Seren
Because my LA apartment is so small, I can’t keep the mail art that comes to me…I just have nowhere to put it! So, this weekend I spent time making art (I’m sooo behind on sending people art) and creating little bundles of artwork to send.
I have tons of dyed paper I made last summer so I focused purely on using that. I love the texture of the paper, it’s cheap paper towel – 2 ply, and the vibrant colors. I used dye ink and water to create the dye in large Ziploc baggies. I saturated the paper towels in the dye and laid them out to dry. Once dry, I set the color by ironing the paper on high heat (move quickly or you will scorch the paper…also be sure the paper towels are totally dry). I also backed the paper with fabric adhesive. So I could use the paper as an iron on.
The post cards were easy because all I had to do was rip off pieces of paper, arrange it on the book board (you 
need a very sturdy substrate and I had tons of book books already cut) and ironed them on. Now…I wasn’t worried about cards that were being mailed in an envelope…those would be protected…but the cards that would be mailed “in the buff” needed a bit stronger adhesive. I cover the book boards with redline tape sheets and applied the paper towels to the tape. To ensure the bond was super strong, I ironed over the paper towels (on low heat this time) to make the red line tape even stickier.
The finished product was pretty exciting. I put the post cards in small Ziploc sandwich bags with several pieces of random mail art I’d received from my friends. The baggie gets sealed and taped closed with clear packing tape…and an address label is slapped on the front. My post card faces out the back of the baggie (the un-labeled side) for our postal friends to enjoy. I sent out 25 of these colorful little baggie and
they cost about $1.80 each to send because of the new postage fees. Which is ok, because they were fun to make and I think my mail art friends liked them! I still have a lot of paper left so I'm also using it in the Artists' Books and mini zines I'm working on. The adhesive backing makes the paper easy to work with in book form and the color is so vibrant against the heavy craft paper I'm using for pages that the bold, black rub on letters I'm using for text blends really nicely...nothing gets lost on the page. I will upload some pictures of my little books soon...they are still very much in process, but they are interesting, nonetheless.
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