Category Archive for ‘Mail Art’ at Inspiration Junkie robayre.com

Archive for the 'Mail Art' Category

Recently in Awesomosity

Published

on February 4, 2012

in Cool Links, General Update, Mail Art, My Artwork and life

. 1 Comment

Matt’s parents just bought a new DSLR so they are giving us their old one. This is a picture Matt took with the new-to-us camera.

(photo by Nataloons on Flickr)
I may, or may not have gone on a toy shopping binge after reading this post by Silvia Chenault. Come on, The Lalaloopsy above comes with a little gnome! How could I resist?

Recently, Katie shared this corner of her home on instagram, featuring one of my original pieces of art. It is so exciting and thrilling to see photos like this.

This mail postcard recently arrived in my P.O. Box from Miss Thundercat. The funny story is that I was enjoying my flickr contact’s photos when I was stopped cold by this piece. Imagine my surprise when I scrolled down to find that she actually made it for me! I love it so much.

Recently, Doc, my 23 month old nephew has taken to calling me Bunny. I hope he never grows out of it. Here he is above, talking on the “phone” to me.

I got this for Christmas. Yeah, a coin capsule machine. I’ve been only wanting one forever, probably since I was a little kid crying for quarters at the grocery store.

In January my sisters and I had a pinterest party at my place. We each picked a recipes from our food/cooking boards. Chris picked white enchiladas, Dacia picked crock pot hot chocolate, and I picked cheez its/goldfish crackers. Everything was so delicious and now after revisiting this, I want to make some more crackers. So delicious!

Today I am anxiously awaiting an overnight package coming from California for an Etsy project I’ll be working on over the weekend. I’ll be overnighting it back on Monday. Do you have any big plans for the weekend?

Mailart365 160-166 PINWHEEL MANIA

Published

robayre

on October 4, 2011

in Cool Links, General Update, Mail Art and My Artwork

. 2 Comments

I have a new pattern I’m loving and it’s the pinwheel. It started out earlier this year when I was seeing this pillow by Fine Little Day all over the craft/art/design blogosphere.

Seriously. I was obsessed. The things I loved the most about it was the use of a wide range of colors, AND that the color application looked very handmade. It didn’t look like a store bought and manufactured design, it looked like someone just colored on this pillow with some markers.

Next I saw this awesome garage door on pinterest. How can a person not smile while driving by this house?

Then a couple weeks ago I saw this post by Elise Blaha. This girl is awesome, if you don’t already follow her blog, do so now! Turns out I wasn’t the only one inspired by the pinwheel. She made this lovely painting above, WITH a tutorial on how to make your own to boot! I think I will be making one of these shortly for our new home. (I love to say that)

The pinwheel is so cheerful I think. This week I present to you my pinwheel mailart, tada!

I’m starting out with my favorite, which was also the last card I did in the series this week. I painted all the yellow and then had the idea to draw in a floral pattern like some of the vintage fabric I have. The solid yellow is watercolor and the flowers are colored pencil. I’m so in love with this, don’t be surprised if I do a whole series based on this idea for next week.

Thinking about it, it makes perfect sense, the fabric inspiration and the pinwheel. The pinwheel pattern in a very common quilt pattern. My mom is a quilter and I was regularly taken to quilt shows as a child. The pinwheel pattern inspiration really touches on this art, design and quilt kind of a thing for me.

The three above were the last three I did.

And this is where I started, with the variety of colors and the apparent texture in mark making.

Fun, no?

I made the cards using a variety of colored pencils, water colors, dry pastels, sharpies and highlighters.

I hope you enjoyed my cheerful pieces this week!

Mailart 365 153-159

Published

robayre

on September 26, 2011

in Coverage, Mail Art and My Artwork

. 1 Comment

I present more of my mailart postcards for the mailart365 project. Notice how I’m only posting 7 postcards each week. This is not going to help me get caught up, but at least I’m not falling further behind.

When I was little my godmother gave me a little pin that said “Robyn, strength of character”. As a child it didn’t really mean much to me, but as I’ve gotten older it became more and more important. Unfortunately, I have no idea where that pin went, but I’ll always remember those words

Click on any of the pictures to view them larger.

Earlier today I was catching up on my blog subscriptions and was delighted to discover that Shannon of Happiness Is had featured my chalkboard mailart postcards. I did a double take “wait, did I click on my own blog?” Thank you so much Shannon, it made my day :D

Mailart 365 146-152

Published

robayre

on September 16, 2011

in Mail Art and My Artwork

. 1 Comment

Another week’s worth of mailart for the 365 project, chalkboard style.

Have a good weekend!

Mailart 365 139-145

Published

robayre

on September 10, 2011

in Mail Art and life

. 3 Comments

Hey, remember my Mailart365 project? Yeah, it’s been a long break, with house buying, and moving, but I haven’t forgotten. Even before the move I was already 3 weeks behind but I don’t plan on throwing in the towel yet. Yesterday I decided to finally count up exactly how far behind I was and I’m officially 8 weeks back. 7 after this post.

For years I’ve wanted to use chalkboard paint in my home. Now that we are home owners it’s finally going to happen. We have some ideas, but they haven’t been executed yet. In the meantime, while I’ve been on my mailart break I’ve been wanting to do lots of nonsense sketches in my sketchbook. It occurred to me to make some chalkboard painted postcards so I could do nonsense sketches as mailart, but still make the pieces interesting. The cards have all been spray fixed so they won’t smudge in the mail.

Today is a very exciting day, Renegade in Chicago! I hope I can find some wonderful treasures and that I don’t get too annoyed with the crowds. Also, I hope they have the photobooth again.

Embossed Mailart

Published

robayre

on August 5, 2011

in General Update, Mail Art, My Artwork and life

. 2 Comments

Today is a HUGE day for me. Something that has been in the works for over a year and a half, and I’m so excited. I will be dealing with that immediately after posting this, but first I just wanted to share my most recent mailart pieces for the 365 project. I will be back as soon as I can to share more about my exciting news.

A couple weeks ago I saw this tutorial post on Oh So Beautiful Paper about embossed stationery. It brought me back to high school graphic arts, first semester. We were learning about business cards and just to show how far things have come since then, the teacher told us if a business card wasn’t embossed (quickly checking by running fingers across the card), most people in business would just throw them away. Flash forward to today, embossed cards are definitely in the minority. I work for a printing company and we don’t even have embossing capabilities in house, so any embossed business card orders we receive get farmed out and it is a very rare occurrence. At any rate, back in high school we got to play around with embossing so I knew how to do it, but haven’t done any since then. Immediately after reading this post, past 8 pm, I HAD to run to Michael’s to see if they had any embossing powders and fluid and I was thrilled to find a selection. I found a stamp pad that also came with a small bottle of fluid, which was perfect for me.

If you are not familiar familiar with embossing, it’s a method in which you get a raised type. Above are some thumbnails at an angle so you can see how it looks. I also encourage you to click on the link at the top and see a picture tutorial. But basically an image is printed with embossing fluid on paper and then the embossing powder sprinkled over it. The powder adheres to where the fluid was and the excess is removed. Then the powder is heated and the powder melts and sticks together and looks more like a raised liquid on the paper.

I started out by carving a few small little triangle stamps to make some banners and test out the embossing process.

When I think of banner messages, I think of sayings like “SURPRISE” or “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” so I though it would be funny to make some banners that were a little less exciting, like “it’s your birthday… or not!” and “I don’t want to go to work!” Wouldn’t that be funny to walk into a party and that was the banner hanging there?

At first I only bought black and green, so the next day I went back to see if there were any other colors I’d like. I decided to play with some other carved stamps I made.

This is when I started experimenting with painting with the embossing fluid in the bottle.

This is when I got the idea to thin out the fluid and put it in my Kempar Drawing Pen that Rosa gave me eons ago. That pen comes in handy so often!

I was able to get multiple colors by drawing out one part, sprinkling the powder and then drawing another and repeating. I learned if I heated each color between each color by the end the original colors would start to flatten out and get absorbed into the paper.

Lastly, I went over many of the finished cards with light, wet layers of watercolor. I had a lot of fun making these, and I know this will not be the last time I have embossed things to share… I’m thinking maybe some paper products for the etsy shop!

Mailart postcards 125-131/365

Published

robayre

on July 25, 2011

in Cool Links, Mail Art, My Artwork and Projects

. 8 Comments

If you remember from the sneak peek a few weeks ago, I purchased a bag of vintage photographs from the flea market and decided to use some of them for the mailart 365 project.

I started out with the idea to create outfits using my paper collection.

Then I had the idea to do more of the environment in paper. This piece is a very “Robayre” piece, obviously, with all the individual pieces of grass. It was time consuming, but I love how it came out.

Here is another detail

Another environment piece

Another wardrobe piece.

While I was working I suddenly thought of the artist Alyn Carlson and her lovely paper hats. I love her hats and immediately I knew some of my vintage folks needed to wear some fancy hats! I love how they came out and it was so much fun to create their hats.

and another close up

Here’s a bathing beauty and her showy hat

and last but not least, a lovely pair and their extraordinary hats.

mailart 365 118 - 124

Published

robayre

on July 15, 2011

in Mail Art

. 0 Comments

While our friend Tom has been traveling, we have been watching his dog, Benny, off and on. Benny is a tiny white maltipoo that actually belonged to my friend Nikki, who passed away earlier this year. Actually, if you click on that link to her caringbridges page, the first picture that pops up is a picture of Benny wearing a coat that I made for him.

As long as I knew Nikki she wanted a dog. She was definitely one of those children that stray animals follow home, and she had a huge heart for all animals. I was just recalling on her facebook page about how we’d often drag the guys with us to different pet stores and ooh and aah at all the animals we wanted to take home with us. It wasn’t until just months before she passed that she finally got her dream pet. I think Tom and Nikki showed up one day at our door with this little tiny poof ball (pictured above with Nikki on our front porch). Benny wasn’t even 2 pounds yet and could hardly be taken seriously as a dog. He looked more hamster or even muppet. Even now, I think he weighs under 5 pounds and is still more muppet than canine.

Here’s a little video I recorded of him earlier today.
While Nikki was sick, especially while she was doing treatments, I liked to send her picture or video messages that I hoped would brighten her day. One of those last messages I sent her was a cell phone video I recorded of Benny when he was a tiny puppy and she responded that “he just made her so happy”. She loved him so much and so because of that he is important to me as well.

Today I took Benny outside and while he ran around I noticed the beauty of his fur. He’s a white dog, and while Tom bathed him right before his trip, he is now a pretty dingy dog. That’s okay because it makes for good texture. Maybe it’s just the fiber enthusiast in me, but I had to run in and get my camera. Right there in the lawn I started snapping shots of his hair until I realized that they would make a wonderful collection of mailart pieces. I adjusted the photos, then printed them out from my inkjet printer on cardstock. Since I used the inkjet I was able to create a watermark on each card in the lower righthand corner that had a heart and Nikki’s name. I then spray fixed each card so it would be safe to go through the mail.

I’d like to share one last story about Nikki because I think it shows how compassionate she really was. While she and Tom were away for a period of time (maybe treatment, maybe honeymoon) one of their cats stopped eating. Apparently, stressed and lonely (although they were being fed regularly by a family member) Nikki’s cat Otis went into her closet and just stayed there and stopped eating. When they returned they found Otis completely emaciated and near death from starvation. Now, if there can be anything funny about this situation, you’d have to know Otis and he is the FATTEST cat ever. So, he was just completely hollowed out and was lifeless. This was quite a shock and they took him for medical attention right away. It wasn’t just a matter of feeding him again though, it was a dire situation where his organs might have even been failing and everyone around told Nikki it would probably be the most humane thing to just put him down. She wouldn’t have it. She ended up spending thousands of dollars, which included care and surgery and a feeding tube and for a looong time after she was having to syringe feed him through a tube that went directly into his stomach from his side. Side note-Otis was actually a kitten she rescued. He also had a litter mate named, you guessed it, Milo, but Milo didn’t survive kittenhood.

I came over to visit once shortly after everything that happened with Otis and she told me the whole story. All the while Otis was right between us, on the couch. I understood her love but even I questioned if it was the right thing to do because through it all his eyes seemed vacant and I wondered if he might have even had brain damage. He was completely unresponsive to us for the duration. During that conversation she told me something that I will never forget: She said that even when everyone was telling her to let him go, and even after they weighed the price with the probability of survival, and even if he didn’t make it, she said that she would never be able to forgive herself for not even trying. Money was tight, but down the road anytime she would need to buy something for herself she knew that she would think “I can spend money and buy these new shoes, but I couldn’t afford to save my cat.”And wouldn’t you know, slowly but surely over time Otis came back to health. Not only did she get him back to normal cat size, but he once again returned to fat cat size. He is the same affectionate and friendly cat today as he was before and it was all due to Nikki’s persistence.

mailart 365 cards 111-117

Published

robayre

on July 14, 2011

in Mail Art

. 0 Comments

My sister brought to my attention that I am officially one third of the way through this mailart 365 project :) The idea for this week was inspired by the transparent colors of japanese washi tape. Did you see this post via poppytalk handmade, where someone is making large rolls of the tape to put up on your walls, swoon!

card 111/365

card 112/365

card 113/365

card 114/365

card 115/365

card 116/365

card 117/365