"All art is quite useless" - Oscar Wilde
RSS

September 01, 2010

Ancient Notepaper

Letters are fun. I used to write a lot of them, now the number has decreased a little, but I still like to write and receive them. Also, I'm a sucker for beautiful notepaper. Naturally, when I read saraccino's mail art post, I felt like trying it for myself. Here are the results:



Here's what you need:

paper
mail envelopes
dye (watercolours, coffee, tea, acrylic colours... the possibilites are endless)
stamps
a hairdryer to speed up the process
a flat iron

I tried some experiments with water colours at first, colour gradients and stuff.



Afterwards I applied some golden acrylics with a sponge to get a shiny effect.



And it's okay, but you can tell I have never been very good friends with my paintbox. In addition, I'm more a fan of old-looking stuff. So I tried coffee to give the paper a yellowed and dirty look.



And I do like the results very much. I am sure you can use a variety of different colours in foodstuff and I'm probably going to experiment a bit with fruit tea next time.

At first I brushed the paper from both sides wih coffee (instant coffee works just as fine as real coffee) and blew it dry afterwards (with the hairdryer, obviously). Then I did it a second time to intensify the hue (the lighter papers in the back were drenched only once, the ones in the foreground twice).



After drying them again, I started to sprinkle bigger and smaller drops of coffee on the paper. This time I had them dry naturally for some minutes up to half an hour (depending on the size of the drops) so the characteristic borders around the drops would develop. Then I dried the rest with the hairdryer and ironed the paper and envelops with the flat iron. I felt like it this step further intensified the colours of the coffee, but maybe I was just imagining things. Anyway, it gives you nice smooth paper to write on.



I used these silicon stamps and golden acrylic paint to decorate the paper and envelopes afterwards.



So in the end it's a rather simple design, but I think it's really pretty :'D



4 comments:

Saraccino said...

Hihi! I just bought some stamps from the same company ^^ just other ones but I couldn't resist! Especially after asking whether one could sell things made with this stamps or not (some companies are a little restricted with all the licence stuff) and i just got a nice answer like "of course and we would lobe to see you work" ;)

Coffee and gold looks just great together! I think one of us should move so we could start sending mails ^^

And for the coloured one: How about stamping all over them and then cutting small pieces out for some collage? Maybe it is just the rainbow impression you are not too fond of?

Qantaqa said...

Uuuuh das oldschool-Zeug sieht ja urst nais aus *_*

Kannst ja mal Spinat-Saft benutzen, das kommt bestimmt recht fancy. :)

Glittermuffin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
decembersong said...

yeah, they are great :'D I couldn't resist either.
and don't you say that, I'll be really glad once my moving is done :'DD

I think I'll find some use for the coloured paper sooner or later, collage doesn't sound bad...


@ Qan: ich dachte an Rote-Beete-Saft und Waldbeertee XD Ich hab mir einmal meine Jacke mit dem Tee eingesaut und als es trocken war, hatte sie ne schöne Farbe... :'D

Post a Comment