good morning! welcome back for day two of the june countdown to new papertrey ink stamps and another look at my new stamp set - hello mother, hello father - available june 15. today, i've created a set of camp postcards. no envelopes necessary for easy posting from camp!
the postcards are 4-1/4" x 6" following the usps specs on the maximum size to be used with a standard postcard stamp. and to minimize possible postal machine issues with layering, i stamped my scenes on text weight kraft paper and adhered them with edge to edge spray adhesive. this way, my stamping doesn't show through to the letter side or vice versa when writing is added, and it doesn't add much weight or depth difference.
for each of the three designs i used images from hello mother, hello father and textile impressions (also new!) with stencils created from scene it: skyscapes dies, along with sentiments from keep it simple: happy mail (you guessed it: new!) and pencilgrams (to add "from camp"). following the same formula to create a cohesive set of cards, i stamped the words on two lines in pine feather and dark chocolate, building a camp scene above. for the canoe design, i used the zig zag textile element to create water and on both the tent and fire designs, i used a different textile element on either side of the sentiment.
after stamping and masking the camp images, i cut the various skyscapes in acetate to create (reusable!) stencils with which to ink the backgrounds in layers. i also used post it tape to mask off straight lines where necessary, grounding my scenes above the sentiment. once the backgrounds were inked, i took off the masks and colored the images in with colored pencils, blending them with a colored pencil blender pen to give a smooth inked look.
the combination of coloring, masking, and ink blending really gives an illusion of depth on the flat card. the starry night sky was a little more challenging than the others in that i wanted light stars on a dark sky and it would be pretty difficult to mask all those stars. the solution was to ink the full circle in blue and then ink the star layer in white ink right on top, resulting in pretty light blue stars.
to complement the somewhat rustic look of the kraft paper, i stamped the letter text in dark chocolate on the back side, close to the left edge. on the right, i added four lines for the address using moments inked: posted, also in dark chocolate, masking off the right edge to get the perfect length and margin. to divide the two sides, i stamped the zig zag line from textile impressions in classic kraft. i see myself using this stamp a lot!
and there you have it - a little more involved than yesterday, but still so campy and fun! if you're making a set of postcards for an older camper, you can simply leave off the letter text in favor of space for the camper to write on his or her own. make a few of each and look forward to them coming back to you! or make them to send to your camper, taking off or changing the "from camp" part of the sentiment. hmmm, i may have to do that one myself when my girls head out next week. but first, more ideas tomorrow! until then, be sure to check out all there is to see today on nichole's blog...
enjoy!
:) lexi
make it:
(hello mother, hello father; keep it simple: happy mail; and textile impressions will be available on june 15!)
