Mail Art

I am participating in an informal mail art exchange with my friend, Sherry, in Indiana. I wanted to use this background for something surreal and vibrant. It was not until after I stamped the image on matte coat that I decided to use pastels. Since matte coat has a smooth clay coating, it does not have the "tooth" to grab certain coloring media. However, I was persistent and found that my Pan Pastels would work. The background was colored with the pastels and sealed with workable fixative. The moon man was stamped on a mate coat scrap and colored in with Copics. I cut him out and glued him to the background. The hand was colored with Souffle pens.  This was actually quite quick to create as I did not do a lot of painstaking coloring. The broad strokes of the pastels made it super easy. Just remember, if you use your pastels to add color, use the appropriate non-coated paper.

Art Journal Fun

This was a playful double page spread I made. The background on the left was created with strips of various background papers and tapes. On the right page, the inner part of the page is a resist - water soluble Pastel over Glaze pen outline. Both techniques could be translated to a variety of projects, including cards and ATC's.

And now for Something Completely Different...

I am taking a card and scrapping break this weekend, and participating in a series of art journal classes taught by my friend, Kelly Kilmer. She always has great classes, techniques and loads of information packed handouts. A fun little technique I learned is illustrated in the page (in progress) below:

The focal image on the above page is from a retro comic book (I think it was Millie the Model, or something similar). After cutting her out, I used a stencil and a Sakura Glaze pen for the yellow dots. Once it was dry, I colored with water soluble oil pastels, blending with a damp paper towel. The Glaze pen resisted the pastels for an interesting effect. Cool, huh?! (Thanks, Kelly!)

This next page also uses a couple of different materials that I had not combined before today.

The bird image was cut from a bird book. I added some sheet music for much of the background. There rest is tape (you know how I love tape!) and transparencies. I really like the combination together - particularly the clear background tape!

You could use both of these great ideas on cards and scrapbook pages. Something different can be quite fun.