Happy Mail to Kyra #3 Part 1

‘Art is an impression of your creation’.

Hello everyone, welcome to todays Happy Mail blog part 1.

I sent Kyra some mail, a different kind of mail. This time I chose design the envelope I was sending her.

The idea came when I was about to recycle an Amazon envelope. It looked strong and sturdy and after a short think I decided to turn this envelope into an art piece. I was astonished at how this envelope turned out. Here is a before and after picture.

Before

After: Front

After: Back

This was relatively straightforward to accomplish and not a lot of supplies were needed to achieve this. I will add the list below.

Here are some pictures of the process of this envelope.

Amazon envelope

I applied a layer of gesso.

I drew outlines of the features to guide me. I kept the top right corner empty for the stamps. Then I added some acrylic paint all over the envelope and gave another coat of gesso on the features. The white box area on the front (and back) is for the address.

I coloured the main features with acrylic paint.

I added more detail with the black marker and white gel pen. I also added more details to the background with the butterfly and script stamps. Finally I added some splashes with some watered down gesso.

I followed the same method on the reverse side. The only difference is I did a silhouette of the main features instead of colouring them in.

Finally once everything was dry and I was happy with everything I gave the whole envelope a coat of varnish spray to lock in the work particularly because it was going to travel in the post.

Here are more close up pictures of the envelope.