Happy 50th Birthday, Mr. ZIP!

One of the great things about working with the folks at the National Postal Museum is that when I say things like, "Oooh, what if we had a letter-writing event for Mr. ZIP's birthday?" they don't look at me like I have two heads. (They also know who Mr. ZIP is, which is pretty great.*) "Do it!" they said, and so I am.

I designed a few pieces of stationery just for the event, and you can come pick some up on Saturday, July 27th, from 11AM to 3PM in the museum's atrium.  There will also be a limited number of vintage first-day covers to use, as well as plenty of free postcards and blank envelopes to send off your missives.

The National Postal Museum is located next door to Union Station at the following address:
2 Massachusetts Avenue, NE
Washington, DC 20002

Hope to see you there on Saturday!  

*Mr. ZIP was presented to the public in 1963 to help increase the use of the newly-introduced ZIP codes and speed the processing of mail.  He's also pretty cute, doncha think?

Nate Silver is my hero

AKA: Every liberal's rallying cry the night of November 6th.

Throughout the fall, my grandmother, a conservative Democrat who watches CNN in the afternoons because she wants to give herself another stroke (I can't think of another plausible reason), kept calling to tell me how worried she was about the election polls. I would respond by refreshing fivethirtyeight.com and telling her what the actual facts were.

Her: Who says that?
Me: Nate Silver. And math.

I called her just after midnight on November 7th.

Me: I told you Nate Silver wouldn't let us down.
Her: You were right. Thank goodness.

I made these Gocco prints on November 8th. They're printed on atlas index pages, the local place names reminding us that actual people in cities and towns matter more than polls on supposed national opinion.

You can buy yours here in my Etsy shop.

Valentine workshop at the National Postal Museum this Saturday!

Have you made your Valentines yet? If not, come make a couple at the National Postal Museum's free Valentine's Day Card Workshop with me on Saturday, February 9th! We'll have tons of supplies: cardstock, pretty papers, cancelled postage, ribbon, rubber stamps, washi tape, and more.  Cards mailed from the museum will also receive a special cancellation (which I will hopefully be able to convince the postal employee to put on all my Valentines that I'm also bringing with me).

The National Postal Museum is located at 2 Massachusetts Avenue, NE, right next to Union Station. We'll be there from noon to 4pm. Hope to see you there!

(And if you can't make it to this event on Saturday, take a look at the Handmade Valentine Mart in Mt. Pleasant on the same day!)

Holiday mail party wrap-up

I was going to write a whole post about how awesomely the mail-making party went, but when Mary has done it so nicely for me already, why duplicate?  Check out her post on the party and the rest of her fab pictures! (I failed at remembering to bring a camera.)

washi tape and gold stars -- photo by Mary Has Sound

My thanks go out to all those who came out in the cold to make some holiday cheer, LulaMae Events for helping me get everything there and helping me make it look pretty, and everyone who blogged or tweeted about the event to spread the word! 

hello again

I've been busy with some temporary work (which has become a good source of fun crazy-people stories). It was only supposed to last a few weeks, but here it is mid-July and I'm still plugging away. Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but I wanted to explain that I have to strike while the iron's hot.

Today, however, is humid and gross and drizzly, which means it's disgusting out, so I'm avoiding the outdoors by sitting in front of a fan and unloading images from my camera. This has the added benefit of being a quiet activity, which means it won't wake up the birds, who are still sleeping in their cages. (Yes, plural birds. We rescued another cockatiel, because we didn't have enough projects going on.)

Here are just a couple things I've been working on lately.

These were for a handmade notebook swap through a mail art group I belong to on swap-bot.com. We were to mail the notebooks as they were, so I had to think of a way to keep them shut in the mail. Then I realized that I usually have the problem of keeping it shut in my bag, too, so I designed my partners' notebooks with a little flap to protect the pages inside from the postal system's machinery and their errant pens, lip balms, and other purse whatnots. I used color-coordinated rubber bands to keep them from "flapping about like a wounded bird," as one swapper put it, with the intent for them to continue using the rubber bands as a fastening device.

Su's a big postal nerd like me, so I made for her a collage of pretty postmarks on typically American stamps to go on the back of the notebook. The front I designed to look like an airmail envelope using a mostly steady hand and trusty Sharpies.



Lisa enjoys public transit, so I covered her notebook with a Metrobus schedule and stamped it with a bicycle stamp of my own design and carving. Among the themed sides of postage stamps, I also snuck in a vintage one featuring honoring the 200th anniversary of the "treaty of amity and commerce" between Sweden and the U.S., which means she gets Ben Franklin on both sides of her notebook. Lucky gal.

"Mr. Franklin, I would say you are probably one of the sexiest presidents ever." --Michael Scott

The insides are all mixed papers and maps, along with a few little envelopes and other pockets into which I tucked surprises (like "par avion" postal stickers for Su and Metro tickets and found stickers for Lisa).


Both ladies have now received their notebooks (intact!) so I feel safe sharing without ruining their surprise. :)

The other thing I've been working on are these sweet Gocco-ed bicycle map prints.


I drew the bicycle and burned it onto a Gocco screen. Then I cut down a bajillion maps or so into 5x7 pages, then screened the bicycles onto them. (I also did them onto colored cardstock, but I'm more excited about maps because, well, I'm a nerd.) I have them available for a bunch of cities, including Portland, eastern Canada, Dublin, Lourdes, Hamburg, Istanbul, Lisbon, San Francisco, Copenhagen, and of course, the mid-Atlantic/DC-MD-VA region. Plus, sweet jesus, they're only $15! What are you waiting for?

Let's hope my next update won't be 7+ months in the making, shall we?

Stacks and stacks

Why are stacks so satisfying?

This one is especially satisfying, as it took a few days to finish. First, I cut each envelope individually; you can see that some of the pages from which they were cut are visible at the bottom of the stack. Each one is then folded up to make it functional, and then I seal the sides to the bottom flap. I then make a crapton of secret-recipe peel-off strips. Finally, I apply each strip to the top of each envelope flap and organize them into countable stacks. Voila!

Here are 300 envelopes organized into sections of 25. Later this week I will organize them into groups of three and work to make sure each set gets envelopes from three different maps. This will be enough for 100 packs of Recycled Stationery Sets, available to you at Crafty Bastards or through craftgasm.

I can't believe that there are only four days left to work until Crafty Bastards!

Transition to Full-Time Crafter

It's been a while, hasn't it?

To sum up my absence, I was busy getting unemployed and then going on an already-paid-for-and-at-that-point-much-needed vacation.

Now, however, I'm busy getting ready for the massive crowds of shoppers who are coming to Crafty Bastards next Saturday, October 3. This full-time crafting thing has me working more hours than I did at my old job, but it is much more satisfying to have something produced at the end of each day. ("Plus, the dress code is much more relaxed," she said, typing in boxers and a T-shirt.)

Today's happenings in full-time craftgasm-land (FTCL for short):

I trimmed, folded, and assembled 600 sheets of paper into 100 packs of Recycled Stationery Sets this afternoon and evening. I didn't really need to band them up, but it is rather satisfying to do so. These now just need to have envelopes wrapped up with them and they'll be good to go.

Which means I will be cutting, folding, and sealing up 300 envelopes tomorrow. All in a day's work.

(P. S. Have you voted for your favoritest Craftiest Bastard yet? Not that I'm advocating stuffing of ballot boxes, but you get one vote per email address...)

Promos? Maybe some readers can help me.

I have an entire bookshelf full of papery goodness in the form of stock photography books. These are glossy, thick, pretty books that are given to advertising firms by photography companies to entice the agencies to buy the rights to their images. This means they are perfect for collage, ATCs, and all sorts of other forms of papercrafting. A friend of mine who works for an ad agency found out his office would be throwing an entire roomful of these fabulous books in the trash, and let me and Meigh of NoPantsMcGee in after hours to cart as many away as we could carry. She had a hand-me-down SUV at the time, and we loaded that thing's cargo area and backseat FULL of these heavy books.

Unfortunately, they are not going to all fit in my new apartment. I'm moving from a large three-level Victorian rowhouse with five bedrooms, five people, and seven built-in bookshelves (three of which I took over) to a one-bedroom English basement (zero built-ins). This means I need to come up with a way to get most of them out of my house before moving to the new place.

This is where you come in.

Since they're so pretty and useful for upcycled crafting, I don't want to just recycle them -- I want them to go toward MAKING. And since I want them to go toward making, and I also make things, I want to launch some sort of viral marketing campaign about {craftgasm}, with a free book for participants, perhaps. But the cost of mailing out books individually to people would be too cost-prohibitive to manage. (Is it acceptable to ask for $3 to ship a free item to someone?)

What genius ideas have I not come up with yet? Shoot 'em to me in the comments. (Best idea gets a book!)

Homespun Yarn Party tomorrow!

I don't have much free time because of tomorrow's craft fair, but I wanted to share these with you:


Ignore the messiness of the dining room table (and the low quality of my camera phone) and enjoy the prettypretty papers I've been playing with this week. These are now packaged up as the new and improved, all-maps-all-the-time Reclaimed + Upcycled Stationery Sets for the Homespun Yarn Party; they'll be in the craftgasm shop next week!

Can't wait until then? Stop by the Homespun Yarn Party from 12 - 5 on Sunday, March 15 and snap some up in person!

The Moment You've All Been Waiting For

I'm sure that folks have been constantly refreshing their browsers, anxiously awaiting the official blog-unveiling of my newest product line. No longer! The time has come!

After amassing a huge collection of stationery as "The Queen of Correspondence" (according to my friends), I started making my own when I couldn't find exactly what I wanted already being made. Enter the Recycled Stationery Sets. They are made entirely from reclaimed, reused, and repurposed papers. Notebooks, old ledgers, and abandoned printer papers are some of the sources of the sheets, and the envelopes are a combination of old maps and reclaimed stationery from an out-of-business company. (Their return address was on the back flap of the envelope, but it is now covered by a plain white label [also reclaimed from the trash heap] that is stamped to coordinate with the rest of the set.) Each set comes with six sheets of paper (two each in three designs), three envelopes (one map, two plain), and assorted stickers and labels made from maps. I'm thrilled with how well they've turned out!
You can see more details about them at my Etsy page, but feel free to ask any questions in the comments section!
How do you keep in touch with faraway friends? And how do you reuse any paper you find yourself swimming in?