Birdie Flies Off - ATC Mailer

This month's kit from Alpha Stamps is the Anthology ATC Mailer, 

full of a beautiful mix of birds, butterflies and vintage ephemera images.

ATC Mailer folded

Backside of folded ATC Mailer

 

I love the Tim Holtz Paper Dolls. They're already fussy-cut out, ready to go and you get a ton of them with assorted sizes of the same images. Still prefer to fussy-cut my own stuff, but when my hands hurt from arthritis sometimes it's easier to just grab one that's already done.

When the mailer is opened up and if your ATC is in the vertical position, it almost looks like a little stage in the middle. Display the mailer standing up, and add a couple characters! They easily store in the ATC envelope along with the ATC.

There really was no rhyme or reason with the mailer. I loved the papers in the kit, collage sheets that came with it so decided to just go with what I liked. Nope. Didn't care one bit if everything matched or "went" with each other. Doing it that way was a lot more fun than fretting over a set theme. Also, there are many imperfections with the finished mailer and lemme tell ya - sometimes you just have to let that insane desire for perfection shit fly right out the window. Embrace the imperfections!

Tips:

The mailer comes flat, easily done up with either paint, papers or whatever makes your muse fly.

Don't do what I did, thinking I could save some time and just paper each side all at once while binge watching murder mysteries on AcornTV. Otherwise you'll end up with a mailer that doesn't want to fold properly and cracked paper on the outside. Alas! You must trace and cut each section out.

Before covering the mailer,  paint the folds and edges of the mailer.

  

I ended up painting the outer edges of the mailer on both sides after I cut out the paper and realized that they weren't exactly perfect. The metallic bronze paint worked great with the papers. Another reason to not worry over it being perfect - because it will look so fabulous when it's finished that no one will notice or care! They'll just be thrilled to receive something made just for them.  Example:

One of my cats, the hateful demonic one whose name is "That Damn Satan Cat", or Satan for short (along with other assorted nicknames...Haggy McHag Face, Bitch, Fucking Bitch, Evil, Pure Evil, Shut Your Piehole, etc). What Slim Daddy calls her when she wakes him up with her nagging fisherman's wife scream of a meow in the middle of the night is NSFW so I won't even go there...

Where was I? Oh yeah, Satan's antics. When I was cutting out one of the pieces to go on the flap, Haggy McHag Face jumped on the back of my chair, ran across my arm and I ended up cutting the piece in two..Why? Because she's a bitch and had nothing better to do except live to irritate me beyond all means. I didn't feel like cutting another one, so I left it and just kind of fixed it when I glued it to the flap.

Don't forget to place your middle, inside paper under the cutouts and trace the lines before gluing, otherwise you won't be able to insert your ATC card. Alpha Stamps Design Team Member Kristin Batsel also has a tip on how to keep from gluing the flaps shut when applying the outside paper. You can find her Mermaid ATC Mailer blog post here with her tips. Thanks to Kristin, she also gave me the idea to paint the edges at the folds.

By the way - I did not have to cut out my own watercolor paper ATC blanks. Alpha Stamps now has these great watercolor ATC card blanks  that are heavy weight, smooth on one side for stamping, drawing, etc and the other side is textured for watercolor techniques. Best part? You get 20! in a package under $3! They're one of my new favorite items. 

Head on over to Alpha Stamps to view the supply list and don't forget. Throw that perfectionism shit out the window, Wabi-sabi instead!