A Documented Life - 4 Weeks in a Flash

While I've been keeping up with my Documented Life Project prompts, I've been neglecting this blog. So, here we go, the last four weeks in a flash......

Week 32, use a fortune cookie. I know I have an envelope of them somewhere, but couldn't find it, so faked it with a download. My total inspiration for this was a workshop given by DLP administrator Roben-Marie Smith. I used the insides of security envelopes and gelli print scraps, and a whole lot of doodling.

Week 33, use the underpaper (you know, the paper under your work that collects all the inks, paints and sprays). In my case, the underpaper is the deli wrap paper I used to blot off excess paint on my gelli prints. Over top, some stamping, lettering, doodling, and stitching.

Week 34, use numbers in some way to indicate how the week went. This one really speaks for itself. All in all, a pretty good week.

Week 35, draw, paint, sketch, photograph, alter a face. In other words, do something to get a face on the page. No mention of stencil, but that is exactly what I used.....a very cool one from Artistcellar, which is actually a stencil and mask in one. I started out with a background which was created during a wonderful stencil workshop I took a couple of weeks ago with Michelle Ward. (Haven't blogged about it yet. Like I said before....poor neglected blog). It was the red rosin paper used to protect the table, and while cleaning up, I just had to cut out the section by my seat. This page started out completely covered with this paper. I placed the mask section on the right hand side and covered everything else with black paint. Then I used the stencil section to trace the smaller face on whatever was left of the paint smeared red rosin paper. It was cut out and glued to the left hand side of the page. Some faux stitching and writing with a white pen finished it off.

I know many of you signed up for the DLP. Are you still doing it? 

A Very Happy Mailbox.....

....is a mailbox full of mail art. In case you don't know, mail art is a decorated envelope, package or postcard, the point being that the container is the art, and there may or may not be anything inside. For the past few years, one of my groups, Blissfully Art Journaling (this links to the yahoo group, and we also have a Facebook page) has had a mail art swap going on during the summer months. Everyone who signed up had about two months to send mail art to everyone else on the list. I recently received my last piece, and decided it was time to do something with it all. Not to mention the nearly 30 pieces I received last year and still had languishing in a folder. Not to mention also, all the random mail art I've gotten from various friends over the years.

My inspiration for creating my mail art journal came from two sources. One, a workshop by one of the Documented Life Project administrators, Roben-Marie Smith. Click HERE to learn more about it. It spurred me on to get all this yummy mail into a book, and was well worth the cost. I used one of Roben-Marie's techniques for getting all my mail onto pages, but my binding method came out of classes I've taken with the wonderful DJ Pettitt

The outside of my book:

.

Just about everything I used to decorate the covers came from my art pals....bits of ephemera, text papers, random scraps, stamped images....all included inside the envelopes.

Inside, you can see how I was able to attach multiple envelopes and postcards on each page by stacking them and using my sewing machine to stitch them in place. I love that each piece can be turned, as often the backs are just as beautiful as the fronts.

The pages are hinged together with strips of fabric that I printed with my Gelli Plate.

Here are just a few of the pages:

The buttons on the spine are not merely decorative. They are what hold the signatures in place. Thank you for this awesome technique, DJ!!

For my fellow mail art lovers, I hope this inspires you to get your mail art out of the closet and into a book.