Steampunk Mail: Published!

To all my faithful followers, I am so excited to share that I have reached my art goal of being published!  I am feeling quite happy and accomplished.  The magazine is Just Steampunk by Scott Publications.  

I purchased this little paper mache box for a dollar at a wonderful place called USArtquest, which was the inspiration for this project.  This is also where I met a certain man named Joe Rotella of Create N Craft, who pointed me in the direction to submit. Incidently, I also met Steampunk Eddie at the big sale at USArtquest, who is on the page opposite me in the magazine!

Below is a picture of my page from the publication.  I was tickled to later see my work on the title page of the home decor section too!

I have to give shout outs to both Graphic 45 and Alpha Stamps as they were both mentioned in the article as well.  I can't believe they put most of my text too!!!  It was edited for tense, but other than that, these are my words...and there are lots of them.  There are not too many long written pieces in this publication.  

I love the texture that the silver gilders paste created on the wings and on the Dresden Scrap that borders the box.

Lots of metal embellishments add to the industrial look of the project.

See some of the cool mail below.  I just started creating freely using up scraps on hand.  I thought it was quite clever to use gears, keys and junk as tabs and dividers.

The large postcard is captured in a mica frame.  I also used a lot of embossing.  This is an easy technique that gives you a lot of bang for your buck.

I love the addition of vintage postage stamps to the mix as well.

As always thank you for your support!  Each and every one of you who stops by is appreciated, and your comments really do mean the world to me.  

Cheers, 

Rhea

Bathing Beauties

My very first design kit from Alpha Stamps was a beachy delight.  This month they are sponsoring a "Wish you were here" postcard swap.  You can find more information about it here.  I made several samples, delighted with all the fun imagery. 

I absolutely adored the travel adhesive borders.  I did not even use them as intended, I left them on the card stock backs as I did not realize until later that they were stickers.

On the back of the card on the left I used this cool wire mesh to capture some shells and glue it on my card.  The product is kind of like a tube of mesh, so I was able to tuck things inside.  

  

I really love this card.  I used lots of Dresden borders in a nice shell motif. I love this image too.  

I kept this once pretty simple.  I really liked the imagery.  Here are more of the adhesive travel borders, along with a sticker from the Tropical Travelouge line from Graphic 45.  

The last one is really fun.  I just freely collaged from all of the images I cut out when I got my design kit.  Sometimes it is freeing just to put stuff down and not be attached to the outcome.  I think this is why I am really loving collage journaling right now.   

Stay tuned for more beachy goodness on my blog.  I have a tutorial coming soon with Alpha Stamps! 

Cheers, 

Rhea

Mail Art Junque Journal

I am delighted to be able to finally show off this treasure.  At one point I thought this lovely little book was lost forever, but it resurfaced and I am so grateful.  This journal started out as a Mail Art journal,  round robin style swap through Swap-bot.  When it was returned to me there were still several pages unfinished, so I just added more of my own mail art and lots of other paper junque.  It is so fun and packed with goodies. 

I am showing off a few pictures to entice you, but I am also posting a You Tube video, as I think this will better capture all of the yummy mail art goodness inside. 



Lots of people contributed to the cover and I love this aspect of the journal.  It is hard to imagine what it looked like before I sent it out into the world.  I wish I had a "before" shot to share with you.  I picked up a few of these handmade books at an art student's garage sale.  In hindsight, I should have grabbed more than the three I did. 





Here you can see how thick this book really is.  There are a ton of flaps and fold outs I made simply by creatively attaching envelopes with  decorative tape.  You would not believe how much decorative tape there is in this book. It makes for really good collage fodder.





These are two pieces of mail art that I had received and added to the book before sending it out.  I just adore the mermaid envelope!



Here is another great spread that is true to the original theme.  These pages were completed by Mandy, aka Farstarr.  She has a lovely etsy shop worth checking out!



Here is another one of my favorite spreads.  I made this one from wonderful mail art items I recieved from Su, aka, TangleCrafts.  She also has a wonderful etsy, filled with zines and all sorts of mail art fun.  The brown insert is actually a self mailing zine that is all mail art themed and just filled with lots of useful information and inspiration.  I thought this was a clever way to add this to my book.  I made a simple hinge with gaffer tape from 7 gypsies.

Hopefully I have teased you enough to want to take a gander at the full tour of my fun journal!  Enjoy!



Farstarr's Mail Art Journal

Quite some time ago I started a round robin journal with a small private group on Swapbot.  It did not go as planned, but at least I finally got my book back.  For that I am grateful.  I have not sent it back out to have the other seven people work in it, because I am afraid it will not return.  I am, however, keeping up on my end of the deal and working in others books.  Since my journal is mail art themed, I have offered participants to send me a bit of mail art for me to add to my book tip in style. 

This book comes from Mandy, aka, Farstarr.  She and I have been swapping mail art in some form for a while now.  She has a love for fish and science as well as all things postal and vintage.  I think the book she altered is actually a moleskine.  It is getting really fat and full of character already.  I hope she does not mind...I added a bunch as you will see!

The cover and inside few pages were created by the owner of the journal.  I love Mandy's use of vintage ephemera and stamps.  I could not resist adding this German scrap fish to the front.  I am hopeful she does not mind that I added this here. 



I got a little carried away on the inside cover too.  I had some stickers that I thought would go really well with her journal, so they found their way on the page too.  Each page I worked on has an imprint of a vintage Via Air Mail stamp.  I thought this was a clever way to "sign" the page, without being obnoxious. 

This is the first spread I did.  It was quick and easy to do since Mandy sent along an envie of dreamy ephemera with her book.  I did find though that the pages I did with her stuff look very similar to the other entries, so I later ventured into my own stash to switch it up.

I just had to use the vintage picture that was in the ephemera envelope.  I love the look of an old photo.  A simple label was added to the top of the page, I titled it "day 365."  Hopefully the owner appreciates this nod to her Mail Art 365 project. 

This page is filled with simple collage and scraps from my work table.  The guppy was in Mandy's stash, and I added a cute title after taking the picture.  It will just have to be a surprise for the owner.

This page also had a few additions post photos due to composition issues.  It was too dark to retake them when I realized this.  Bring on the longer days for better blogging!  Anyhow, I also decided to cover up the surfer, as the owner of this book really does not like people in her art.  Don't worry Mandy, the surfer is gone!



This background was left over from one of my first swaps on the bot.  I thought it was a nice addition to the book, something different.  I also added a few scraps, some used stamps as well as some artistamps I had in my stash. 

And here is my final spread.  This layout is much different than my usual style.  I embraced the straight lines for once.  Here I used an old letter, some vintage ephemera from my own stash as well as a few of Tim's salvage stickers to finish the page.  I love the small envelope glued on the page.  I enjoy having interaction in my work if I can add it.

Since this week's challenge over at Simon Says Stamp and Show is to show off "anything besides a card," I am going to link it up.

I hope you enjoyed seeing inside of this wonderful compilation of mail art!

Cheers, 

Rhea 

I love snail mail

So I recently blogged about getting my completed mail art zine here.  I just received another issue to work in and I was super inspired.  I managed to get it yesterday, and it is is the mail today.  I just love how projects like these help push me into creating. 

The theme for this little book is snail mail.  It would seem that we were all inspired with a literal translation of the theme as there are super cute snails in every entry.  As you will see, I followed suit.

 

I had cut out a different "shell" all together, my messy craft table helped a new shell to be made, and I am much happier with the outcome.  As many of you know, I love clocks and time imagery.  How fun to incorporate a snail's pace into my contribution.  The transparency clock shows some vintage ephemera below from an old adding machine workbook.  I also used a bunch of rub ons.  Super fun, easy and spontaenous work. 



Here is the front.  Please excuse the found objects keeping all the addresses confidential!  I love the stamps I used on here and how they go with the nature meets mail theme. 

When making this page I tried a new technique that I just adore.  The base color background is color wash and glimmer mists.  I wanted to add some texture, so I busted out a new stencil.  I was so inspired by stencils used at my recent creative retreat.  The one shown here was by Martha Stewart (she has bunches of new stencils at the big box stores).  Now the fun part...I used vintage photo distress stain with the stencil.  Heaven!  So easy to apply and super easy clean up.  Here is a photo before I added all the other layers...



 



I hope this post inspires you to get out those stencils.  They are so much fun!

Cheers,

Rhea

My Mail Art Zine: Complete!

Last year I started in a few different mail art projects.  I was quite excited today to see one of them had a positive outcome, as the finished product arrived in my mailbox today.  It was hosted on Swapbot by Mandy, aka, Farrstar.  You can see how to make a zine such as this on Mandy's blog. 

We made our book from heavy card stock and simple stitching.  The first pages, below, were completed by me.  I set the tone for the book by writing what I love to hopefully inspire my swap buddies around the world.  I am so pleased to see that they did not even cancel my stamps at the post office.  I had a few special ones I used on this piece as I knew they would come back to me!

To mail, you fold the book closed, tape it well, address it on the outside, then the zine becomes traveling art for all to see.  When the next person gets it, they add their art and fold in half and have a new postcard side and image side.  As you will see, many of us used every inch for traveling art!

I have used some hand made Christmas Ornaments to conceal addresses in these photos. 

 

The next two pictures are now my cover and my back.  This is how the zine naturally lays due to it's most recent postal adventure.

I just love the big red mailbox as well as the carrier.  These pages have all kinds of postal goodness upon them!  I am happy that these have become the outside of my zine. 

More maps, stamps and air mail stickers, yum.  There are some awesome stamps from down under.  This book traveled far and wide:



The tape used here ended up becoming a part of the art.  Love it!

There are a ton of cool stamps on this page.  I love the background script paper.  The pages below are done by our hostess, Mandy.   

 

Very interesting imagery used here.  I love the tapes used.  I am obsessed with decorative tape! 

The big scalloped edges made to look like a stamp are a really nice element to this set.  I love the stenciled letters too. 

 Another favorite, above.  The stamped image of the pen nibs is to die for.  The palate is something I would totally do and there are quite a few artistamps on here. 



This set has nice colors that are out of my usual range.  The bizarre imagery makes me smile.   





And this concludes this project, at least in my book.  I still have two or three more zines to work in before this adventure is totally complete.  What a great group of people.  This took some serious time and commitment and the results are totally worth it!

Cheers,

Rhea

Recycled Mail

While reading a book about creating your own stationery, my muse struck and I created this little booklet in moments.  I had saved this envelope as it was covered with very unique vintage US stamps.
 

I cut the portion of the envie with the stamps on it.  Since it was not quite as long as I needed, I rescued another piece of the envelope to make the back.  The paper inside is a heavy cardstock that has an aged feel.  I cut the strips twice as long as I needed and then punched two holes along the seam I created by folding the strips in half.  I used a heavy twine to lace through the holes.  Simple little notebook with a touch of vintage postal charm.

Creative Blocks

I thought I would post a picture of my latest creation.  This project is a class Tim Holtz offers, however a creative group I gather with chose this as our latest altered art project. I was impressed at what we were able to produce in our afternoon together. 

The base for this collage is a large canvas with several small canvases added on the surface to create blocks and dimension.  A variety of techniques were used to create my piece.  General collage and distress concepts were employed along with image transfers processed with gel medium and stamp/tissue paper.  Found objects, game pieces, scrapbook elements, napkins, Ideaology findings, old clock parts, grungeboard, vintage used stamps, tissue tape and ephemera were utilized as well. 

I love the ecclectic look.  I know it is busy, but I do love the layers.