What I’m Working On

Personal

This weekend seemed busier than usual for me! Although most of it was spent indoors, I felt like I was constantly creating or organizing. Did you have a productive weekend?

One super fun thing I worked on this weekend was a zine! The amazingly awesome company I work for puts out a zine for the employees every quarter. I’ve submitted pages to the zine but, this quarter, I’m lucky enough to be part of the team! Everyone in the company are welcome to submit whatever they want to the zine, and the zine team makes the submissions pretty and puts the entire zine together. I had 4 submissions to work on! This is one of them. I decided to do all the pages digitally, as I have my entire collection of images scanned into the computer, and it’s so much easier to work that way. I had a ton of fun doing each page. It inspired me to get started on another zine!

Envelopes, envelopes, envelopes! I learned a new trick that makes my lift 1000 times easier when it comes to making envelopes: getting the larger sized envelopes, painting/collaging the entire front, and then folding it in half to make a normal-sized envelope. It’s a bit of a waste but I’ve always had so much trouble coming up with something to put on the back of an envelope. Now they are more cohesive and it saves me so much time!

ATCs! When I’m waiting for paint to dry on envelopes, I typically start making an ATC. I switch back and forth while I’m waiting for things to dry. Stephanie inspired me to start doing these little guys. When I was active on Swap-bot, I always wanted to make one but, for whatever reason, they always intimidated me. Anything other than an envelope intimidates me, really. I’m starting to branch out a bit! I have a bunch of little images that are perfectly sized for ATCs.

Outgoing

Mail, Outgoing

I put together some nice little envelopes for some great pen pals! In addition to making some mixed media stationery, I also painted and collaged some envelopes! These are probably my favorite envelopes. I’m so happy with how they turned out. It’s so great to be inspired by my envelopes to include all sorts of goodies for the recipients. I’m diggin’ these painted backgrounds so much!

I love going through my stash to find the perfect things to send out. It’s also great for making room for new things! I have so much stuff saved for the day I think I am going to use it, and then I just don’t use it for years and years. Time to send it off to someone else! I’ve bought a lot of little baggies to put small paper bits in, and they are so perfect to send along with letters. Nothing too big or spectacular but nice enough, I think!

Painting Stationery

Mail

Remember my SCRAP Haul post from the other day? This is what I have been creating with some of the paints I purchased!

I’ve been obsessed with using paints as a background and just adding on top of it. This stationery started out as pages from a vintage encyclopedia I have. I used a makeup applicator sponge to apply different paint colors, as well as some alcohol inks. I realized I’m not too fond of alcohol inks so I’m trying to use up what I purchased years ago.

For the set above, I used my little diamond rubber stamp and a square stencil to add the shapes. To draw attention to some of the shapes, I outlined them with my white Gelly Roll pen and my black Uni-ball Vision pen. I really love that technique! Since I’m a big fan of collage, I also punched out some circles of an old map I had to add to the page. I really love the look of the brown paint I picked up; in the light, it has a bit of a metallic shine to it.

Of course I picked up some purple paint! Unfortunately a lot of the other colors I bought don’t go that well with it but I’m also a bit picky about what I color I pair with purple (I don’t know why!). I used basically the same elements for this set; paint, some rubber, stamps, alcohol inks, and outlining with pens! It’s a pretty solid way of doing things, if I say so myself. I’m really happy how these turned out and I’m excited to start writing letters on them!

One thing I really love about this technique is that it makes such a great background for everything! I did the same process for an envelope and then collaged on top of it. Most of it ended up being covered but the parts that were visible went so well with the collage! I think I will be stuck on this look for quite some time. It’s super quick and a lot of fun! I can’t wait to pick up some more paints to use. I really want some neon colors because I’ve been diggin really bright things lately.