Postal art, altered cards and collage art

I wanted to share with you a few pieces of art I have been making. This first piece above is a Christmas card that I then added all sorts of other bits of art and washi tape. The envelope is embellished with washi tape and rubber stamped and I used a collection of vintage postage for mailing.

This art card I also used a bunny paper punch for some negative space.

This is another mail art envelope that I had so much fun collaging the vintage postage and rubber stamping. I highly recommend sending out paper mail and you just might get some back in your mailbox! Bring back the art pen pal in 2019!

The fun I had with the book Collage Playground by Kimberly Santiago

I only made it to pages 22 and 23 before I had to stop and get out my markers and chalk and a handful of other bits of mixed media to give these two techniques a try from the fun book Collage Playground: A Fresh Approach to Creating Mixed-Media Art.

I had tried the blocking out technique before but only in a solid color and with paint....who knew it worked with lots of different colored markers? Well, I do now!
The other technique involved playing around with positive and negative spaces in stencils. I thought I'd make a stencil first using my Tim Holtz Sizzix gear die. Then I used a bit of colored chalk with the outline part of the stencil and then I used the "positive" or actual gear to add more detail to the gear image on the page of my altered book. I used both green and brown chalk which had a nice "aged" effect. I can't wait to see what other "toys"... uh techniques Collage Playground holds beyond the first 20 pages!
More about the book from North Light Books:

By Kimberly Santiago

"Collage Playground focuses on collecting tempting elements like paper and fabric, deconstructing them and then reconstructing them into something beautiful. You will be introduced to "Collage Elements," ten simple techniques that take the mystery out of collage work, featuring combinations of papers, fabrics, paints and more that will help you create art that is highly textural and engaging. You'll see how the 25 projects are created, step-by-step, bringing the "Collage Elements" into practical use. Gain insight into and inspiration from the author's beautiful original works! "

Mixed Media Greeting Card Album using embellishment ideas from the book The Scrapbook Embellishment Handbook by Sherry Steveson

First let me say mixed media crafting makes a mess! A fabulously fun one, but none the less a big a** mess.

I love working with all sorts of bits and pieces so the book The Scrapbook Embellishment Handbook was right up my alley being that it is divided up by chapter based on each type of embellishment....very cool!

The first embellishment that caught my eye was the little metal frame on this page in the "Metal" chapter.
I save tin cans to recycle into die cut elements and so it was easy to run a piece of soda can through the Sizzix die cutter with the slide/frame die.
I have a stash of old family slides and it's cool that they fit perfectly in the Inkssentials Memory Frames by Ranger.
But I think they would look better hanging being back lit so I then when to my stash of scrapbook paper catalogs which happen to be a great source of little images and backgrounds. I also poked through an old catalog of stock photography. Out of these two I filled my little frame.
I punched two tiny wings from the McGill punch and textured them. I assembled these elements along with a tag that said "wander" which I thought went great with the road image and shoes with a bit of wire.

For the background I cut a piece of woven plaid fabric and fringed the edge by pulling a few of the threads out from each side and glued it onto the cover of The Greeting Card Album.

I put an image into the soda can die cut frame.
Printed out the words "knot nice" with my label maker.
Glued it all onto the plaid cover with a sawed off end of a spent 12 gauge shotgun shell casing.

Kind of eclectic but so am I!

Want more fabulously fun ideas on how to use embellishments? Grab a copy of:
The Scrapbook Embellishment Handbook
By
Sherry Steveson

Product Description from the publisher Memory Makers Books:

"The Scrapbook Embellishment Handbook, author Sherry Steveson covers 17 popular types of embellishments and teaches you how to utilize them on your layouts. With beginner, intermediate and advanced techniques for each embellishment, you will get over 50 step-by-step demonstrations, plus 130+ layouts and projects that illustrate these techniques.

A bonus Step It Up gallery shows you how adding embellishments can enhance a layout. In the gallery, you will see how a layout starts with a simple design, then is passed to a second scrapbooker who adds a few embellishments and finally it is passed to a third scrapper who adds even more embellishments, completing the look.

About the Author
Sherry Steveson has been scrapbooking for nearly nine years, and her work has been featured in Creating Keepsakes, Scrapbook Trends, Simple Scrapbooks, Scrapbooks, Etc. and Memory Makers Magazine. She is a design team member for several kit clubs, a manufacturer, and an online store. She is also the author of When Life Gives You Lemons."