Romantic Triptych

This post originally ran on February 25, 2020 on Nathalie Kalbach's N*Studio blog. I used Nat's stamps on painted papers and a paper bag, plus some of my own small collages made from vintage images, washi tape, stamps and stencils.

I also made a little video that shows my process:

In November 2019, I participated in Nat’s “Deck of Cards” challenge. By the end of the month, I had 30 pretty cool pieces of artwork that were just the right size for greeting cards. I felt a little too attached to some of them to actually use as cards and send off in the mail to friends and family, so I bundled them up and propped them up on my display shelf. Here’s a few of them:

But…I wanted a prettier way to display the cards, so I hit on the idea of creating a free-standing triptych to showcase them. I had too many to display all at once, so I decided to attach little pieces of Velcro to my favorites so the display could easily be changed.

I started by mixing up my favorite shades of pink and yellow and painting some 140 lb. watercolor paper. In addition to the painted paper, I also used a piece of recycled brown paper bag. Next, I spread white acrylic onto my geli plate and picked up paint with Nat’s positive/negative Hamilton rubber stamps, then stamped all over the three surfaces. (Once the geli plate was full of marks, I also pulled prints off it with deli paper.)

Once I had plenty of printed paper, I auditioned different cards and lace to see what would work best for my triptych. I folded and cut a fresh piece of watercolor paper to the triptych shape.

Next, I glued the printed papers on and cut them to size. With a glue stick, I added some gorgeous thick lace.

The final step was attaching the Velcro dots to both the triptych and the cards.

The hardest part was finding a space in my small apartment to display my new creation!