Mail Art - Virginia

Happy Easter Sunday everyone, and for those not working today I hope you have been able to get inky.

Mrs Postie brought me my first mail art from Virginia this weekend.

A mixed media collage with inks, papers, stamps and I think some hand drawing round the stamped circles.
I have now stuck it up on my craft room wall for inspiration-thanks Virginia.

I have Sonja next in the mail art....this will be the first time I have sent anything out so I am not sure how to find out Sonja's address...if your reading this, can you contact me with your address and I will get my mail art in the post?

Many thanks

Kyla

A long overdue Pair Journal update

It was a real race against time to get this to the post office by lunchtime today - but I have sat on Shirley's poor journal for long enough and I was determined to get it sent back to her before I disappear on my hols - I made it with about 5 minutes to spare :)

I have only made a couple of little tweaks to existing pages this time around as I was short on time, maybe I'll revisit them next time the book comes a-calling

I added some colour/shading to the little houses on the Home page:





and various bits and bobs (washi tape, oil pastels, stamping) to the texturiffic Love page:

Shirley had started this next page with a wonderful fiery background - so I added a phoenix, some stencilling and the word Rise:

The next page is half size as we have now got to the end of the front side of the book.  The word I pulled from Shirley's pocket-o-words was Life, and my mind went off on a tangent thinking of artificial life and hence the 1s and 0s in the background and the wireframe tree:

I then flipped the book over and added a couple of new backgrounds to the backs of a couple of the pages already completed:

This first one was gelli plated, with a sneaky spray paint border to hide the fact that the double page was just a little tiny bit bigger than the gelli plate :)

And this one made use of some of my old Basic Grey letter stickers - some left on there, some used as masks and removed

I look forward to seeing where Shirley takes these two springboard pages

And I leave you with a look at Shirley's entire book as it stands so far - to give you some idea of scale, it is 8" tall and more than 10 feet long!  I had to stitch together this photo in Photoshop from 11 individual shots:

Please click on the pic to see it more clearly....

It has been a pleasure to collaborate on the front half of this book, and I'm sure we will have just as much fun with its 'backside' ;)

INcoming and OUTgoings ( donnalouiserodgers)

Pat and I agreed to do a mail art exchange when we mailed out our exquisite corpses,  she sent me a beautiful waxed postcard, the colours composition and detail are exquisite, thank you hugely Pat,

and by coincidence I  have today mailed Sherry both my corpse (so to speak) and Nigel's CJ, though it may not arrive until Tuesday?

I also mailed out mail art x4: one for Pat, one for Sonja, one for Virginia, and one for Sarah, I have been just so silly busy with work that it has been an absolute pleasure to be able to do postcard sized stuff for people,

mostly now I am making babies....and thinking about the torso of pats corpse

Pair Journal Rebecca and Sonja

This post has been an epic as I have been fighting with Blogger and my photos for ages. I was in a rush to post the journal and I took my photos upside down as the light wasn't great. Now it's not normally an issue. I just rotate them in Picasa, save them and then upload them but for some reason Blogger is rotating them back much to my annoyance. My DH eventually cracked it for me so thanks to him.

Rebecca and I are swapping journals and I currently have her one here with me and I'm working away on the pages. Once I got started I was fine but it was a bit intimidating at first to actually start work on someone else's pages.

This is my cover.

This page is a stencil with texture paste, inside of an envelope with washi tape and a Hambly rub-on.

Adirondack paints and some paper glued down then coated with gesso for texture.

Some vintage pages with watered down Liquitex paints.

The remains of a Jenni Bowlin alpha with an image I had from a magazine.

More vintage papers as well as some 7 Gypsies tissue paper covered with stencils and a mix of Adirondack inks and Dylusions.

Final page is some She Art papers I had.

I currently have Rebecca's journal and I'll post some photos of what I've done to it when it's finished.

Sonja.x

Donna's Desert Island Discs

Florence and the Machine

Never let me go

I'll be honest and say upfront that I struggled with this,

as the music just didn't speak to me,

nor did the video.

But after giving myself a stiff talking-to, I actually like what I came up with

I just hope Donna will forgive my lack of musical taste ;)

 

The outside of the inside is acrylics,

and the errr, inside of the inside is pen and charcoal.

Now I just need to go and add a few tweaks to other pages :)

Sarah's Desert Island CJ

My page in Sarah's journal - now ready to post on

I added colour text and the odd stamped image to previous pages and a little charm to the album tie

Prayer flags - additions by Pat

This flag was started by Sarah - I have added a felted bird and flower and some stitching on the flower and stem

On this flag - originally started by Lou in Group2  I cut away a few of the layers in places - added fabric pictures and some hand stitching

COLLABOR-ART PRAYER FLAG Project Round 2

Pat (Group1)  sent me a lovely spring coloured appliquéd fabrics base, I forgot to take my before pictures for both flags I'm working on, when I get them I'll add them to this post.  I stamped bright red and orange flowers over the base and then machine stitched lots of petals around the bigger red flower.  I also added a lime green fringe.  Its always difficult to know when to stop but I think there is still plenty that can be done here.

Flo (Group2) sent me an earthy abstract base.  I stamped swirls all over it, machine stitched them and then stencilled my all time favourite image of a goddess over this, I then added an earthy coloured ribbon as a fringe.  I look forward to seeing how both these are finished off in the final round.

TFL Lou x

I once had a girl .... or should I say .....

It's Desert Island Discs time again and this month I have Pat's absolutely gorgeous book to play in

I chose the song Norwegian Wood as when I was little, the Beatles were constantly played in my house as my big sister loved them - and this song (and the Rubber Soul album as a whole) was my favourite

I never realised though until I really read the lyrics in preparation for this page that it was about a jilted arsonist! :D

But instead of portraying our John burning the poor girl's furniture, I decided to illustrate the line about sleeping in the bath tub...

The background was spray painted through the same stencil twice, but moved a bit the second time...  I was kind of trying to go for something reminiscent of the Norwegian flag:

Not sure it quite worked, ah well, at least the colours are right....ish

Then I blocked out the shape for bathtime Lennon with white paint pen, and started to colour him in:

I liked the way the background showed through his towel so I made sure to keep a bit of that in the final thing.

Lots of shading with oil pastels and a Stabilo All pencil later, and he was done.

All that was left to do was type up the relevant bit of the song lyrics:

You can see where I was a bit heavy handed with the typewriter on the "o" in "crawled off" and the middle fell out - oops!  But I had already stuck it down before I noticed :)

So that's it for my own page, quite plain, so lots of scope for you lot to fiddle with it as it does the rest of its rounds :D

And talking of fiddling:

I added some shadow stamping to echo the lovely pressed flower on Pam's page

And some light colour to the gorgeous sketched girl on Sherry's page

Meanwhile Donna's amazing Parisian page was the perfect home for my Paris washi tape (up top)

and I finished up by giving Virginia's page a blush of colour round the edges

As ever, this has been a lot of fun!

Sian's book next month, and I'm going to give a bit of an advanced warning, my page might have a few swear words on it!

Pam's Desert Island CJ: Smooth Criminal

So I can't sew, I've never worked with fabric, I don't own a sewing machine and when I received this I thought HELP! :o) It is gorgeous though... and a couple of ideas sprung to mind first of all printable canvas then transfer paper was suggested to me. Tesco only had transfer paper so I went with that! I'd already decided what I wanted my page to look like and I'd created it digitally so I had something to follow. It turns out transfer paper is fab!

I love smooth criminal and I love music played with classical instruments (Metallica's S&M album springs to mind!) and I love cellos (Apocalyptica hello!) so this was an obvious choice for me. I hope it's not too papery for pam (thank you mod podge!!!) I managed to use some ribbon as well under the title after painting it red. So here it is:

As Pam doesn't like MJ the only reference to him is the hat hanging off the cello but it seemed to me to fit my theme of a smooth criminal with bullet holes and blood drops. Pam describes the song as exciting and sexy and I hope this page goes some way to representing that.

Thanks for looking :o)

Archived: Junk for Babies

Okay so here's the deal:

you tell me you want a D&V journlet (baby offspring from our pregnant paired journal):

I send you a journlet and you send me junk....

Here's how it works:

You add your name to the list AND you email me your addie,  I tell you when I have mailed you your baby, when you receive your baby you decide what junk it is worth, and then you mail me back some junk...to be clear you don't have to make me anything ( if you do I will be happy) you can just send me stuff I will use in my makings....

Simple....

Adoptive Parents List:

1  me! me! I want a baby!  - Sarah -  mailed received Junk recieved thanks
2  I want a baby too!!!!! -- Pam-mailedreceivedjunk recieved tahnks
3  I would love a D&V Bubba too!-Sami- mailed and recievedjunk recieved thanks
4 I would love to become an adoptive parent - Jas x - mailedreceived
5 I always said "no more", but I have no will-power and too much junk - Nigel- ???lost - mailed ages ago. It's arrived now, and will have a stern talking to about dawdling :) ah I kenew I sent you a special one!
6 I would love to own a piece of your work...and as you know I have LOTS of junk to spare!! Kyla- mailed and received...will blog soon - junk exchange arragned
7 I could send you enough junk to make the Von Trapps...?! Thank you, Leanne x-mailed
8 I'm available to adopt Lou x -  mailed & recieved
9 If you don't mind sending to France I'd love to adopt one. Rebecca (Bex) -
mailed received junk en route
10 I've no previous experience, but would love to take care of one of your gorgeous babies Donna - Sherry -mailedreceived junk received
11 If there are any more babies available I would be happy to adopt too - Pat Beaumontmailed & recieved
12 Okay, okay - I tried to resist - but couldn't - me please (Karen) - mailed & recieved
13 You know me to well :) Yes please, thank you Donna. mailed and recieved
14 this one is for BIG mamma Carol Davies of the uSA - to be made - will be ready in approx 2 weeks - private excahgne tothe usa
15  this one is going home to Mamma watch out Virginia


The babies have to be full term before they are birthed so I will tell you your due date when you email me your addie...

WARNING: Please read this if you are pairs journalling

Sarah will tell me 'I told you so' and 'we have rules for a reason Little Miss Anarchy'

Paired journals are NOT SUPPOSED TO MEET

so when Virginia and I ended up with both and swapped them both literally as a 'pair' I suppose we should have seen it coming...

MY journal is PREGNANT

please be warned you should keep your journals circulating one at a time or they may have too much fun together and you could end up with Jounalets....

Karen's Desert Island Discs CJ - by Sherry

This is my contribution to Karen's Desert Island Discs CJ.

The song I chose was by Emerson Lake and Palmer - 'Cest La Vie'.

I hadn't heard this song before but took inspiration for the page

from the first verse of the song

"Have your leaves all turned to brown

Will you scatter them around you" 

I used my Gelli plate and the page went through various stages

before I was finally satisfied with it.

 The little folder on the front has a button closure and opens

up to reveal a rubber stamped image of 'gratitude' and

an umbrella with little hearts raining down on it.

I thought this appropriate for Karen's reason for choosing this song.

Hope it's OK for you Karen.

I took a deep breath and added to other contributors' pages ....

To Sian's page - Bird Gerhl

I added a little metallic rub on paste to the bottom left hand corner -

to further highlight the embossing.

To Pat Beaumont's page - Sweet Child of Mine

I didn't add to as it was so full already.

To Karen's own page - Ave Maria

I added some metallic rub on paste to the door.

(I must just say that I think this page is really beautiful).

To Virginia's page - Purple Rain

I added some clear embossing to the purple raindrops.

Finally, to Donna's page - The Final Cut

I added a little varnish around the eyes to

highlight the tears.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, to think about The Exquisite Corpse Project

- thanks for the email Sarah, safely received :)

  

Sami & Lou's Paired Journal

So I took the plunge to partake in some Paired Journalling, Sami was very kind to offer herself up to me.  Panic then immediately set in, collaborative art is fun but also very challenging and nerve racking for me; you all make it look so easy.  I faff, procrastinate and then worry its not right, even though I know 'right' doesn't really apply here, but I want to do a good job IYKWIM, so Sami's fabulous journal arrived and my mind went blank.  I kept looking through it thinking how can I add to these fab pages, what will work here, how much do I do....the list goes on and on... eventually I told myself to GET A GRIP and Go 4 IT, so here goes ..........

Page 1 before and Page 1 after - I toned down those pink hearts with a light coating of gesso and then added the red mulberry flowers.

Page 2 before and page 2 after - I used my chalk pastels and covered the page in lime green so you could still see the text underneath. The & and Q are stamped in acrylic, the bird and music line are glued down.

Page 3 before and after - this was actually the first page I worked on and then decided it was too bold and had a major panic over it, it took a couple of days before I worked on the journal again.

Page 4 before and after - I've added some rub ons to create texture in the background and the flowers on the dress, the words, the dragonfly and the bird cage are stamped onto tissue paper and glued down, the crown was just shouting at me "pick me, pick me!" so I did.

This page is all me, I used chalk pastels for the rainbow and some stamps.

This is another page I've added to but can't find the original image.  Chalk pastels again, stamped tissue for the penny farthing and a digi image for the cockerel.

This is another page started by me, chalk pastels and a stamped image.

I didn't work on all the pages maybe next time round I'll feel braver.  The journal is back with Sami, hope she enjoys working with my contributions.