Penny Black challenge

This week's challenge at the Penny Black blog is to make a decorated envelope. I thought the brushstroke stamps would be perfect for this, so I made a few different ones until I got one I liked. (Note to self, don't start with Fabriano cards until you have a good system down!) I painted the stamps with twinkling h20s and misted and stamped, repeating a few times withing re-applying colour. I thought it would be nice to make a card while I was at it, so here's what I came up with.

I really, really love those brushstroke images. They are some of my favourite stamps and it's a pity they're so hard to find here in Canada. Whenever I see one, I snap it up.

I was inspired by the work of Rachel Jackson, whose work often appears in Craft Stamper magazine. Her work is characterized by lots of white space, interesting texture, bright colour, and a certain element of splatter or paint. I was going to go simple on this, but then I thought of the article I just read by her that had interesting text blocks stamped in unusual places so I thought I would give it a whirl. I'm not sure if I like how it turned out, but I like it well enough to use it. I think I will keep experimenting with her approach, which is sort of clean-and-simple meets mixed media. Craft Stamper is a great magazine, but it's also hard to find here. Again, whenever I see it, I snap it up. I'm debating about subscribing, but it's from the UK and quite expensive.

Anyway, back to the card. I added a frame with my Micron, matted the whole thing onto some grey cardstock, and then on a moss green tsumugi card base.

This envelope was stamped in the same way, but with the dragonfly too. He's stamped in Black Emerald twinks, and the same purples and blues for his wings, but without the pomegranate. Black Emerald is THE colour for dragonflies. It's black, but dark green when the light catches.

I don't know what it was about yesterday, but it was a day for paint in our house. The girls spent a long time painting, and got themselves completely covered in paint. And the table, and the floor, and the bathroom when they tried to clean up. It was a monumental mess and they got into a monumental heap of trouble for the series of poor judgment calls that led to the mess. Fast forward to 9 pm when I am stamping away, and dip the hem of my t-shirt into a pot of Rainforest green twinkling h20.... I sigh (it won't wash out) and note the irony. Fast forward to 9:10 pm, when I knock that same pot off my desk and it bounces on the floor, upside down and makes two big spots of dark green on our light coloured carpet under my stamp desk. An interval of intense scrubbing and muttering followed and I got it pretty much out. Luckily our carpet is made of some frightening fibre that repels twinks. I guess the previous owners didn't splash out on wool carpet. Anyway, the irony of the situation wasn't lost on me..... Here's hoping our house isn't in the grip of a similar force today.

I will leave you with the best rapture comment hubby found on-line: "People are making rapture jokes like there's no tomorrow."

Thanks for stopping by!

Mail art

Hello!
No picture today. My computer is on the blink again. Once again we heard her dulcet tones calling out "CPU failure!" "CPU failure!". Since we put a Do Not Resuscitate order on it after its last bid for the eternal boot-up, it's looking like it's time for a new computer. All this to say that I don't have any photos of cards to post and even more annoying is that the computer has locked away forever my instructions for the cards I am supposed to be teaching this Saturday at Heather's. Grr. I can always do a forensic analysis of the cards, but it can be hard to figure out exactly which colours I used, etc. Especially now that I do class handouts, I don't tend to try to remember things too well. Looks like it's back to CSI: Stampcave for me! (Careful Stamp Investigation, that is.)

In other news, I have been dabbling in mail art (if one thing counts as mail art). Or more specifically, I tried one project and really enjoyed it and have decided to try it out some more. (I did take a scan of it, but read above para to discover its fate.) If you are interested in being a mail art recipient, please send me an email me your address at the link at the above right then (and this is important), please comment here to tell me you've done that. In case I am at a loss for mail art themes, you could also give me a colour, noun, favourite song, any kind of theme really, and I will see what I can do. International is ok too, especially because it really is fun to see where people visit my blog from. An important caution: I am a terrible mailer of things. So don't expect something right away. Instead, plan on this being a delightful surprise, arriving in the mail long after you'd forgotten you'd even emailed me. There's a very slim chance you might get something right away, then you can rush out and buy a lottery ticket because that would definitely be your day to beat the odds.

I'd love to hear from you!

EDITED TO ADD: I don't think my email actually shows up anywhere on this blog. I'm not sure exactly how to add it, so I will put it here in the hopes that blog-patrolling spam monsters won't find it in my secret "clumsy code". Here goes: kdaley 8 underscore 8 stamps 8 atsymbol 8 yahoo 8 point 8 ca [and where you see space-8-space here, don't put them in], or you can just leave your mailing address in the comment box. It seems unlikely that the bad guys are reading my blog to solicit mailing addresses for junk mail when magazine subscriptions and charitable donations will do the trick instead! And one other note, if you assume I already have your address, you may not be aware that my address book is playing hide and seek and is currently winning. So I can only get addresses of Canada 411. sigh. Although I know I'd love to be one of those super organized people that always knows where things are, I know I'd hate to be one of those people that spends all my time cleaning, tidying, and organizing. Life's all about tradeoffs, isn't it. And I will trade a nice cold beer and an episode of Doc Martin for a clean closet any day.