ihanna postcard swap

found duct tape sheets. used that instead. so much easier

so one of the things that i have been somewhat kinda sorta regularly doing is mail art type of stuff. i love doing mail art. i love doing mulitples. flickr has been great in terms of finding projects to be involved in. i'm thinking about hosting some projects myself. anyway, yesterday, i sent out my postcard for the ihanna swap. you only needed to make 10. i had 5 addresses in the us and 5 international. i have to say that i've not really done much international mailing so i apologize to those international names i had this time around. if i'd already known the postage amount, i would have been able to put some nice beautiful stamps on them. but instead you are getting the laser generated generic label that the postal person uses for speed. sorry! i was also thinking that i may re-do this project regularly and keep sending my 10 people postcards throughout the year. maybe quarterly would be cool. i kinda liked my piece, but then i kinda didn't. at least i finished it and was able to see what needs improving.

i wanted to do an interactive piece - either a window or a slide. i thought a slide would be the most fun but might have some damage in the postal system but that's the beauty of mail art - you never know what's gonna happen to your piece once you submit to the us postal service. plus since i had to get special postage, you never know what sort of mail person you'll get. my particular person called her supervisor first and asked if it was ok. they were like, what is it? mail art i said. what?? later my postal person said she thought they were pretty. thanks postal person! that means a lot especially since i have the mixed feelings about the piece.

next i had to figure the content. i thought i wanted a sort of 'feel good' quote since it would be a random 'hello' to whoever received it.

transparent quotes all nice in a pile

these were layed out in indesign and printed on transparency sheets with the appropriate stop. i placed them on these plastic id cards i had hanging around:

id card on top

made pulls out of duct tape:

for the paper (cut down bfk rives - my all time fave) i had tried to use inks, then considered prismacolour art stix but really wanted to work with sharpie. i like the way it bleeds on rives and eventually it will age really nicely. also, wanted the piece as simple as possible since i'm such a procrastinator and then just had a week to do these.

right before assembly

i forgot that the last time i did a slide, i also needed an inner 'envelope' for the transparency so as to protect it from the final gluedown. this is something i need to work on since the 'envelope' can add bulk - although the rives takes it really nicely. i just used 20lb all purpose copy paper for this part but next time maybe i should use something a little stronger as it sort of weakens with the glue - even though i used a dry stick. it's ok when it dries, but just in case. anyway, i stamped with the blog address so that i will HAVE to write about it for my people to read about the process. plus i'm finding the blog thing great for taking notes for myself. anyway:

back side closed.

back side open.

so, i forgot to take pictures of the fronts. i didn't really do anything to them except put addresses. next time when i do this, i'll know postage amounts so i'll have fancy stamps to take picture of. anyway, i'd like to thank hanna for sponsoring this and hopefully my people will enjoy their mail!