Make it easy: Envelope and matching Card!

Birds bring mail - don't they?

Hi, dear friends of Rubber Dance! My name is Gabriele from Art-a-tag and I am a Mixed Media artist. Nice to see you again!! I would like to invite you to the second step of our wonderful journey using the fantastic new Rubber Dance stamps. 

This time I want to introduce one of the new sheets: Vintage Birds. It is really large! 20 x 26 cm (8 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches)!  Now have a look - isn't that beautiful?! I bet your muse is now wide awake and gives you many, many new ideas for exciting new projects. 
         

                                       

My muse told me right away: birds and mail are a great combination. I wanted to decorate an envelope with these fantastic vintage stamps - and why not make a matching card while I was at it?

I used a big envelope size 32,5 x 23 cm (12,8 x 9,06 inches). The size does not really matter, take whatever you have on hand. As you can see, one wasn't enough, it had to be two and there may be more to come .....

For a nice background I printed two envelopes on my Gelli Plate. You can also just spread some acrylic paint on the front of the envelope with a brayer, a brush or sponge or your fingers. 

As I wanted to have a white space for the address, I covered that area with an index card, and this will become your matching greeting card:

              
The blue envelope was printed with light blue and light turquoise acrylic mixed right on the Gelli Plate. You don´t need a brayer to press the envelope on the plate, so you will get a nice uneven texture. Also my envelopes tend to stick to the plate and get ruptured when I use the brayer. Here you can experiment with different qualities to see what you like best. Then I applied a dark brown on my plate and put a stencil on top, the envelope with the card on top and this time I did used a brayer to get enough pressure, so the brown print would show - at least some of it. It is not important to get a sharp print of the stencil, because it is still your background. 

The red and yellow envelope was created with loosely mixed paint on the Gelli Plate - a bright lemon yellow and a bright red. With the back of a brush I made some circles and printed. 
I didn't quite like the result, so I printed some dark brown over it that was left on the plate, when I took the stencil off I used for the blue envelope. That was better.

As you can see, the index cards carry the same prints as the envelopes and will make wonderful cards for your personal messages. But first it is play time!! Playing with stamps on acrylic background might bring some problems as the base coat is mostly uneven and results in sometimes fuzzy prints. Water-resistant inks bring the better results, as acrylics are like a plastic coat. If you use water soluble inks, you can wash them away with water and stamp again or stamp on paper and collage the print.

       
For the blue envelope I stamped the big egg in a row on the left side and did some shading with pencil to give it a bit of 3D, so it stands out nicely. Some Washi tape on the upper edge of the address space, that lovely feather stamp with Distress ink Walnut Stain and that unique postage stamp completed my envelope. The brown dots on the lower edge of the white space are made with  dark brown coloured pencil. The brown marks on the right and left side are happy accidents from the print with the stencil. 

 The card shows that lovely humming bird stamp and the quote "No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings" by William Blake. I stamped the quote on brown paper, coloured the edges with Distress ink Stormy Sky, which I also used to stamp the humming bird. The feathers in Walnut Stain and some doodling - done. A nice, unique card with little effort and a perfect match with your envelope!

The edges of this envelope I painted with Distress ink Walnut Stain. Before the ink dried completely, I wiped some off the acrylic paint with a damp cloth. This lights up the yellow and red and makes a nice contrast. Then Washi tape in red with the words "happiness - good mood - laughter - love" and gold/silver for the bottom edge. Some patches of yellow and faded white with acrylics to give the background more texture and some ink Wild Honey for the address space. Stamps are BIRDS (you can go berserk and stamp it all over, also nice - using different colours) and of course the blackbirds were a MUST! I liked the bigger one with long legs, so drawing with a black pen and little stripes with a white pen - easily done. Oh yes, the white pen is used for the birds eyes also.


The matching card features the same blackbird, now with "normal" legs. The wonderfully textured background shows nicely the brown ghost print. The upper circle looked like a sun to me and I applied some yellow acrylic paint, not too thick, so the background shines through. Now some of the red Washi tape "lust for life - joy", the sentiment from the stamp sheet "A little birdie told me". Finishing touch for the bird: black pen and some white for the eye. 


Supply list:
All the stamps used for this project are from Rubber Dance
and can be found on this sheet: #B2-L: Vintage Birds

Envelopes 
Card stock, index card 
Acrylic paints - whatever you have on hand
Stamp pads with permanent ink black or brown
Distress ink Walnut Stain, Stormy Sky
Pencil, black pen and white pen
Brown paper
Glue 
Washi tape

So, dear friends, we are at the end of todays journey. I hope you had some fun joining me on this little excursion and it would be lovely to see you next month on our next journey. You are also very welcomed to visit me on my blog Artatag.wordpress.com.


I wish you a happy creative time!
Gabriele from Art-a-tag


To find the stamps I used for this project, and many more, visit the Rubber Dance website at www.rubberdance.com. 

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