share with you these postcards I made last weekend using images of vintage cars from an outdated wall calendar.

I started by adhering a road map to pieces of 140 lb watercolor paper cut to size (5x7 inches).  To tone down the map, I scraped on white acrylic paint using an old credit card.  I added stenciling using distress inks.

After adhering the cars, I embellished each postcard with rub-ons, vintage postage stamps, and rubber stamping.  To finish the postcards, I sponged distress ink around the edges and sprayed them with a glossy acrylic sealant.

Gosh, it felt great to sit down and accomplish something at my art table!  And now to blog about it?  It's like I've come back to life.  To celebrate my return to blogging and to thank you for reading this, I'd like to send a piece of mail art to you.  Just leave a comment on this post telling me what you like about these postcards and how I can contact you if you win (an email address would be great).  If more than one person comments, I'll hold a random drawing to decide the winner.

Comment by Friday, July 13, 2018, in order to be entered.  Good luck!  And thanks again for stopping by.