The folks behind “Meet Me at Mikes,” a craft blog based in Australia, are hosting an interactive window project.  They’re asking for crafty bits and vintage items in an envelope.  At the end of the project, one lucky person will win ALL the stuff that they received in envelopes from all over the world!  Also, the instructions are “Make sure you keep your postage cheap, so don’t be all extravagant.  Just be cute.”  Cute, not extravagant– I can get down with that.

They’ve already received almost 200 entries and the project goes until mid-July.  My parcel (pictured above) will be there soon!  Here is the address for this project:

Meet Me at Mike’s
63 Brunswick Street
Fitzroy 3065
Victoria, Australia

Also, I’ve started chatting via the post with the gentleman behind the You’ve Got Mail Project (Facebook login required).  To participate in this project to preserve the post, write to:

Your Pal Carl
P.O. Box 10401
Austin, TX 78766.

He writes back very quickly and with thoughtful replies to your notes.

What are you waiting for?!  Get posting!

Remember that present from a week or so back?  Well, I’ve reason to believe it’s reached it’s intended owner and I can now show you the monogram I put together for Sarah– the lovely lady behind Bury Me With My Needles.

I’m back on the monogram thing again– I kept it super simple.  These flat cards are just her monogram on white, subtly textured card stock.  Monograms just feel so elegant to me, they need almost nothing else to make the cards pop.  I did line the envelopes with some fancy schmancy Italian paper I picked up here in DC.  I’m very happy with how they turned out.  The green and pinkish color scheme both echoes their wedding (which was all hunter green and white) and is springy.  Plus, I’ve seen her wear both colors a good deal.  That’s almost always how I pick colors for people.  If they wear it, they like it.

Mostly I enjoyed putting the packaging together.  It was such a delight to do the typesetting for the “Monogram” on the front.  Plus, I got to use my new air mail tape from Etsy’s WonderLandRoom.  Also, usually I just send out note sets in plastic sleeves.  I felt very professional sending it out in a proper stationery box.

I’ve just dropped this in the mail to its recipient so I don’t want to show you what it is completely… here is a taste of something I put together for Sarah, the lovely magical mailbox maker.  I’ll show you a proper picture in a week or so– when I’m sure she’s gotten it.

Mostly, this post is an excuse to tell you that oh boy does Cavallini and Co. have some great new stuff out… That wrapping paper is their “Vintage Office” design and I am in love with their vintage Par Avion stickers.  As much as I would like to find everything on e-bay so that it’s actually vintage, reproductions are so nice.  I find it much easier to part with a reproduction than with the real thing– that might explain why I horde things that are over 50-years old…

Also, you know who else has been coming out with some great stuff lately?  Chronicle Books.  I think it’s great that they’re working with bloggers like The Small Object and Paper+Cup.  This weekend I picked up the “Old School Letter Set” designed by Paper+Cup and have, for weeks, been debating if I can justify buying the Pictorial Webster’s Wall Cards.  The book is incredible, and its image of a mocking bird formed the basis of the one in my tattoo.  It’s just, $24 seems a bit steep– especially since I’d probably send them as postcards.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a magical mailbox crocheted for yours truly by Sarah– the lovely woman behind Bury Me With My Needles.  As I believe we have discussed, I do not knit or crochet.  I would very much like to do these things, but whenever I try the instructions might as well be written in Greek and using the metric system.  When I do what I think the instructions say to do I just end up with knots.  Whatever, my thing is paper.  Maybe I’ll have to try again.

Anyway, I found this incredible pattern and pretty much begged bartered demanded that Sarah do this for me.  She’s so skilled I assumed it’d be a breeze for her.  I can only assume it was since she sent me this incredible, magical mailbox less than 3 weeks after leaving DC (she was one of Shelby’s Foote-Soldiers).

My favorite feature, and I’m not sure you can really tell in these photos, is that she added some subtle shimmer to the mailbox and the letters.  I want to say “kind of like fairy dust” except not stupid or gawdy (because a crocheted mailbox is many things but gawdy certainly isn’t one of them).  Just adds a little something to make it extra special.  Plus, all the letters and packages are addressed to the nick names of cities I’ve lived in.

If you’re interested in making one of these yourself (or asking a yarn-crafter-friend to make one for you) the pattern came from CraftyAnna’s Etsy shop.  I hear Sarah made a few modifications to the pattern but I’m not quite sure what exactly that entailed…

Can you tell I’m excited?!  I think it will come to my office with me.  The judgment of my office-mates be d*mned.

Went to a baby shower for some friends this weekend– it’s so weird that people I know are starting to pop out kids.  Do we ever feel like we’re old enough for this?  Anyway, I stitched them a bib using a few of the patterns from Sublime Stitching’s “Craft Pad.”  Babies are cute, yes, but they’re really just little eating, pooping, and learning machines.  Hence the theme for this bib…

Part of me wishes I’d filled it up a bit more– it feels kind of barren looking at it now.  However, I didn’t want there to be too much going on to rub on baby’s skin.  The back of the bib is really nice, it’s got this kind of vinyl-ly stuff on it for “super soakers,” and I didn’t want to poke too many holes.  That would defeat the purpose of having that great backing…

I wrote a few weeks ago about participating in my first-ever paper swap, organized by The Suburban Pen Pal.  Well, I don’t want to tell you what I’ll be sending until I actually pack it up and the folks in my group get to see it, but I’ll give you a few little shots of my work so far.  One made card and collecting some “bonus” vintage stuff.

I’ve got some ideas percolating and loads of time to work on it– until the end of April.  Actually, given everything we have to do between now and May 1 maybe that isn’t so much time…  I intend to get this done in the next two weeks, before things get really crazy.

]]> http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/2010/04/05/sneak-peek-school-swap/feed/ 0 http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/2010/03/22/spring-school-paper-fever/ http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/2010/03/22/spring-school-paper-fever/#comments Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:40:07 +0000 ashleyb http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/?p=740

Laura over at The Suburban Pen Pal is running a paper swap this spring!  The theme is school, you’ve got until March 31 to sign up, and until April 30 to mail your sets of 3-5 things to 5 people.  Then, you get 5 things yourself!  Delightful.  This will actually be the first proper swap I’ve participated in, but I’m quite excited about it.  Back when I was in school (ironically) I felt like I couldn’t really commit to making something awesome enough on a deadline– there was just too much happening.

Now… to start the brain storming.  I’m thinking of doing something with old school book covers (or images of them, at least) oh, or maybe something with a border made from rulers or beakers or something.  Lots to think about.

I’ll post photos of what I send out after the swap– no reason to spoil anybody’s surprise, you know?

Sewing twigs to paper is hard tedious.  But they do like nice, don’t they?

Sorry I’ve been absent from this space for a while.  A combination of a cold, training for a relay, and making these bridal shower invitations for a friend has kept me busy (or away from the computer) for the last week or two.

These are for a friend who is getting married in early April.  Many of her DC-based friends will not be able to travel for the wedding, so we’re throwing her a shower up here.  The invites were actually fairly simple: just torn paper bags, small envelopes, and twigs.  I lined the envelops myself, but I actually find that really peaceful.  Is that odd?  I could cut envelope liners and paste them in all day and not get bored.

The hardest part was getting the twigs (reeds, really) on there.  We’re putting these in the postal mail (not just the office mail), so I needed to be sure they wouldn’t cause too much havoc going through the machines (e.g. they couldn’t poke out of the envelope when crushed).  Plus, you’re sewing twigs to paper– which is peaceful in a way but making over 20 can be a little trying.

Finally, I need better light bulbs in our bedroom (where I take a lot of my photos).  They make everything weirdly yellow and then I try to fix it with my dinky non-Photoshop image editor and… well, you see how that turns out.

This issue of Vile, number 7- Winter 1979, is really the crowning jewel (it’s also the most difficult to photograph– the paper is awfully fragile and, since it’s bound with a metal tab nearly impossible to open completely).  Made in an addition of 300, this issue includes original works from artists who used rubber stamps.

Each of its 93-pages seems to be an original (at least, not photocopied).  According to the masthead it was hand collated by Madeline Behrens-Brigham.  According to some Google research, she is still active in the San Francisco Crafts community.  Trying to work up the courage to send her a message via LinkedIn or Facebook…  For some reason collating this seems like a truly herculean task– even moreso than following-up with the artists who agreed to participate.

Stamps featuring the work of Italian artist Filippo T. Marinetti.

As always, there are more images of this issue on my Flickr page.  This weekend I’m hoping to have time for more scanning and snapping.  Ideally, I’ll eventually have a nearly complete version of Vile v3 on Flickr (unless I get a nastygram/take-down notice.  But that just seems like it’d be counter to the whole mail art spirit, no?)

Spent the weekend in the VA countryside with some new friends– many from work.  As a thank you to our two hosts/planners/gourmet cooks I am going to award them adult merit badges. The border is just some free clip art from the Florida Educational Technology Clearinghouse.  I did the text in MSWord, printed it on Eames Furniture Weave “Natural” cardstock, and then just put one little loop of thread through the badge so it kind of swings around.

Photos from the weekend coming soon– it was so beautiful.  Bright white snow, gold grass, black cows, and dark brown mud.  I took the film camera for the weekend and cannot wait until I see how the pictures turned out.

Also, may be a bit quiet around here this week into next.  Work is going to get very busy– and it’s hard to complain since the blizzard gave me loads of time to revel in creativity, paper arts, stamps, and books.  I promise, I wont leave for a month and a half this time!