Head Lumps

I don't get to brag about this often, but I have a remarkably unlumpy head. So unlumpy, in fact, that it's really a shame my hair is not a team player or I would keep the sides shaved. Unfortunately, when my hair gets much under an inch certain chunks of it turn a light blonde that makes me appear to have bald spots unless I rub chalk pastels in my hair, but that's another story.

I mention my lack of head lumps because this week's blog project was inspired by a swap Steph posted in the mail pals group for Artist Phrenology Charts. 

I made mine well over a week ago, but seeing her write up about the one she made resparked my interest in the whole ordeal.

As the starting point for today's project, this is the one I made for the swap.

I used an impromptu side selfie as reference to draw my own chart and painted it in gouache before using a very convoluted method of masking and x-acto knifing to fill in the little sections. It is a postcard sized piece, so I did not exactly have a lot of room to work, which is fitting since there never seems to quite be enough room in my skull for everything, anyhow. 

Since the project itself is rather personal in nature, I went for things that were symbolically important to me, but that wouldn't be weird for someone else to hang on their wall if they were so inclined. I also know there are a few people in the group who let their kids get the mail, so I decided to go for G just in case it ended up in their mailbox. 

My aim for today, instead of just making another chart, was to make a little stamp to use in my journal and probably in mail art and letters as well. A shorthand for "here's a random thought" or "this is what's on my mind today". 

I worked my design mostly off of the chart I had already drawn because I am lazy and see no reason to put the work in twice. I decided to extend the hair all the across the head and I toned down the chin because daaaaaang my chin is not that big. No idea how I missed that when I was doing the preliminary sketches. 

It occurred to me while I was tweaking the design for the stamp how much of an artistic shorthand I have developed for portraying myself. Even though this is so minimalist, and not really a great reflection of what I look like, I see it as being me because of a few quirks that show up in every drawing or doodle of myself. I think the quirks are more telling than anything I actually put as being in my head. 

The bridge of the nose (which head on I tend to draw like < > ) is because there is a running joke between my sister and I that the "family nose" is simply "broken". I broke mine when I was 3 running around the edge of a swimming pool in Las Vegas. 

Specifically using the left side of my face for profiles is because my beauty mark by my nose is on that side, as well as my eyebrow piercing and the part in my hair.  

Unkempt or bushy eyebrows (even though mine are usually in the general vicinity of "point" these days, not exactly "on point" but close enough to order takeout and have it delivered from there) are because my eyebrows are... noticeable. They wiggle around a lot and seem to make up about 70% of my facial expressions, and, when combined with well timed shrugs, 95% of my dance moves.

If I am adding color, an orange scribble suffices fine for hair, because in school a boy once tried to annoy me by telling me I wasn't a redhead because my hair was orange. I said "huh, yeah, guess so" and my hair has been orange ever since.

And that's it! That makes a me. 

After I was happy with the design (and scribbled some mess ups out in pink since I never remember to buy white out) I taped it to the window to trace the reverse. I had no choice since we're out of printer ink, but I think this is faster anyway.

Transferring with chalk was a huge fail. Way too fine of details. Chalk everywhere. 

The sharpie bleed through method always has my back though.

The biggest problem with minimalist stamps is being tidy while carving. It's damn near impossible to keep any carve marks from showing up when you stamp, so you have to make sure every single mark that might show up looks good. I did not know this when I first started carving and a lot of my early stamps looked like they were made by a maniac or someone with the patience of a gerbil on speed (they were).

Many proofs on this one. I tweaked little things each time until I figured I was as good as I was getting. I was a little disappointed with how sharp the bridge of the nose was, if someone was paying me to do this stamp I think I would have redone it. Since it is more or less a caricature of myself though, and that is something I exaggerate anyway, it isn't the end of the world.

The final stamp on a page in my journal. I sectioned the brain off and scribbled random thoughts in it. Oh the possibilities are endless. The color that could be added, the doodles and quotes and ideas and ink splatters. I can stamp ahead in my journals, write addresses in the head noggin, or put postage there... Yeah, I am going to get a lot of use out of this little lady.

Reduce, Reuse, Remail

When I first seriously got into pen-paling and mail art about 8 years ago, I kept every single piece of mail nearly pristine in a little basket. Then a small drawer. Then a giant clear tub in the top of the closet.

Those were the dark ages. Now I have a flawless system that still results in piles of mail all over my office, but somewhat reduces them.

Pen pal letters are punched and filed in binders, chronologically by sender.

Stamps are torn off, sorted by USA or not and put in a bag for Stamps for the Wounded.

Interesting bits of envelopes or non penpal notecards go in a ziptop bag for later use.

Goodies, extra special swap notes and mail art are filed in their own collections or displayed. Everything else is tossed in the recycle bin.

I'll save in depth sorting babbling for another post, today let's dive into some reusing and remailing in action. That pretty pile of mail art at the top of the post wasn't click bait, swearsies. 

I dug through the envelope stash and sorted out a few piles. On the left, an "accent" pile or things that would make good focal points and then three piles of colors that looked good together. 

I glued the paper bits to a piece of 11 x 14 mixed media paper trying to keep things that looked good close together. (I ended up not using the red pile this time.)

A little bit of spray ink, some gloss medium to seal and my very favorite large glitter flakes to add some sparkle and tie everything together. After I felt good about the base and gave it time to dry, I positioned a few focal pieces and cut down the end products.

I got four nice small postcards (about 3.5 by 5)

One really really dumb postcard. I cut it too small and had to add a border later. I spent most of the time working on this project giggling about that damn dicksquid.

Two bookmarks 

One atc

eight word tile things and three inchies.

Now all the little bits that made me so happy to see when I opened my mailbox can go out into the world and cheer someone else up. At least a few of them will be sent in swaps, which will net more interesting envelopes in my mailbox so the cycle may continue. 

Never Ending Art Cards

I stumbled across a video on never ending cards a few days ago and immediately was struck with the idea that I could make them at least five times as cool and ten times the amount of effort by arting them up. 

I posted a quick flip through of my prototype on instagram and it gathered the interest of more than three people in the group I usually swap in, so I made a fairly straight forward video tutorial for group purposes. The video covers the basic assembly method and a few basic tips I figured out early on. 

If you loathe video tutorials, here's the template I was working from. Save yourself some heartache and ignore the "d" and "c" markings in the top diagram, they are only there to mislead you and make you cry. I wish I had a source for this template besides "google image search and squinting" but no dice. If you don't get the folds working on the first try, do not give up. So far the consensus has been that everyone took two or three tries. 

I started to work on my second one with no real theme to it. I basically just treated each set of pages like it was its own stand alone handmade postcard and went crazy, here's the pages in my new one with what worked well and what was a struggle. 

Page one, pretty simple. The background was done with my beloved Faber-Castel Gelato sticks and stamped over. The gelatos cover the base color of the paper nicely (I used a burnt orange piece of printer paper) but they smear and smudge something awful between pages. I ran into some trouble with the thickness on the folds and had to go back through and score along the vertical crease with an x-acto knife (in addition to cutting it horizontally). 

As for the lettering, well, I wanted to do "Enlightenment is Overrated" but I got bored halfway through letter hunting. Most the letters were clipped from the same envelope the lily came off of, I have never re-purposed an envelope this fast.

Page two. This traumatized little beardie. The background is stamped repeatedly over the "natural" color of the paper. The beardie itself was cut into 4 pieces on my sliding cutter along not only the seam but also the creases. This made it so much easier to fold the card later and I didn't have to fret about accidentally scoring through the base paper. 

I finished it up with some washi and an inner monologue. The washi is thin enough it didn't need to be scored at all along the creases. I wish I had done the entire background in washi before adding the lizard. Looking at it now, I am still not sure I'm happy with it. 

Page three I consider to be the most effective, both in looks and ease of assembly and folding. It's a cubomania style spread. I clipped the image from a book of Clive Barker's illustrations, cut it into 3/4th inch squares and randomly reassembled it. The orangey yellow smudging was initially an accident from the gelatos I used on page four (they really do get everywhere) but it pulls it together nicely. 

I'm definitely going to make another done entirely in this technique. Due to its random nature it looks good both the way it was assembled and the way it rearranges itself when you fold it back to reveal the next page. It would be phenomenal with simple patterns worked in. 

Finally, page four. Gelato background that I masked off with strips of thin washi tape and spread black acrylic over with a palette knife, plus a good ending quote. 

Let us take a moment of silence for the sharpie I ruined trying to black out the gelato. Ashes to ashes and all that.  

I like how the acrylic looks here, but it definitely warped the paper a bit. I put the card under a few heavy books to flatten for the time being. If you are doing acrylic on yours, I highly suggest doing it first thing to save yourself some tense moments. While the paint didn't bleed through my paper at all, my haphazard application of it got into the center seam and nearly ruined one of my other spreads. If I hadn't noticed it soon enough to wipe it out, it definitely would have adhered things together in bad ways. 

Overall, washi tape, cubomania, stamping and dry media are your friends for this project, especially if you are using printer paper. You also should not underestimate your creasing tool here. Even if you need to steal a butter knife for the blunt end, you need a creasing tool. And a scoring tool. And glue. And a little patience.

I will continue to fiddle around with this nonsense because it is screaming for some little ink drawings or to be assembled with canvas paper and adorned with acrylic that way. I'm also thinking decorating just the front page and using the other pages to write on will make for some excellent pen pal letters. Except if I received one in the mail a week ago I would have been dumbfounded on how to get into it... 

What I am really curious about is how these would hold up sent naked through the post. They would need a sticker or label or something to hold them shut in transit and would certainly require letter rate rather than postcard. I'm sensing yet another prototype and a test mail in the near future. 

If you're giving it a go, good luck and have fun!