 | Good Mail Day: A Primer for Making Eye-Popping Postal Art by Jennie Hinchcliff and Carolee Gilligan Wheeler NEW NON-FICTION (FAMILY) 709.04 HIN Find it in the catalog! |
"Read me the letter, baby, do not leave out the words."
-- Pete Yorn, "Strange Condition"
Letters. Cards. Postcards. Correspondence. I love mail. I obsess over creating cards and writing letters. I love surprising friends and family with mail and I love looking in the mailbox and finding something hand-addressed to me. This does not happen too often lately, as people prefer to use email, Facebook, or even texting over "snail mail." Well, I consider snail mail to be awesome mail! Read the book Good Mail Day and you too will see the awesome possibilities of what you can send someone in the mail. Don't use the excuse that you're too busy to write letters. Even a short, handwritten note or postcard sent to someone in the mail will most likely totally brighten his or her day.
Not only will this book motivate you to write a letter, but it will also motivate you to recycle everyday items (even trash) while making something creative at the same time. According to Hinchcliff and Wheeler the First Commandment of Mail Art is "Thou shalt not feel the need for fancy-pants supplies and equipment." The authors provide many colorful examples of hand illustrated envelopes and mail art and share creative ideas like making a "transit map" on a plane or bus trip or gathering materials from a walk around the block to create mail art. Included in the book is an envelope template you can copy and then trace to create your own envelopes.
Click below to see a few examples of what I was inspired to make:
 | I reused pages from a lettering booklet and created different-sized envelopes. |
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| For the above examples I took an old French book that was weeded from a high school library, sewed a couple pages together, and made a très beau envelope! *For these envelopes I used templates from the book The Envelope Mill. You can also find envelope templates on the Internet. | |
