Mail Art... now, all can be revealed.

Since my mailart postcard made it safely across the miles to my sister Jackie, it's now safe to show it in public. I gotta say- when I finished it, I almost didn't want to send it, because I really like how it turned out... but, I really thought she'd like it, so I did it... I let it go, out into the world... amazing, how that's so hard to do with some artwork, isn't it??

It's a 4 x 6 inch postcard featuring a heat-embossed image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The background is one of my new favorite techniques, which starts with heavy paper, strips of magazine paper, masking tape, and paint. I found it in a Somerset Studio magazine article by Gail Russakov. The magazine paper and masking tape are affixed to the background (in a starburst sort of pattern, on this one), and layers of paint are applied. The different textures and colors of the tape and magazine paper "hold" the paint differently, to give really neat effects. There was also lots of scrubbing with baby wipes, gold acrylic, and gold Lumiere paint on this. The image was stamped and embossed onto cream-colored paper, then painted with thin washes of acrylic paint. The back of the postcard started out as a vintage map out of an atlas (I picked it up at last year's used book sale at the state fairgrounds, and have only used a couple pages out of it). This also took lots of gesso, paint, more scrubbing, and ink to distress it and bring out the wrinkles. The quote on this side (and the word on the front) were stamped onto manila shipping tags, cut out, attached, then distressed with ink. I like it a lot, but I know if I tried to re-make it, it wouldn't turn out the same... so, I just need to come up with more mailart ideas. I like the format, and the size... sending them to people is pretty fun, too!

In other news, I finally had to turn on the AC here- the high today was forecast to be 97 F, five to 10 degrees above normal. I know I don't like cold weather, but this is a little ridiculous! (It's also been dry- they reported yesterday on the radio that it was only 2% humidity... I'm pretty reluctant to touch a wire hanger, a door handle, or even the pets- that static electricity hurts!)