work in progress

I’m known to often have many projects on the go at once, and right now I have about half a dozen altered books in the works. Here’s a little sneak peak at a few of them in progress and if you’d like to see some recently finished ones check out this post or this one or you can see some of my older altered book works in this section of my portfolio site. 

pressing away

I have been pressing forward with my preparations for OOAK, literally! After finishing close to 700 magnets recently, I feel pretty accomplished knowing that I just produced the same amount of pinback buttons this week! I still have more button press projects to finish up, but getting a big chunk of these tedious repetitive tasks finished, and now leaves more room for me to soon play with altered books, mixed media pieces & some long-awaited printmaking projects

another edition of postal pleasures

Three letters showed up for me this week: I got my first mail art envelope from Alexis Fullenkamp which was plastered in little heart stickers. Inside was a lovely handwritten letter, a sexy shot of BSB Kevin Richardson, a power rangers pterodactyl card, a cute smiling sticker, a double sided magazine cut out of a vintage porno scene and the best of all: a collage of comic book crotches!!! SEXY!  Amanda McNair (shmanda13) has been SUPER busy lately, but found the time to send me a super bright and glittery postcard of Vegas with a sweet letter written on the back in teal ink. My BC buddy Jeannine Saylor  (@saylor_made) spoiled me this week with a large order from my etsy shop and an adorable mail art package! She wrote a lovely letter with tons of encouragement for OOAK. She also gifted me a few prized items that were from her “keep” pile including the sexy lonely ranger, beautiful vintage barn owl card and some fabulous used canadian postage stamps (that were in their own mini envelope). Other fun paper ephemera that she added: a horned frog stamp, bookmark, original illustration of a grasshopper, india postal image and some letraset initial stickers. As for what I sent to pen pals, Jessica Mack (@brownpaperbunny) got another dose of bunny love with her latest mail art package. An original graphite drawing of a beautiful hare, found paper ephemera included an image of a bunny amongst flowers, crocheted baby bunny suits, classified ad for raising rabbits and an illustrated ‘hare’ joke. There was also a mini sticker of bunny ears, a large decal of a cartoon bunny and my letter written on a catalogue men postcard. My adorable little buddy Hera Fraser found a cute purple monster on a recent envelope addressed to her. Inside was an H flash card that I wrote my letter on and I started each sentence with “h” words. Along with the wee letter were 3 magic paint Alladin pages. The paint is injected in the paper so all you need is a paintbrush and some water to have different paint colors MAGICALLY appear!!! Kira Walker (@gali_gal) and I have been writing each other letters like classic pen pals. It has been so nice to just sit and write and get to know someone. This time I included a few trinkets that were fox & cat themed (Kira’s favorite animals). Because I am currently so busy planning for the OOAK show, I don’t really have time to make mail art so it has been nice that some of the letters I wrote at the beginning of the month are still trickling into my friends’ mailboxes. PLUS, discovering letters in my postbox is perfect right now, because although my mail art production rate is slow, the blog posts can stay alive.