Recent Mail Art

I have been very active and busy in the last few month with some mail art projects over on Afa, and this post is about those projects.

Firstly there is a monthly arted envelope trade with an assigned partner, and I am not quite sure why but I just had to make some envelopes with opening doors recently. One of my partners had stated in her profile that she was doing a lot of gardening design and floral arrangements. I decided I wanted my envelope to her to reflect that and I went for a walled garden (like a secret garden) with an opening wooden door. I am not showing the front as it contains my trade partners name and adress.

If you look real closely you can see the texture of the nails on the door, I used Lumiere metallic paints for those (not a sponsor), and my trusted inktense pencils for the rest.

I also found some tiny brads in my stash and I used them for the closure as you can see.

Now I hit a bit of an obstacle, drawing perspective properly is incredibly hard and I found no way I could draw the view from the gate into a walled garden in a way I found pleasing and with proper dimensions and so I had to go back to the drawing board for inspiration. Eventually I decided if I can‘t give my partner a garden, I might at least give her a lot of.... Space!

It doesn‘t come out in the picture, but I used an iridescent medium on the planets and the polar caps.

Up to this day I am not sure if my partner has received her space garden, she went to stay with relatives for a month about a day after I sent it and I have no idea if she is back yet or even if the envelope made it. Because it has the opening door I wrapped it in a clear bag for the journey. I will wait another week or so and then contact her via message to see what the story is.

And then there was February which is the month for Valentines Mail Art. For this people sign up and then make a valentines card for everybody who signed up for it. In the last few years this list had grown to over 20 participants, thank goodness this year „only“ 16 people had signed up. I had just before bought some mulberry paper online and as it was not how I thought it would be I had not used it yet and so I decided I would use it for this project. And maybe carve some lino stamps, too? I must admit, I carved some very elaborate lino stamps, but they did not work out for printing on the mulberry paper, I was very dissapointed. Instead I found some Indigo for dyeing hair in my arty stash pile, my husband had gotten it for me ages ago in a set together with Henna, and when I did research about maybe using indigo on paper I found only answers that said the Indigo for hair wasn‘t suitable for fabric dyeing, nowhere did it say anything about paper. And so I went ahead playing...

I loved the process, and I also found that a little water applied on top of the freshly soaked paper changed the indigo colour slightly. Unfortunately the mulberry paper itself wasn‘t thick or strong enough to be used a postcard on its own, but I used it as key feature on ebery card and my partners February envelope, too.

Now I just had to make some card for the background, and if there is one technique I started to really enjoy, then it is splash dyeing paper with fabric dye. It dries waterproof (a must for arting over it), the dye comes in wonderful colours and you really don‘t need much at all, the splashes are wonderfully random and add a surprise effect to watercolour and inktense pencil drawings. It really is playtime and highly enjoyable. 

For this particular project I chose a very pink colourscheme, it was for Valentines after all...

Unfortunately I did not take pictures of the process, but the first card you see here is for the birthday babe in the envelope and Valentines trade, it has the pink splash paper as base, inktense pencil writing and a little heart garland made from the indigo dyed mulberry paper

Up next is my February partners envelope, another one with an opening door, I used a different splash paper for the envelope and I used my pink fabric dye to dye the heart shaped door. The medium size heart on the door is indigo dyed mulberry paper with some fabric dye added also, and then a tiny indigo heart over it.

When you open the door you can read a message inside the door and the envelope turned into a shaker card with some heart shaped confetti and lots of glitter inside...I loved making this one. And the indigo dyed mulberry paper was used for every single card and envelope that month, I still have loads left over so I will be using it again.