Zine it.

My habit of making things lately has been to start with whatever supply is floating at the top of the piles of stuff on my worktable - or whatever's dug out from under the piles after cleaning up. Yesterday, the random supplies "discovered" were palette papers from recent paint sessions in an art journal I'm working on. Those palette papers got turned into zines.

I've made zines a few times in the past few years and I'm getting more comfortable making them. I always make them based on my artwork and each one has required at least some digital processing. The last one was created all digital, using images of ATCs I'd made. This time I tried something new and made hard-copy zines using the palette papers.

The plan was to make the one sheet, 8-page mini zine. Usually this calls for an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper, but the palette papers were 9" x 12" so the zines are slightly bigger. The papers themselves were not fully covered in paint - usually I use palette papers until they are completely covered. I decided to keep it minimal across the board by only adding a few collage images, rubber stamps and some clipped words from a booklet to the pages.

The words were from a short self-help booklet on leadership that I got from a free book box.

I clipped the good action words/phrases that popped out at me.

Then it was just a matter of fiddling around with images and random word combinations until I had 3 finished zines.

Ta-da!

I like them. They're definitely different from the ones I've made in the past.

[They're different from pretty much everything I make, actually.]

From "below the surface"...

I kind of did whatever with the words. Eh.

I tried to make them make sense, but I wasn't too fussed about it.

From "where you want to be"...

This palette paper had the most paint coverage of the 3.

It was giving me a feminine sort of vibe so I ran with it.

From "a picture in our minds"...

 This one was the first one I finished and my favorite. It gave me the great idea to make zines the next Mail Pals swap.

This method vs. digital has its pros/cons, but I'd probably make zines like this again.

Until next time...

stay cool.

Incoming mail art art.

My "system" for handling incoming mail is to take the art bits - the ATCs and other art cards and supplies - and sort them as they are received. Things get displayed or put away in designated storage containers and that usually leaves me with just the envelopes to deal with. Which I don't deal with until I have a heaping mess of them. Surprise.

When the plastic drawer unit I use to hold incoming mail parts is filled to capacity, I sort through everything. Rediscover overlooked bits of things, toss blank envelopes, liberate pretty note card fronts, cut out interesting postage. For the most part, that's as far as I'd go. The remaining re-sorted stuff would get archived and the collecting cycle would start again.

Lately though, I've been inspired by some swaps in the Mail Pals group to repurpose more of the old envelopes. They served their purpose, after all, and why not give them something better to do. Last month I had to do another incoming mail re-sort so I took the opportunity to really get into it and salvage as much collage fodder as I could from the hoard.

I got a respectable heap o' stuff...

Some of the usual suspects - postage and note card pieces...

But also lots of painted and collaged envelope sections, stamped images, pretty tapes...

shapes punched from security envelope patterns and handmade envelopes...

 Yesterday, with those collected mail art scraps I made a group of 10 ATCs. TEN!

I added a few new details like rub-ons and sticker words, but the rest are all salvaged mail art bits.

Masterboarding.

When I start a collage project, I like hunting and gathering up whatever stuff I might want to use and having it at hand in a big pile in front of me. The process of finding stuff means combing through a bunch of drawers and boxes and accordion files until I have a nice pile. Well, once I'm done with the project, I usually already have the next project in mind and give about 2.5 flips about "restocking" the leftover bits, so I just push them off to the side....to collect until they annoy me enough to do something about them.

Such a time came this morning, when I looked over at the the accumulated bins and box tops holding leftover paper bits and shook my head....

*sigh*

Now, the Darth Vader box at the very end holds prop toys from my photography days.

But the lid is flipped over and holding paper things I recently received in some mail swaps.

The plastic boxes in the middle...the bottom one has scavenged parts from incoming mail art envelopes. 

(That's another post for another day.)

The box on top of that is stuff I've culled to send out in mail swaps.

The overflowing box on top of them...and the full lid in the foreground are all scraps.

With those scraps, I made a pile of postcards, wee!

The best thing to do with a bunch of scraps is to make a masterboard.

A masterboard is simply a large artwork cut down into smaller artworks.

I do it UH LOT. It's my favorite way to make postcards because it's very much an "anything goes" process.

First step to starting a masterboard is getting a surface to work on.

I went BIG and used a sheet of 14"x17" bristol paper.

Then it was just a matter of plastering paper bits to it.

Masterboards are a process of building layers.

You keep going and going and going until you stop.

It doesn't matter how it looks at any step along the way because it will end up being AWESOME.

When I was tired of gluing paper bits down, I added some washi tape pieces.

Also filled in some blank spots with simple Sharpie lines.

Every layer counts, whether you end up covering something later or not.

Layers build texture and texture is the best part of a collage.

Use different types of paper - newspaper, glossy magazine pages, tissue paper.

Especially if you plan on adding paint at some point.

They all catch the paint differently.

When I make masterboards, it's usually mostly collage with a little paint...

or mostly paint with a little collage. This one was mostly collage with lots of cool images, patterns and text that I didn't want to obscure with paint.

I added ghostly white layers with a big poster paint marker.

I schmeared on acrylic craft paint with a spatula.

The paint gathers on paper edges as you drag it over the collage.

I used Sharpie paint pens for hash marks and hand-cut stencils for more shapes.

Once I was satisfied with the mixed media layers, the masterboard was mostly done.

I spot-set the paint and pencil details with workable fixatif.

Then it was time to cut!

First and foremost, I cut out the "choice" postcards.

Of course I wanted the images of the clown and the kids in the gas masks to stay intact.

I also liked how "what's inside" looked with the manga dude.

And "individual" with the lightning strike underneath...

Survey the land of your masterboard and see what pops out.

Or cut it uniformly. Who cares?

The remainder of the masterboard got chopped into small postcards.

Smaller than I usually like, but still cool.

I may add more stuff to them...images, words, stickers.

Did I use up all the leftovers, and thus save myself from having to put them away?