Tag Archives: rebus

final stickers for my rebus letter to my granddaughter

Making a little something

My granddaughter Maeve is a source of joy in my life. I love making things for and with her. I decided recently that I wanted to be her penpal but wondered how I could do it. She’s just three years old, after all. I didn’t want to overwhelm her with a lot of words.

After thinking about it for a bit I made a rebus letter to send to her. A rebus is a mixture of letters and pictures that contain a message. Remember the old Concentration game show? That’s what I had in mind. Here’s how I did it:

Step 1, pencil a letter on a piece of paper, using as many pictures for words as you can. You can see I changed my find a few times about how and where to use pictures for words. No worries! It’s only pencil, at this point.
Step 2, ink pen over the pencil, then stick onto a window. The window is a light box! Now I can put sticker paper over it and trace my drawings so that Maeve will have stickers to put on my letter. It makes it interactive and a fun game for her.
I trace the pictures from the rebus letter onto a sheet of sticker paper (large shipping label paper) with a pencil.
Here are all the pictures from my rebus letter to Maeve, in pencil on sticker paper.
I trace the pencil drawings in ink using water proof ink pen.
Then I used my watercolors to add some color to my pictures.
Here are the final colored stickers.
I cut out the stickers and put them along with the rebus letter into an envelope and mail to my granddaughter.

This is a fun way to stay in touch with my granddaughter between visits. My daughter sent me a video of Maeve putting the stickers over the pictures in the letter and she looked like she enjoyed the process very much. Me, too!

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You can buy my art imprinted on all kinds of cool stuff in my Fine Art America Shop. You can purchase downloads in my Etsy shop or cards imprinted with a personal message and mailed for you in my Signed Cards store. Buy greeting cards, prints and stickers in my Square shop. Please contact me directly about purchasing original artwork. Thanks!

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