Inspired

What a day! Two packages arrived. First one from Megan and then a bag of inspiration from Gail. I now have two lovely albums to fill with treasured snail mail. Le Enchanteur, made by Gail, is proudly standing amidst the treasures. Thanks so much Gail. I had such a wondeful time with my new glue gun.

My Boomerang Just Came Back

Megan has used elements from a bundle I sent her as part of my Boomerang Mail and today the Boomerang came back when this lovely, covered sketch book arrived. Many thanks Megan.

Future Warrior Shrine

Future Warrior Shrine - created from a favour in

a christmas cracker, a matchbox painted copper,

a piece of strip board and some electronic elements.

Glue Book Pages

I have been having fun with these glue book pages.
I have uploaded them to a flikr album, until my website is finished.

I love texture and old doors, so it works for me to take parts of various photos and put them together in one collage. I am attracted to these colors too.

Pressed flowers were the only way to go with the beautiful handmade papers that Monika sent to me. I'll try to describe them - the piece on which the vase rests is a lovely soft cream colour, embedded with tiny flower petals - the green piece used for the vase looks like marbellised paper and has sprinkles of glitter - as this already had a curve in it, I cut another one and made it into a vase for the pressed geraniums. The leaves are torn out of another piece of handmade paper.
The lovely shreddy earthy brown piece on the right gave the piece balance and anyway, I couldn't resist adding it - it's so beautiful.
This piece will be framed and kept as a memento of the Mail Art Group.

The left over piece from the vase was used here, just to accent the pressed flower, which it does beautifully.

This was great fun! And I still have the stamped pieces and button and sequins to play with from Monika's inspirational package.

This is the mail art card I sent to Carol.

some of my art inspirations

Since I don't have my other webpage back up yet, I thought I would list here some of my favorite art inspirations. I think Megan and I have very similar tastes!

Sabrina Ward Harrison

art e-zine

Corinne Stubson

Kelly Kilmer

Juliana Coles

Teesha Moore

Sisters on Sojourn

Traci Bautista

Kristi Schueler

Lisa Vollrath

Melissa M. Hubbell

Lynne Perella

Traci Bunkers

Eliza Badurina

Altered Books-ISABA

Altered dictionary page

Megan's cool book reminded me of my Altered Dictionary project (which has been on the back burner for quite some time now). Here is one of the pages I did for it.

Flea Market Find

We went down to the local Sunday flea market - I was hoping to find some magazines to use for my glue books. There were plenty of magazines, but I told Ken I would wait until we had seen everything. I'm so glad that we did. I found an illustrated encyclopedia (I think it's from the 1930's) the seller wanted $5 - I didn't argue. Although I said to Ken as we walked away that if he knew what I was going to do with it he would probably be horrified. I think I'm going to alter it, but I'm not sure yet.

Images Posted to Sylvia

Here are the two images I posted

to Sylvia, second one in a white cut-out regular card,

and the first on a

red single square piece of card with a fancy edge.
copyright Monika Roleff 2006.

A collage created in Photo Shop

This morning, I created a collage in Photo Shop using several pictures,old paper as a background and then some special grunge brushes to look like stamping or somewhat random brush strokes. I added some square brush lines to add more elements to tie it all together.

Finished Collage from Workshop

Here is the collage after everyone in the class has added parts to it. Actually there were two collages and the paper was torn in half so pieces of differnt ones were put together and a big hand carved rubber stamp was used over one of them. this does give the work greater unity.

Glue Book

Inspired by Lisa Vollrath's Glue Books http://www.lisavollrath.com/pages/95 - I have begun my own glue book. I am intending to do at least one page a day. These are collages made from newspapers, magazines, flyers and junk mail.

My first Matchbox Shrine

I was inspired by Lisa Vollrath's website to try and make a matchbox shrine. I found a small plastic soldier figurine and rubbed it with copper a rub-on, the metal sticker on the front was also rubbed with copper to give it an aged look. The background is of the Reims Cathedral.
I'm already thinking about what I can do next!

postcard for Gail

picture made from stamps and spritzed with violet and silver afterwards

Bags of Inspiration

Hi All

Heather shared this website with me http://www.lisavollrath.com/index.php there is a wealth of information about collage, ATC's, altered books etc. It has a How to section with clear instructions for many different techniques. (I'm tempted to try some of them, myself!)

I thought her 52 Bags of Inspiration http://www.lisavollrath.com/pages/10 was an interesting concept, and thought it may be something that we could try here.

Here's how I would invisage it would work for us. The names of those that want to participate will be put in a hat and drawn out, I will let each of you know who you are to post to, that way we are posting to different people all the time. You put together a package of ephemera, collage elements, fibres etc and post it to the recipient. The recipient then has to create something with those elements. They would need to post pics of the items they received and the finished product.

Email me if you are interested in participating.
Megan

Boomerang Mail

Hi Mail Art Playmates
I am as excited as can be about this mail art and being sent off to look at favourite old sites has got my creative juices really bubbling. Now Megan will lead us and suggest some projects so if you have wonderful ideas just mail her and let her know about them.

Aside from the projects I am planning to gradually mail Boomerang Mail to each of you.

I am going to undertake to do regular illustrated letters and they will always include some pieces of ephemera on the condition that one piece of ephemera comes back in some imaginative way.

Whatever did I do before Soul Food became what I imagined it could be?

love Heather

Collage in progress

This a work in progress. We learned about putting together layers of material and keep on working something until we felt it was done and not feel some parts were too precious to cover up.

Nick Bantock workshop

Since Nick Bantock was mentioned, I am putting in a couple pictures from the workshop I attended which was taught by Nick. This photo shows a picture of myself working on a collage and Nick is giving me advice.

Collage

I have completed another 4 collages today, and have posted them to my blog http://ravenstreeperch.blogspot.com/ let me know what you think.

Reposting over here

I posted this on Nina's Treehouse but felt it really should be put here instead so I am just reposting it here. I am glad we have a separate blogger for the mail art now. This was to Shari.

Japan - collaged tag

I'm not sure if this is finished yet - I know it needs fibres - not sure if it needs anything else. Let me know what you think.

Favourite collage & journalling artists

My favourite collage artist is author Nick Bantock. He is the author of Griffin & Sabine.
His most recent book - Urgent 2nd Class - is a handbook for creating art using old maps documents etc. like he uses in his books.

http://www.nickbantock.com/

Another of my favourites is Lynne Perrella. Her work is inspirational. She has two books -
Artist journals & Sketchbooks and Alphabetica (I've got the latter on order).
Here's the link to her website

http://www.lkperrella.com/

Treasures

With my recent surge in creative activity, I decided to go to the local stamp and scrapbooking store. I had my husband with me to curb my spending. Plus I promised I wouldn't be long. Once inside there was no turning back. I picked some scrapbooking papers and then I found the reduced price stamps. I got 13 stamps and other supplied for $36. The retail value of the stamps was $208. When I got home I cleaned up the desk in my study, so that I could play.

Moon Dance was the result.

Lemurian Mail Art Playmates

Lemurian Mail Art Playmates

I have a large collection of mail art that I've saved from my participation in sending mail for about 10 years! I will be happy to share some examples with you.

Hive of Industry

Beehive by Carol Rowen

It is a right little hive of industry down here in my home at Carnforth.

Cupboards are being opened and sorted as I arrange all the things I will need for this mail art project. I have not been this excited since I was a young girl and had penfriends in the United States and Canada. I still have a couple of little things that they sent me, that seemed so special. Come to think of it the little fuzzy skunk brooch is special.

As I sort my things I realise I am going to have to get into 'papers' and look into buying myself a colour printer. Like a right ninny I didn't realise everyone scanned and printed their work onto nice stiff cardboards. That explains a lot. There is so much I don't know but if I start wandering around art sites that promote this sort of thing you may never see me again and Soul Food will have to function on auto pilot. Maybe it will be best if you all answer any of my questions and we learn together.

Illustrated Letter

I had begun to feel nervous about suggesting Mail Art because although I was a fine letter writer I have never participated in anything of this kind. It is good to feel that I am outside my comfort zone because it reminds me how others feel when they arrive on the site and are daunted by the sheer talent around them.

Then my muse came walzing in the room, her gown making a lovely sweeping noise as she arrived. Tonight I watched the Antique Road Show and saw some illustrated letters.

So my first partner for the Snail Mail Mail Art will be getting an invitation to join my crazy world - Insanity Inc.

I think I could quite enjoy this illustrated letter writing. But I don't think my letters will ever fetch the price that the ones on the Road Show were going to fetch. Bad luck folks! You will simply have to find some other way to make your living.