2019 #3 Mail Art: Mono-printed Envelopes with ESA {by Alison Hall}

2019 Topic 3: Mail Art

Mail Art is so entirely unique and tonight's beautiful envelopes from Alison are certainly no exception. The multiple layers of other papers give a wonderful textured base for her smorgasbord of colour.

Hi everyone, it's Alison Hall aka Craftytrog with you today, and I'd like to share with you a couple of mono-printed, stamped and doodled envelopes. 

I love building up layers, using collage, adding paint with stamps and my Gelli Plate, and finishing with pen marks, doodles and paint splatters. This technique creates a lot of depth in a piece of art.

Here's how I started. I covered an A4 and an A5 envelope with lots of paper scraps that I had lying around on my desk. There's a book page, music sheet, ledger page, coffee filter, newspaper, and under-paper. All sorts!

Then, using an 8x10 inch Gelli Plate, I started to add colour and design to the envelopes.

The Seth Apter stamps that I used were ESA02 and ESA11.

I used the Gel Plate and stamps to mono-print the envelopes, and also used the Gel Plate as a palette to add paint to the stamps, and stamp on the envelopes.

I used some of my favourite bright shades of PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic, Slimed, Cerise, Caribbean Sea, and also Twilight and Snowflake for dark and light highlights.

It's looking a bit crazy at this stage!

From ESA11, I used the spring stamp to add detail to the edge of the A5 envelope, and created a light space for an address using the grid stamp and Snowflake Fresco Finish Acrylic. 

As you can see in the photo below, I added paint pen outlines, doodles and splatters.

On the A4 envelope, I used ESA02's scratched rectangle stamp to add detail on the edge, and the diamond pattern to create the address area, before finishing with outlines, doodles and splatters.

I was about to take my final photos, when I decided to add some highlights with Gold Fresco Finish Acrylic. I think I was influenced by the fact that I'm currently reading a historical novel set in India. I was thinking of beautiful, colourful saris and Maharaja's palaces!

I used the end of a paintbrush to add dots and metallic shading.

If you have a Gel Plate, I would encourage you to go wild with design and colour and decorate an envelope. If you don't have one, you can still use stencils, stamps and paint to create an abstract piece of mail art. Using collage materials as a base, creates another layer to increase the depth in your artwork. You can still see pieces of collage peeking through in the photo above. I look forward to seeing your mail art inspired ideas linking to PaperArtsy social media feeds.

Alison x

Blog: Craftytrog's Arty Adventures

Facebook: Alison Hall

Instagram: @craftytrog