Mail Art for Carol

Above is the front of a handmade envelope and the card that goes with it, on a bird/nature/art theme. This was made for my friend Carol Van Gerve. Now, Carol does not do email, but is quite the correspondent & she keeps me very busy (and happy) creating mail art! : ) All of the images I used are from ARTchix Studio; collage & faux postage images - I love those bird faux posts! I also added nature printing to the card and rubber stamping to the envelope before sending it off. I am still making good use of the embossed leaves I have from Alpha Stamps, as you can see I used one with a little glue, to help seal the envelope on the left side.

Here is what the card looks like, open:

I doubled up on the ARTchix images that I used for the inside of the card. Underneath is a paper collage image from the Birdsong Collage Sheet. Over that I laid a transparency image from the Spring Blossom Transparency sheet in the same size, over the paper image, and I used 2 brown brads at the top to secure both pieces to the card. The nature stamping of the grasses was done first with acrylic paints. I wanted the bird to be in the right relationship with the grasses I had stamped earlier, so I ended up redesigning the fold of the card as you can see in the first photo -top (the fold is not centered). Because the card was not a typical size anymore after changing the fold, I had to create an envelope to fit it!

I took a piece of scrapbook paper I had copied for my Bubbles ATCs and never used, and folded it around my card. It was a little short on the back, so I added a strip of tan cardstock and then decorated it with fun words from the Tell me a Story collage sheet by ARTchix studio. I added a number of rubber stamped images, and with a little extra postage (because of it's size) it was ready to fly to carol!

: ) lenna